Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations strongm on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Radeon 8500 - Perfectly Incredible ATI (PIA) OR (Pain in the ASS) PIA

Status
Not open for further replies.

MACHiNESMiTH

Programmer
May 31, 2003
7
LT
(The Dilemna Part I)

Yo All!
I have a long Story so Gear up for some Rapid Reading

I had (after a long Wait) purchased a Gigabyte Radeon 8500(LE) Pro Which was supposed to be
a major leap from my humble Geforec2 MX 400

My system Specs @ that time:

P III 800Mhz EB + FIC FB11 MoBo
320MB Ram
Seagate 20GB HDD
ATI Radeon 8500 (of course) Drivers 1.5 & Catalyst 3.2

NOw I wish I could describe just one problem...But there were a TON of them!

First of all was the fact that the drivers wouldn't install properly
but I put that down to the old Nvidia Drivers that were installed...so to save my self all

the trouble I reinstalled Windows (98) & Ho Boy!

I used the drivers that came with the Card (v1.5). Everything was RunniNg, BUT Slow
I was just getting a few frames ahead of my geforce2, BUT in GTA3 EVERYTHING SCREWED up!The

game was jerking horribly, which was shocking becuase it was giving a constant 21fps on the

Geforce 2 MX ...NOT what I paid for!


I then upgraded to the Catalyst drivers 3.4 and learnt how to welcome the BSOD frequently!

After an indefinite period of time - Any 3d App I'd run would lock up the Machine
I made sure that this was due to a 3d app, coz after 8hrs continous use of JUST windows and

It's applications (NO 3d stuff) (tested twice, by the way) The system was still running but

run a 3d app and Hello Lock up!

Here's what I did to battle this problem...

1) Added additional Fan + Heatsink -FAILED!
2) Removed all other Peripheral Device
and their Drivers (w/ a clean install
of the O/S no less) -FAILED!
3) Changed Power Supply from 250W ~ 300W -FAILED!
4) Installed Win XP (in a dying hope that it might run)-FAILED!


* pls keep this in mind that All of this was done w/ all the Recomende vers. of VGA drivers

and Directx etc etc


So before I conclude )Part I) I'd like to add: I seriously do NOT want to Blag this Card Coz

I believed that this card was a performer but the Transition from Nvidiadom to ATIhood
was far from Easy, Hell it's far from Taxing! This is an excruciating mess!

I have failed...I hope you guys won't!


 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top