9600GT having major issues?

[DeadlyNinja]

I've been shopping around for a 9600GT and I read some review from newegg users complaining about the 9600GT having issues. Is it true? What kind of issues are we talking about here? I couldn't figure out if they were Vista related or not.

[Solaris17]

gen1 9600GT's have an inharent blackscreen issue that iv noticed inxp and vista when playing shader intensive games


some cards i would reccomend were they changed the referance design or fixed it themselves somehow would be

palit and XFX

[DeadlyNinja]

I saw some similar complaints on the XFX cards too. Hmm... I wonder if it's safe to buy now.

[OzzmanFloyd120]

I've only had one problem in shader intensive stuff and that's during firefly forest in 3dMark06. At stock speeds I don't have a problem, but when I OC my GPUs with my CPU @2.6 the bench will freeze and then every other scan line will turn black and then the display drivers reset.
Keep in mind though that both of my cards are the same model, but one is the second revision on the card, whereas the other is the first release(which explains why only every other scanline goes black) I bought one on Newegg, the other came directly from XFX on an RMA.
Like I said before though, I only have that problem under high OCs

[DeadlyNinja]

I don't plan on OCing my card, and I'm only buying the stock clock ones.

[Kursah]

I second the Palit recommendation, I love my Palit, damn great card, it ranks #2 to only my modded x850pro (to xt pe w/pipe unlock mod) as my all time favorite cards in the last few years. This thing OC's great, keeps cool, and hasn't given me the slightest bit of aggrivation!

[MKmods]

I have several pairs of the ECS 9600GTs with the Passive coolers, I have been able to OC the heck out of them and never had 1 prob with any of the 4 cards.

[OzzmanFloyd120]

Originally Posted by Kursah

I second the Palit recommendation, I love my Palit, damn great card, it ranks #2 to only my modded x850pro (to xt pe w/pipe unlock mod) as my all time favorite cards in the last few years. This thing OC's great, keeps cool, and hasn't given me the slightest bit of aggrivation!

Those really are great cards, it's just too bad that they don't have pixel shader 2.0 on them
No Bioshock for x850 owners.

[bigtye]

Some of the problems reported with 9600GT's were the result of the initial driver release which could cause stop errors after an hour or so of play, experienced this myself. The latest drivers though seem to have solved this issue, have not had it occur since udating.(174.54 I think)

My 9600GT card is also overlocked and has been great, running on XP 32.

Tye

[DeadlyNinja]

It's just a driver issue? Thank god then. I heard some people actually had to RMA the card though. I read it on both the XFX and EVGA cards.

[webwizard]

I am running two XFX Alpha Dogs and have had no problems. This card runs very cool compared to others I have had. Mine is OC to 840MHz and still no problems.

[Melvis]

Originally Posted by bigtye

Some of the problems reported with 9600GT's were the result of the initial driver release which could cause stop errors after an hour or so of play, experienced this myself. The latest drivers though seem to have solved this issue, have not had it occur since udating.(174.54 I think)

My 9600GT card is also overlocked and has been great, running on XP 32.

Tye

Hi there, i see you have the GPU that im interested in besides what you have said above^ is there anything else i need to know about the Gainward 9600GT GS? Anything at all? O what is the temp that the card runs at? i see it has a very nice stock cooler on it....

Thanks...

[bigtye]

Yeah I love the card, idling currently at around 27 C whilst room temp is 17 C and case temp is 24 C (measured on temp probes attached to the heatsink.)

It was the right price/performance without too much power use.

I forget what it gets up to in gaming, I think around 36 C, it's winter here though and I have no heater, except the pc lol. The cooler is big but fan is quiet. Like I posted earlier, don't install the drivers on the cd, go straight to Nvidia site to download latest.

Games great on 2142, COD4 and COH, which is what I play. Using 1680x1050 with some AA and most settings on high.

I am just using the standard overclocks the card came with.

Tye

Funnilly enough, after posting this yesterday, I played COD4 for 30 minutes this morning and got another driver stop error. Game froze, music kept playing and had to do a reset to get back to windows. I'm a bit unsure about my recommendation now, be it a driver issue or card issue, I'm not sure.

PM me if you want to know anything else.

[Joe Public]

I have a Xpertvision/Palit 9600GT which is working well. Haven't had any trouble with it. The cooler is very efficient, never gets above 50C here. (In a not so good ventilated case). I'm not overclocking it yet, but going to do some this weekend.

[Palit_Guy]

I handle all the RMAs for Palit as well. We have never had a black screen return. I've not even heard of that until now.

[Melvis]

Originally Posted by bigtye

Yeah I love the card, idling currently at around 27 C whilst room temp is 17 C and case temp is 24 C (measured on temp probes attached to the heatsink.)

It was the right price/performance without too much power use.

I forget what it gets up to in gaming, I think around 36 C, it's winter here though and I have no heater, except the pc lol. The cooler is big but fan is quiet. Like I posted earlier, don't install the drivers on the cd, go straight to Nvidia site to download latest.

