Well let me give you a little background first on my situation. I had a Radeon 9700 Pro installed and when the card broke (fan stopped), I took it up to CUSA to get an exchange under my replacement warranty. The bad news was they had no 9700's in stock and I then choose to pick up the 9800 Pro and pay the $100 difference. So ok I'm all excited now, I go home and install the beauty. After boot I uninstalled the old video drivers and monitor drivers (because I have a Viewsonic LCD display I also wanted to install) Afterwards I ran Driver Cleaner as instructed while in safe mode, also ran the cab cleaner on driver.cab and sp1.cab (for those familiar with the program). After the next boot I installed a Fresh Copy of DirectX 9.0a and then installed my Catalyst 3.4's. After the completion of the driver install I again installed DirectX 9.0a. The DirectX install before installation of video drivers and after was suggested to me by a certified tech at a retail computer service store. His explanation for this process would be hard for me to re-explain but it?s almost like insurance that DirectX files remain intact and unchanged because of the removal and then reinstallation of the drivers.... Ok now to get back on track here, then after the video I installed Viewsonic's INF driver for the monitor.
Ok now for the bad: Splinter Cell and UT2k3 (my two heavily played games) are crashing about 15 minutes into game with Critical Error messages and then I'm kicked back to the desktop.... with no descriptions either for this particular error. I've tried uninstall/reinstall drivers without success. Secondly, I left all video settings at default (Open GL and DirectX such as AP for AA and AF) and I play with a 1280x1024 resolution @ 60 Hz. Fast write I've always left on in the past without problems unless this 9800 requires it turned off, same goes for Write Combining being enabled. In my bios my Aperture size is set for 128mb and AGP speed at 4x in bios and in the video control panel. Those are really all the setting I am aware of and that I would mess with. I'm going to call ATI tomorrow to address my concerns about this but I wanted outside help from others also because it really is aggravating! I do apply the latest patches for my games. Hopefully I'm just overlooking something minor because, formatting isn't an option but only as a last resort, I don?t believe in it honestly. People like to solve complications with an erase and to me that?s not a true problem solver.
Thanks very much,
Gamer
Ok now for the bad: Splinter Cell and UT2k3 (my two heavily played games) are crashing about 15 minutes into game with Critical Error messages and then I'm kicked back to the desktop.... with no descriptions either for this particular error. I've tried uninstall/reinstall drivers without success. Secondly, I left all video settings at default (Open GL and DirectX such as AP for AA and AF) and I play with a 1280x1024 resolution @ 60 Hz. Fast write I've always left on in the past without problems unless this 9800 requires it turned off, same goes for Write Combining being enabled. In my bios my Aperture size is set for 128mb and AGP speed at 4x in bios and in the video control panel. Those are really all the setting I am aware of and that I would mess with. I'm going to call ATI tomorrow to address my concerns about this but I wanted outside help from others also because it really is aggravating! I do apply the latest patches for my games. Hopefully I'm just overlooking something minor because, formatting isn't an option but only as a last resort, I don?t believe in it honestly. People like to solve complications with an erase and to me that?s not a true problem solver.
Thanks very much,
Gamer