I hope you like the Darkman reference in the title.
Card: ATI Radeon 9600 se. Solid mid-range card.
Long story short: to date, I had an error where the card would abruptly stop sending a video signal randomly after startup. I confirmed it was not the monitor. Windows suspected it was the driver and told me so. Fair enough, it sounds possible. Reinstalling the drivers and rolling back the PC to a month ago didn’t work.
… New stuff:
After my previous graphic troubles, which I suspected to be a graphics driver issue, I went in an deleted every ATI file I could find in the Windows/System 32 directory. I figured that would probably clear out any bad drivers I had in there. I already removed my grahics card. I then tried to put the card back in. For some ungodly reason my PC sputtered to life. I turned it off. I pulled the card out, made sure all the connections were god, and put in back in. PC sputters to life. I turn it off, reboot, and still no video signal. Notice unpleasant smell of burning plastic. I turn the PC off and remove the card.
I’m thinking the card itself went bad and now its fried. I don’t want that to be the case but its the only explanation I have.
One caveat: it looks like the very back section of the AGP slot got broken off. The broken section is a just a small peice of plastic - it doesn’t have any contacts and it looks like the card is slotted properly. Its not like there’s a whole lot of possible alternate ways to fit it in.
Should I go ahead and ask ATI to replace it according to their 7-year warranty? Or should I get the slot replaced and then check? There isn’t any noticable damage to the card, but that doesn’t mean anything. And I broke the small plastic bit off from shoving the ATI card in and yanking it out 12 times.
Are you sure you had the AGP card fully seated in the slot. Sometimes cards in AGP slots only seem to go 1/2 way in. Make sure none of the pins for the AGP slot are visible when you boot up.
If you don’t have another machine, or a friend with another machine with an AGP slot to try it in you have a few options.
Buy another AGP card from a place with a liberal return policy and try that in the slot. If you can get it to work your 9600SE card is a dud. Return the card you bought for testing purposes.
Borrow another AGP card from a friend. If it works in your machine then your 9600SE is likely toast.
Just RMA the 9600SE card and get a replacement. If the new one doesn’t work your board is dead.
The 9600SE is really not that great of a video card if you game. It is a 9600 with crippled pipelines. It is fine for general office use and watching video, but it is not a very good gaming card.
Good luck!
I’d be very careful about ppluggung this card into any other motherboard until you verify that your current one is still ok and the card has not damaged it.
Try another card in you board first, if it works at least the motherboard is ok, then maybe you could try the card in a differant m/b, however if that other card works, chances are, your own card is duff.
Mmmmmkay, I’ll go ahead and try a couple of place. I’ll ask the managers about it. I was sort of thinking about getting a new card anyway. Maybe I can get a friend into hooking it up.
I always make sure its shoved down snugly into the socket, and I’ve done it enough to be pretty certain I’ve got it set right.
Hmmm… I was thinking about a 9800 - maybe even 256 MB.
I didn’t know the se had crippled pipes, though I knew it wasn’t in the same league as the 9800. It actually worked rather well.
I’ve always had bad luck with video cards. Mine keeping burning out.
The mobo works AFAIK. I was on it last night quite fine using the onboard video card. Its still a POS with faulty ethernet connecters and one bad mouse junction, but it does work.
The mobo works AFAIK. I was on it last night quite fine using the onboard video card. Its still a POS with faulty ethernet connecters and one bad mouse junction, but
If your motherboard has that many problems and you have had bad luck with video cards in it, you might want to replace it, or RMA it if its still under warranty. If it has onboard video I’m assuming that its a micro-ATX MB. Let me know if you want help finding a replacement.
As far as video cards here are the price performance leaders:
Under $100
GeForce Ti4200- 8X 128MB - older card, but still very powerful
Radeon 9100 128MB - best low end ATI card
Under $150
Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB
Under $200
Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB (make sure you get full Pro version, there is one with slower memory that is cheaper)
Under $300
GeForce 6800 - This is the basic 6800, it trumps the 9800 Pro
If your in the US www.newegg.com is a good choice, Crucial.com also has good deals on refurbished Radeon cards with lifetime warranties.
The SE version of the 9600 doesn’t have crippled pipelines; it has a 64 bit memory bus, giving it half the memory bandwidth of the regular 9600. (Which has a 128 bit memory bus.) Either way, in many cases the 9600se is slower than a 9200. mbacko1 was probably thinking of the Radeon 9800 SE, which only has 4 pixel pipelines, rather than the 8 round in a real 9800.
Also note that having 256 megs of RAM on a video card will currently do little to aid performance; even Doom 3 doesn’t use more than 128 unless you really start cranking up the resolution to 1600x1200, and turn anti-alisiaing all the way up.
I do agree with mbacko1’s video card suggestions he gave above, though I would like to add a few. And I second the reccomendation to go to www.newegg.com for parts.
Under $100.
Regular 9600’s which are quite a bit faster than the 9600se you have, and offer full Dx9 compliance.
Under $200
If you can wait a month or two, Nvidia is coming out with the Geforce 6600 GT for $199, and this card is in many cases just a bit slower than its 6800 cousin. For example, in Doom 3 & Counterstrike: Source , as long as you don’t use anti-aliasing at very high resolutions, the FPS are nearly identical to the 6800, and well above that of the 9800 XT - twice as fast as the 9800XT in the non-anti-aliasing Doom 3 tests at 1600x1200 resoluton.
Randomletters, thanks for the clarification on the 9600SE, I was thinking of the 9800SE when I posted, you were correct.
A correction to my post about Crutial.com refurb video cards, they have a 1 year warranty, not lifetime.
I had a ATI 9200 that would randomly crash out on me, I replaced it and had the same exact problem with the new one. I too that back, bought a nvidia 5200, and had same problem. I finally figured out I had a shot ddr dimm, and the cards all had been fine. I had sworn off ATI products forever, instead I’ve sworn off Kingston memory forever.
