Sapphire 9600XT refurb bad?

[bfkidd]

Just got a Sapphire 9600XT from newegg and noticed two weird things...

1) A capacitor is sticking up off the board a few millimeters (1/8 of an inch or so) unlike the others. You can move it and it seems it would break off easily because it is only held on by the two thin leeds soldered to the board.

2) The memory won't overclock at all. Any overclocking of the memory and it locks up in 3dmark 2001. The only oc setup I could get was 527 on the core.

This is just a stop gap until I build a new system end of this year or beginning of next.

 

[TStep]

The cap may have been replace, hence refurbished. And overclocking is not a guarantee. It may have been returned under false pretense due to the memory not overclocking.

If it runs at stock troublefree, you got what you paid for.

 

[bfkidd]

My system is a P4 running at 3.24 and I get around 12,700 in 3dmark 2001.

I am getting disappointing results in Americas army. Running at Normal details and 1280x1024 my frame rates drop down to the 20?s sometimes.

In 3dmark, and in games I noticed the movement starts getting choppy, like its missing frames or something. This is especially noticeable in 3dmark even when the frame rate is showing over 100.

I was upgrading from a Radeon 7500 and to tell you the truth I am not impressed.

I have a day or so before I can't return it.

 

[BlackPear1]

Are benches consistent w/what 9600XT should produce? You sound concerned so you might just return it anyway for peace of mind.

 

[Alex]

i would stay away from anything refurbished...

 

[rogue1979]

Originally posted by: bfkidd
My system is a P4 running at 3.24 and I get around 12,700 in 3dmark 2001.

I am getting disappointing results in Americas army. Running at Normal details and 1280x1024 my frame rates drop down to the 20?s sometimes.

In 3dmark, and in games I noticed the movement starts getting choppy, like its missing frames or something. This is especially noticeable in 3dmark even when the frame rate is showing over 100.

I was upgrading from a Radeon 7500 and to tell you the truth I am not impressed.

I have a day or so before I can't return it.

I would make sure and uninstall the current drivers, use driver cleaner if necessary.

Download the Omega's based on the Cat 3.10, I believe Omega calls it 25.04.

I have a similar P4 system and I am getting 14,100. I tried the latest ATI drivers, benchmarks looked better, actual gaming framerates were worse.

 

[bfkidd]

Couple of updates.

1) I guess I am keeping the board.

2) I downloaded the omega drivers and the vid card locked up both in 3dmark and in game.

3) I reinstalled the newest ati official drivers without catalyst. I noticed that omega recommended to turn off fast writes which I did. I also set every setting I could find to performance.

The stuttering is now gone! 3dmark was lower, but you could see that everything was moving fluidly. Game plays much, much better. Frame rates are still dissapointing, but the stuttering is gone.

I still have some tweaking to do but I suspect the fast writes may have been the issue to begin with.

 

[BlackPear1]

Glad it's working out for you.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

Originally posted by: bfkidd
Couple of updates.

1) I guess I am keeping the board.

2) I downloaded the omega drivers and the vid card locked up both in 3dmark and in game.

3) I reinstalled the newest ati official drivers without catalyst. I noticed that omega recommended to turn off fast writes which I did. I also set every setting I could find to performance.

The stuttering is now gone! 3dmark was lower, but you could see that everything was moving fluidly. Game plays much, much better. Frame rates are still dissapointing, but the stuttering is gone.

I still have some tweaking to do but I suspect the fast writes may have been the issue to begin with.

i think dipping into the twenties is to bed expected on a 128bit bus and only 300Mhz in speed (well ddr600) 12x10 is probably pushing it slightly for that card.

i know i couldnt play UT2003/04 on my 9500pro even when i had it overclocked at 12x10 it jus dipped too often

 

[bfkidd]

Fast Writes was the problem with this card. Set everything else back to default and my 3dmark score even went up about 500 points!

All in all it seems to be working out. Even though the frame rates are lower than I expected, game play is fine and after 2 weeks of tinkering it appears to be where I thought it should be.

 

[rogue1979]

Do you have updated AGP drivers for your motherboard?

Maybe reinstalling DX9.0c might help.

 

[bfkidd]

Motherboard is a P4P800 and is only a week old. And yes I did install 9c. The card acted the same with my other mb.

 

[loafbred]

I got a refurb Sapphire 9600 XT for my father's machine from New Egg in Feb. '04. It was only $113 back then, which was quite a deal. It's still running fine.

I had to RMA my 6800 Ultra a couple of weeks ago, and swapped some cards around, putting the 9600 XT in my second machine. I hadn't tried overclocking it before, but was bored and gave it a shot. It wouldn't overclock with official drivers. I did some reading and found that it can't, by design. Using the Omega drivers defeats this lock, and with the latest Omega, mine overclocked to ~540 core and ~700 memory. The latest official driver (Cat 5.3) caused terrible stuttering. Cat 5.1 worked fine.

 

[imverygifted]

Originally posted by: franguinho
i would stay away from anything refurbished...

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: loafbred
I got a refurb Sapphire 9600 XT for my father's machine from New Egg in Feb. '04. It was only $113 back then, which was quite a deal. It's still running fine.

Me too. Only problem I could find was with an AMD banner ad here at AT that would cause BSOD. That was about 6 CAT versions ago.

 

[bfkidd]

I have been playing around with it. Bumped the agp slot up to 1.6v. Good advice on the omega drivers and I can OC fine now. It is now running core of 550 and memory at 350.

3dmark 2001 at almost 14500.

If I go back to stock settings I get less than 13400.

I went back to omega drivers and everything is looking good. I get a vid reset every now and then but other than that it looks smooth.

 

[mmganga]

guys I got a 9800 pro from newegg also refurbished, and I think it's crap, as soon as it starts up win Win 2K just in the first banner screen (when the OS loads) it has artifacts such as many short vertical lines...

Once the OS loads the video card will just display garbage, such as triangles and dots and will eventually blank out the display...

Has anybody seen this or should I be looking towards RMA?

THANKS!

 

[mmganga]

anybody have any ideas?

THANKS!

 

[rogue1979]

Make sure your power supply is up do the task, otherwise I would say a definate RMA is in order.

 

[mmganga]

Well it's an Antec TruPower 430W PS which has a claimed 36A or so on the 12V rail...it should be more than enough!!!

 

[bfkidd]

My system is running predictably if not stable.

Everytime I play AA, sometime in the first 10 minutes or so the card will do a vid reset. So the screen flickers, goes away, then comes back. Takes too long but it hasn't happened in a crucial spot yet.

After the reset I can run it for hours with no problems.

Vid issue or OC issue?

 

[Grayson73]

When returning to Newegg, I suppose they won't reimburse shipping cost so I'll have to eat them? I hope the next card is good,..otherwise, I'll have to keep eating shipping costs!

I was going to return for refund, but noticed that there is a 15% re-stocking fee?