Is ATI ever going to solve the Radeon VPU recover/freeze problem?

[E.J.]

Well, i think this is the 9865xe20 post about this matter, but, i still waiting for an answer....

The story is the same as always, you get a shinning new motherboard and a pretty well-rated processor, install enough RAM, and then de most important part, you add a brand new state-of-the-art ATI RADEON 9XXX / XYYYY.

And after you have spent the whole night installing the OS, Drivers and other stuff its time to play that game you weren't able to play because your good old computer was crap.

Installing Game: OK
Getting heated up: OK
Starting the Game: OK
Playing the Game........................................... and after some minutes you understand that your computer is not going to recover and get bored of seeing a plain black screen.

Guess what? yes, this happened to me...., but i'm happy, i'm not the only loser in this world that had the same problem, so i use the allmighty Internet to look for a way to solve my tragedy.

After about 6 hours of jumping from one forum to another and reading the bullshit (aka support info) from the site of the card maker i start to realize that all my efforts may be useless.

After 12 hours of looking around Internet and trying almost everything (not to mention the countless uninstall/reboot/install procedures) i start to get tired....(and very pissed too

Well, maybe it wasn't useless at all, now i can at least watch a video without getting a frozen screen.

So.. now i have a wonderfull ati radeon 9xxxx that can't even play a 2D game without giving me a blackout after 1 or 2 minutes. (with 3d games it hangs at the first glimpse of 3d...)

I have tried so many things, i can't even remember the list of tweaks and settings i have tested.

It's always the same, i have started to wonder if the people from ATI does really care about the fact that hundreds of users of their hardware are wishing to burn them alive.

But it would be a little unfair to blame only the people from ATI, i guess the makers of my shinning new motherboard are half guilty because the card works for other people with a different MB.

I really want to make this card work, i have seen it running on other people computers and i'ts great, i just don't understand why this had to happen to me.

I think the techpowerup! forum is my last chance to get mi videocard working, because this forum is full of skilled, hard working, nice people .

My Pc specs:

CPU: AMD Semprom 2600 64bit
MB: MSI K8T Neo-V Socket 754
VC: Connect3D ATI Radeon 9550 256mb (RV350LX)
RAM: 2 x Kingston 256mb DDR 333Mhz
Audio: Integrated Realtek AC97
HD : Who cares?

OS: Win2k Pro (NO service packs)
DirectX: 9c
ATI Drivers: Omega 2.6.75a

Just in case, i already tested all the bios related tweaks (fast write off, agp 4x, etc...)

Another interesting fact: most of people with this problem are using 64 bit processors / motherboards.

So, i'll be waiting...

PD: please help meee!!, and yes... i'm not an english speaker.













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[SMJ-G]

Well to start of with the ATI Radeon 9550 256mb (RV350LX) is NOT such a crash hot card!!! At best it’s below LOW quality level....that is where your problem is......and don’t go blaiming ATI before you do some research on the type of video card that suits the game you are playing. I suggest (and this depends on the budget that you have) that you buy another card…may be the new ATI X800 series either the GT or GTO which is a good bang for your bucks card.

As far as your 9550 try to use some of the earlier versions of the Catalyst drivers may be 5.2 to 5.4 as the 9550 was released around the same time that these drivers were around. Good luck

 

[turbopsi]

Yeah, don't blame ATI, I have had nothing but luck with them.

You are probably overheating the card.

 

[zAAm]

Yeah, my 9550 never did this. It did recover once or twice, which saved me a restart, but it immediately came back online. And yeah, try some ventilation maybe? Or take on the geniuses at ATI support?

 

[E.J.]

Well, i'm not that angry with ATI, after all i'm a ATI follower too.
As i said before it's part a issue with the motherboard.

I don't think the 9550/9600 is a bad card, there are worse things (9200 for example)

As far as i know the card is not overheating, and i have also tested a 9800 and a X800 from a friend with the same results.

Yeah, a have used the 5.2 drivers and many many others.

I have talked with people who have very similar MB/VC/RAM configurations and they don't have any problem.

But, i don't think the MB is defective because the ATI 9200 and the NVidia cards don't give me trouble.

And the games, well, i do't think Guilty Gear XXReload is a gpu killer...

I really love ATI, but as longer as my situation keeps like this i'll think about buying a MSI Nvidia based card.

 

[zAAm]

Sorry EJ. We can't fix it here so this thread doesn't say much unfortunately. Unless you just wanted to get rid of some frustration? And then you just need another mobo.

 

[E.J.]

Sorry EJ. We can't fix it here so this thread doesn't say much unfortunately. Unless you just wanted to get rid of some frustration? And then you just need another mobo.