Games great on 2142, COD4 and COH, which is what I play. Using 1680x1050 with some AA and most settings on high.

I am just using the standard overclocks the card came with.

Tye

Funnilly enough, after posting this yesterday, I played COD4 for 30 minutes this morning and got another driver stop error. Game froze, music kept playing and had to do a reset to get back to windows. I'm a bit unsure about my recommendation now, be it a driver issue or card issue, I'm not sure.

PM me if you want to know anything else.

Wow ok thats awesome temps there dude, i like that alot, a heap better then my 8600GT thats for sure that idles at around 38c.
Yea to true, its a good price performance hey , do u know what the power draw is?

o ok thats good to, even under load that is a good temp, LOL i know what ya mean, its winter here to in NSW and my PC is my heater as well, sad isn't it lol
Interesting on the driver thing tho =/ i always keep up with the newest drivers, so i hope i don't come across that problem...

Ok well thanks for that, ill keep all that in mind Good PC by the way

[Creatre]

Kinda bringing this thread back up for a similar question. Does anyone know what causes that black screen? My EVGA 9600GT gives me it once it has been running for about 15 minutes no matter what the overclock. I'm at 726/1815/1095 and it seems to be good to go so far. The card idles at 34 degrees celsuis though, and under load at like 50. I feel like I'm hardly pushing it at all...I've seen other 9600gt's get much higher OCs though. Should I RMA this card, or just suck it up with the oc it's at now? Hopefully the black screens don't continue getting worse. Guess we'll find out when I start playing AoC tonight.

[Palit_Guy]

Let me know how it goes with AoC. I'm playing that too.

[Creatre]

Actually, ATi Tool was showing Artifacts, even though it wasn't back when I start OC'ing it, which is odd....New settings are 745/1862/1052 with no artifacts...looks to be running at about 55 degrees celsuis now.

Should have gotten the Palit one...anytime I try to go over 750 core, or 1100 mem I'm getting the black screen driver error. Looks like its pretty comfortable here at 745/1052 though. I know them Palit's are doing better than this though!

[Creatre]

Originally Posted by Creatre

Actually, ATi Tool was showing Artifacts, even though it wasn't back when I start OC'ing it, which is odd....New settings are 745/1862/1052 with no artifacts...looks to be running at about 55 degrees celsuis now.

Should have gotten the Palit one...anytime I try to go over 750 core, or 1100 mem I'm getting the black screen driver error. Looks like its pretty comfortable here at 745/1052 though. I know them Palit's are doing better than this though!

Take that back, this new OC just made me Black screen after 10 minutes of ATI tool....WEIRD!

Just going to ease it back down to 710/1775/1030 see if its more comfortable there...

[dadi_oh]

Originally Posted by Creatre

Take that back, this new OC just made me Black screen after 10 minutes of ATI tool....WEIRD!

Just going to ease it back down to 710/1775/1030 see if its more comfortable there...

The black screen occurs when Over Current Protection (OCP) kicks in. The reference design has a sketchy power supply and when you get into shader intensive operations (I noticed Firefly Forest in 3DMark06 was the worst) the OCP can kick in. Basically it drops the GPU core voltage down to 1.000V and the card locks up. Only way to get it back is to power cycle the machine.

It usually will only happen when overvolting/overclocking. I went through hours and hours of troubleshooting on this. I watercool my card so temps are 34C MAX under full load. I tried overvolting the card from standard 1.15V and ran into black screens continuously. Finally I just put the voltage back to stock and max out my OC at 770MHz on the core. If I go over 800MHz on the core with default 1.15V I blackscreen.

I have a pretty detailed description in the thread below.

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showth...ghlight=9600gt

If you get a non-reference design (like Palit) then you should be safe. Palit does not have the crappy power supply design of the reference board.

[Black Panther]

Honestly I think every model and brand of cards have those which come out with 'issues'.
I spent 2 weeks waiting for my 8800GT last November. During those 2 weeks my intestines were knotted up - the card was a new release and obviously if people bought and it functioned well not all of them write praise on the net, but those who get a faulty card... 99.9% write on forums etc. There were people who had artifacting, others with fan not working, others who had heat problems, yet others who had to down-clock the card in order to get it to work...

Well that's what rma is for after all, there's always a small % of faulty cards on the market.

The only 'problem' I had with my card was a bent backplate, seemed it was purposely made like that for the box wasn't damaged or anything. I easily straightened it out.

[Palit_Guy]

Dadi_oh-

Thanks for that explanation. You just saved me a TON of time.

[dadi_oh]

Originally Posted by Palit_Guy

Dadi_oh-

Thanks for that explanation. You just saved me a TON of time.

You are welcome. Makes me wish I had bought a Palit

Next time....

[Creatre]

Originally Posted by dadi_oh

You are welcome. Makes me wish I had bought a Palit

Next time....

Same. I'll be a Palit buyer next time!