ATI Radeon 8500 64meg under win98 and winXP

[Kristoffr]

Newb question over here. Sure it's been answered before... but I can't find it for the life of me.

Got two machines and just got a new ATI RADEON 8500 64meg card. Been havin all kinds of problems with it. The new machine is 1.6 AMD AthlonXP, and the older of the two is 1.2 AMD Athlon. The XP is running Win XP and the 1.2 is running 98.

The new machine has never had a graphics card installed in it, and upon installing the latest drivers (6.13.10) for the RADEON it seems to have a rough time. Loading those drivers on boot causes the screen to display random garbage. Not even a hint of the picture that should be there. Just blocky random colours. By loading XP using VGA only, it's alright, until you try and mess with the graphic settings. Again, this is off a fresh format and install of XP, so legacy drivers can't even possibly be the problem.

The older machine was using a TnT2 clone, without problems. Upon installation of the RADEON it experience the same problems as the XP, except that I can't even boot in safe mode without the card messing up.

Have the latest drivers, and have looked through the info that came with the card and is posted on their site. Nothing we have has helped us yet. I ain't as tech-savvy as you guys, but I can provide what specs you think might be relevant if you ask for them.

Thanks for your time.

[Austin]

Sorry, it's a tricky one.

It could be a power issue, the Radeon 8500 will draw a lot more power, check your PSU is rated at least 300W.

It could be the Radeon 8500 is simply incompatible with your mobo (no good reason, but other Radeon 8500 users have same sort of probs).

The Radeon 8500 could be faulty.

Perhaps in fitting the Radeon you caused some static elec damage to your RAM or mobo.

I take it your not overclocking any stuff in either PC (shouldn't be a prob anyway but better to set back to defaults).

It could be coincidence, did you make any changes to your BIOS's (unlikely because you've tried it in 2 machines).

Try the TNT2 in the WinXP PC and check that it works. Maybe there are diff probs with each PC, the Win98 PC might need a fresh install or the PSU might be 230W and the WinXP PC might have a hw fault with the Radeon 8500 or some other of your components.

Sorry this isn't incredibly helpful, but at least I've tried to be of assistance.

hope this helps.

[Kristoffr]

Thanks fer the reply.

First off both PSU's are 300.

Can't argue the incompatability option. Although it seems unlikely, since it would have to be incompatable with two different mobo's.

No damage to either comp. I went out and bought a GeForce2 (plan on returning it once the Radeon is working) and it works just fine.

Shipping it back to the vendor to let him wrestle with it.

Thanks again.

[Austin]

Cool, best of luck!

Shame, Radeon8500 is great, maybe you could get a GF4TI4200 now instead?

[Cross_+_Flame]

Austin, on your sig the reverse is also true: I have a less than gigahertz machine and a R8500...and why are my fps's low????

[Austin]

Upgrade your CPU and it'll abosolutely fly. Even entry level CPUs are great performers.

If your CPU is less than 1ghz there's little point putting a Rad8500 or GF3/4TI as the card won't reach any where near it's potential. Put simply your Rad is waiting around for your CPU (and poss mobo) to throw the data at it.

Under 1ghz you hardly see any gain going from a GF2TI / Rad7500 to the top cards, however when your next upgrade is due a faster CPU is all that's needed.

Finally check things such as your RAM (256MB min esp WinXP), drivers (mobo etc, not just Rad), O/S (eg. Win95 makes crap use of latest hw and extra RAM etc), bus speeds and stability (esp when o/c). A lot of people like to push their FSB up to 125 from 100 but it kills the PCI and AGP speeds as they run below 33mhz & 66mhz (at 1/4) until 133mhz bus. With 4xAGP that means it'll be running at 250mhz and not 266 (if left at 100 or 133 bus). The most you can usually get from the PCI is 36mhz (stability wise).

Also try using (or forcing) AA and AntrFilt etc as this is work done almost soley by the gfx card and may help the CPU limitation out a bit.

Hope that helps .