Jaja, yes, i left my frustration in the first post...

I have been looking around a lot in the MSI forums and found some things i haven't tried yet, so i won't give up for about 3 days more

I'll inform about any changes. (positive changes...)

 

[k62]

What kind of PSU do u use? At least 350 watts i guess?
i had the same trouble an my K8n neo 2 , and severeal other setups, when using atoo weak PSU

try disconnecting anything that you dont need to test the game i.e extra disks and so on

My other guess is that either your mobo or ram has som trouble.
Try running memtest or even better RST to test stability for your ram.
Or try running losser settings for ram in bios!

 

[E.J.]

OK, good news!!!!!

My ATI is working!, i upgraded the bios of my motherboard and changed some other things in the Bios a it's working now!

Well, i can't be more happy, finally, after about one month of suffering the damn thing is running like a swiss watch.

It seems that the early K8T's were shipped with an older Bios, thats why some people with the same hardware weren't having trouble.

I flashed the bios and disabled some useless options that were activated by default in the bios (Spread Spectrum, V-Link, etc...) and then re-installed chipset and videocard drivers and voila!!

After that installed NFS Underground and played and played until 1:00 am, jaja

Now, is overclock time!!

PD: if remenber well my PSU is a Viomax 450watt, 24A max and i have two hard disks, a dvd recorder and a common dvd drive connected to it, plus, the motherboard...

 

[Dranoweb.com]

My thoughts.

I thought for my first post here I may shed my thoughts on this topic, as I have been an avid observer of this thread for some time now.

I think it warranted a registration.

I have a Radeon 9550 (no I didn't buy it, its a second had, resurrected job)

At any rate I have had some issues too, coupled with what seems like power supply overload issues.

I have purchased a powered usb hub to reduce some of the load as I have many, many accessories.

this has minimised the mysterious shutdown when I plug in my DSL modem or camera.

As for the video, I have tried a great many things, granted I have not tried a mobo bios update yet - just read that and will try it soon.

I have narrowed the cause of complete system lockups down to a singular cause.

If I play a video it is fine, but if i stop the playback, it freezes a few seconds later.

If I pause playback and then close the video playing application, it has no issue.

I have encountered this problem once or twice when rapidly advancing through a playlist of video clips, as one would with something like Futurama.

This happens across all video capable applications. Usually while playing back DIVX videos, but also with MPEG2.

I have tried various versions of the drivers, but not some of the older versions as I am yet to find a source of them.

I have had little to no problems with games. Half life 2 and BF2143 all run comfortably at a reasonable detail.

I run dual monitors, (1440X900 TFT widescreen @3ms response and TV out @800X600 in another room.) I thought that this situation may have some bearing on the problem, but it does present the same results weather the video is played back on either monitor, but seems to freeze more quickly on the TV out.

Hopefully when the dentist and Chiro are paid for I will be financial to go back to my exclusive Asus/Nvidia chipsets and shift this seemingly incompatible ATI thing to my pile of parts to be recycled into second hand giveaways.

My machine (one of several) was running perfectly before I added this card, and now it is acting like a jersey cow with milk fever (laying on it's side groaning horribly, and unable to do much more than that)

I am usually a calm and collected sort, but if I thought that technology could be psychic I would assume that this picks the most frustrating and infuriating times to malfunction, not only that, it does so in direct proportion to the urgency of my need.

Ranting aside, my questions simplified for those with lazy eyes:

Q1: Where can I get STABLE drivers for an ATI Radeon 9550
Q2: What brand of modo worked after a bios update?
Q3: Anyone had this mysterious USB related shutdown problem?


My system is::

PSU 550W
AMD XP 2500 (SOON TO BE UPGRADED)
1GB DDR something ram (forgotten)
Radeon 9550 256mb
3 X HDD's (all IDE - 80gb, 80gb, 160gb)
Liteon DVD burner w/lightscribe
Early model Pioneer DVD rom (noisy s*** of a thing)
Asus A7N8X - VM400 TV out (tv out not used)
7 LED case fans, and a tornado pure copper heatsink with variable speed.

there is a long list of mods and customisations including panels and controllers I have constructed myself, including about 5amps worth of USB stuff. But hey we all gotta brag sometimes.

 

[tkpenalty]

hey dude, the 9550 is old... sorry to break it to you but its state of the museum more like...

Anyway, 9550 crashing? not ATI's fault, I would request and RMA asap... I have a 9550 and it runs fine

 

[Dranoweb.com]

Haha yes I know it's old stuff, but it beats an FX5200 which was the last "budget card I had"

I have a few machines, the one in questing is basically my mainframe and is connected to everything, it has been there a few years and probably will be for a while longer.

so for now I have to make it work.

so.... in your archives down at that museum of yours, do you have anything about the "old" radeon 9550?

