9800 pro

[mark_h]

hi all aint posted on here for a year or so
so most of you will be new to me anyways
just got my sweaty little hands on a 9800 pro 128mbs (after about 4 years of nvidia cards)fitted it last week & my system was very unstable (would not run any 3d benchmarks or games)i thought it was a conflict with the old nvidia drivers so after a fight (and a format) no change.
iv`e also noticed these things run hot about 55c so iv`e water cooled it but its still very unstable
am i missing somthing obvice or just unlucky??
my specs
card = powercolor 9800 pro 128
m/board= asus a7n8x deluxe
cpu= xp3200
hd=western digital raptors (raid 0)
windows xp (home )sorry??
on board sound
any help is appreciated

 

[HardWareBoss]

Get rid of the powercolor. Buy Hercules, ATI, or Sapphire.

 

[addiarmadar]

That OEM 9800 pro cannot do jack with benchmarks. Get either the Retail ATI or Hercules. Its worth teh additional money, especially if you have plans to oc.

F-DISK-Format-Reinstal DO DA!! DO DA!!

 

[Crashman]

It could be a power problem.

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[bandikoot]

Yeah, when I first got my 9800 pro it was unstable as all get out, but upgrading my old 300 power supply to a 480 fixed all the problems.

 

[mark_h]

im`e running an enermax 460w but it is about 2 years old
are these prone to give probs with age??
(kinda starting to wish i hadnt bothered with this ati & stuck with the gforce)
thanks for the helpfull advice hardwareboss !!

 

[bandikoot]

You got me curious so I went a checked my card's temps. It looks like while nothing much is really going on it stays a little under 50C, and then climbs up to around 57-58C while gaming at stock speeds, so your temps aren't that unreasonable. At least 1 fan keeps it that cool, unlike those multi-fan monstrosities on some of the FX cards. As for the PS, it is always possible that something has gone wrong. I've never had a problem, but a friend of mine killed 2 in about 6 months. If you were curious you could check and make sure that it is sending out the proper number of power where it's supposed to. One thing I always do when I have something like that where I can't figure it out is wander over to a friends and stick it in their computer. I once had a stick of ram that was supposed to be 133, but would only run at 100 on my comp, so I went and tried it on someone elses to make sure it wasn't just me, and it was in fact bad. However, if your card runs fine someone elses computer then you know the problem is something on your end. I made the swich from gforce to radeon, you can too!

 

[Ion]

The card maybe defective too.

 

[mark_h]

i think it maybe a psu problem just unpluged everthink nonesential & it will now run homeworld2 (just)
very slow though ,
have ordered a new psu so i will soon see if it cures all the probs !!