Radeon 9800 Freezes My Comp!!

[Dyne]

yeah bloody, thats what i meant earlier. try your card in his machine. if it runs fine then you know its not the card. and a main reason why you got away with not much cooling before is really just why you said. you werent gaming. old p2's/3 and the k-6's could be put in a friggin oven and have no fans and still run fine. just the nature of the beast. if you can download mother board monitor while you're at it, aside from trying the card in your buddys rig. it will give you a cpu temp and a case temp. id like to see where those are at.

and i just noticed you have a 9800.....non-pro? that could explain the "steppiness" you stated. the non pros are 60 and 80mhz slower than a pro in their core and memory speeds respectively and they MAY have less pipelines tho i could be wrong. but that would very easily explain that. you should be able to throw something like Max Payne 2 or Unreal 2 at it no probs tho. Far Cry is a beast of a game.

[raystorm]

and i just noticed you have a 9800.....non-pro? that could explain the "steppiness" you stated. the non pros are 60 and 80mhz slower than a pro in their core and memory speeds respectively and they MAY have less pipelines tho i could be wrong. but that would very easily explain that. you should be able to throw something like Max Payne 2 or Unreal 2 at it no probs tho. Far Cry is a beast of a game.

the pro and non-pro are identical with the exception of clock speed, but the steppiness is explained at the end of your post.."Far Cry is a beast of a game". The game needs 1 gig of ram for optimal performance. You could always just overclock the 9800non pro to pro speeds without worrying of any major problems (as long as your pc has sufficient cooling of course). I don't do that myself as I'm happy with my non pro 9800 and its performance.

[Dyne]

i thought you needed to flash the non-pros and have certain types of ram to overclock them that far?

[raystorm]

i thought you needed to flash the non-pros and have certain types of ram to overclock them that far?

I think that was a trick with early non-pro's. I think the early 9800np's were pretty much underclocked pro's and someone figured that out and just flashed them with the pro bios and POW.. you got a 9800 pro. (maybe someone here who knows can verify that) You could overclock the non pro to pro speed, but of course you gotta have the proper cooling. I sure don't so I won't even try.

[Dyne]

ah just get an arctic cooler. theyre only what? $30?
saw the benchies of the new ati card on anandtech. seems like when nvidia went from the gforce 3 to the 4. improved a little in every way but not groundbreaking.

[bloodyarts]

The HEAT! The FUCKING HEAT!

That was the problem!! Came home last night, took the tower out of the computer table's tower compartment and took the side panel off.

Two hours later, the game is still chuggin' and I'm still smilin'. I felt the top of the tower case and it was cool as a cucumber. It's normally very warm when I touch it, and you can feel the blast of warm air coming out of the table compartment. It should be safe just sitting on the floor with the side panel back on, but I'm still buying that internal fan stormy linked to see if it will stay cool inside the table compartment.

As for the game performance, it seems that the game needs 1G RAM to run smoothly (as was suggested here) as opposed to my 512K. A 256MB card wouldn't hurt, either. Ah well, I knew I wasn't buying the best card on the market when I ordered the damned thing, so I'll deal.

Thanks for all the help guys! I was at wit's end, and you really came through.

[Dyne]

youll still want the fan setup i recommended with one in the front and two in the back.

[bloodyarts]

Is that something I can install myself?

My comp already has a side fan, one by the power source and another just below the power source. Should I just get stronger fans?

[The Bastard]

If you can find a Vantec Spectrum that would most certainly move the hot air out of your case faster. If you are feeling a little crazy though, you can also get the VGA Silencer and put that on your videocard to cool it.

In the end, stronger fans would help though.