 

[Ketxxx]

Who the hell revived this old thread? 2005? Come on..

 

[DaMulta]

I thought for my first post here I may shed my thoughts on this topic, as I have been an avid observer of this thread for some time now.

For two years?

 

[Zubasa]

For two years?

LOL

 

[SMJ-G]

Dranoweb.com...to answer your questions;
Q1: Where can I get STABLE drivers for an ATI Radeon 9550....there are no stable drivers if your infrastructure is not setup properly and is out of date, what i am saying by this is;
a. You most definitely have to update your bios! Version 1010 is the last for ur mobo...(http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us) asus mobos in particular are bios sensitive, but please note; due to the age of your mobo do not update through dos (Awdflash), use the asus update through windows and also check the bios on ur mobo through that!

Q2: What brand of modo worked after a bios update?....i don’t understand this question, but if u mean this then don’t be afraid to flash ur bios, if u do it safely then u reduce risks, eg set ur default bios parameters before flashing, do not shut power off or have a power failure in the middle of the bios flash, and do not do a dos flash as the variables of your fdd, cables etc and god knows what else will stuff up your flash (it happened to me a few times and not with recoverable bios), but with asus ur luck because u have a bios recovery through the setup cd.

Q3: Anyone had this mysterious USB related shutdown problem...usb problems occur due to drivers, psu or cable/plug defects! But mainly chipset drivers! So update ur chipset driver for that mobo which has the nVidia nForce II.
It could also be dvd-rom related, it seems very old and just about cactus out! Update all ur codecs and windows drivers etc etc.and try to reduce the clutter...u know go back to basics and work up, if u know what i mean.
Cheers hope this helps

 

[SMJ-G]

Dranoweb.com...also read this review about the A7N8x...http://www.digital-daily.com/motherboard/asus-a7n8x/...

• However, can't help pointing to several shortcomings of the boards, in particular, some BIOS flaws. Besides, the integrated audio runs intermittently - there seems to be a problem with the right drivers.

 

[Tatty_Two]

I just think it's a shame that for all the effort you two guys have put in trying to get a stable working card that even when your problems are solved you are left with a card that cant play most of the modern DX9 titles at all, certainly not at decent settings/resolutions......shame really.

 

[dolf]

Usually (I have experience with GeCube 9550 RV630 - 9600XT) that card has problems with the VPU recover error because of the high GPU clock not a heat problem. After decreasing of the GPU clock it runs error free. RV360 is usually capable of 500MHz stable but it deppends of the specific core and the core voltage but in my case it was the core which only works at max. 480MHz stable. After setting the clock to 450MHz (from the VGA BIOS) it was rock stable 24/7. Just check the GPU clock and the thermal paste between the core and the cooler .

 

[Gorseight]

Regarding the VPU Recover

We got same trouble Vista Ultimate or Xp pro, even with Xp advanced modification to make most purely fast as possible, 25.6s Faster as regular Xp pro. Same trouble with the 3850 it crash, they says that recover is made to prevent the blue screen of death, it took 4 month to come up fast with the 3870 with fixed trouble, hidden the real trouble concept of the 3850. It took only 3 hours gaming to crash, and crash and crash here a view

http://img85.imageshack.us/slideshow/player.php?id=img85/2350/12022444751nn.smil

We went with Nvidia 8800GT 512MB DDR3' , nothing happened... 8 hours playing no crashes... Still we say this vpu recover is the dummest concept made by ATI.

System Architecture Dev
Gors.

 

[Hawk1]

Well I've never had a problem with my card in XP or Vista. Don't know if this is widespread, as I think you would have heard more people complaining.

Anyway, welcome to TPU, and in future, try not to dig up threads that are 2+ years old. Just start a new one.

 

[Hawk1]

Wtf?

LOL, I know, but didn't want to be rude about it (thread digging is one of my biggest peeves - but I try to control myself).

 

[Gorseight]

reply

i am not saying ATI itself is a bad product,

sorry was not precise, its the HIS manufacturer <who is really out of this world, ...

if it come to Sapphire, number one.....

 

[Gorseight]

Well I've never had a problem with my card in XP or Vista. Don't know if this is widespread, as I think you would have heard more people complaining.

Anyway, welcome to TPU, and in future, try not to dig up threads that are 2+ years old. Just start a new one.

u might be right, you are lucky, and depend the manufacturer, if its HIS ....

 

[Hawk1]

u might be right, you are lucky, and depend the manufacturer, if its HIS ....

My manufacturer is orginal ATI. Still don't see it being a widespread issue, but haven't been following their DX10 cards.