Sarkast

I bought myself a 9600XT for an extremely good price on e-bay.
Well it turns out that instead of the Visiontek Xtasy 9600XT i was sent the GeXcube 9600XT Extreme.

The problems are:

With certain driver versions i cant set my screen resolution higher than 60hz. Ok i can deal with that (just install one where i can). Unfortunalety with the latest ones it didnt work.

When i run ATitool i see the card is clocked 500/325 - which is normal for the GeXcube. The problem is that with that i have constant artifacts - i have to clock the card down to about 500/230 in order for the artifacts to disappear.

Now the thing is: I am not much of a gamer so i cant really test the card with any games. Strangely (at 500/325) the card goes through the aquamark03 benchmark without any problems (shouldnt i see artifacts/ graphic errors here ???) and gives me a score of about 24000.

Is it possible that AtiTool wrongfully reports artifacts even though the card is working fine ? I would just run the card on 500/230 underclocked because its still 10x more powerful than my Mx440 but after each restart its clocked back to 500/325 with artifacts in Atitool. Besides - as i said i dont own any 3D games so i dont know if in games the card would make trouble.

I didnt really want to ask around much and just return the card but it was just too sweet of a deal for a 9600XT Extreme. If anyone has any ideas whats going on/ could solve the problem/ has experiences with the GeXcube 9600XT then please let me know.

By the way - i reinstalled WinXP several times with diffrent catalyst drivers each time so its not a driver conflict. I am kinda tired of reinstalling stuff so either someone has an idea of what could help me - or i am gonna send the card back or try to sell it to someone for around the same price i bought it for to break even. Maybe somebody else has more luck with it.

I have about 2-3 more days to decide what to do untill my return period runs out. Any help would be appreciated.

TKD2

First of all, ATiTool is highly sensitive to artefacting, which is kinda what it's designed for so it not a case of it wrongfully reporting them.
Having artefacts on ATiTool when benchmarks do not is hardly uncommon.

The wierd thing here though is that it looks like a memory problem since you need to heavily underclock the memory to become artefact free.
Question for you: When you run ATiTool, do you visually 'see' rogue triangles on the display or is it just a case of there being errors reported?
If the latter, it's probably just one marginally deficient ram module - which could well be borderline unoticeable for 24/7 use.

EDIT: It's also a good idea to download 3dmark2001 and run the 'lobby' tests on continuous loop - if the memory's gonna cause problems, it'll show up there.

UncleMacro

You may be getting caught by the Win2K,WinXP refresh rate bug. If that's the problem then you can fix it with RefreshForce.

I use RadClocker to overclock my Radeon 9700Pro and it can set the clock rates every time it boots so you only have to set them once. It looks to my like ATITool can be set it up to load a profile on startup. You shouldn't have to do it manually after each boot.

I just downloaded and tried ATITool on my 9700Pro and didn't get any artifacts. If ATITool was misreporting artifacts then the artifacts wouldn't disappear when you underclocked the memory. It's probably correct but they may be sufficiently subtle that you don't see them fly by. Benchmarks built into games don't check their output so unless the board is flaky enough to crash, the benchmark will just go ahead and report its results even if the output was screwed up. When people are overclocking video boards they normally crank them up until the artifacts become visible and then back the clock rate off a bit. The normal speeds for a Radeon 9600XT should be 500MHz for the GPU and 300 MHz for the RAM so GeXcube already overclocked the RAM for you quite a bit. But 230MHz really blows for a 9600XT.

I've heard occasionally of people who have overclocked their RAM a lot and caused permanent damage. It worked for a while at high clock rates and then after a couple of months they found that they have to slow their boards down to stock speeds and then underclock to run artifact free. It's rare but it's been known to happen to RAM. If your board is used then that may be what happened to it. 230MHz is WAY slow for a 9600XT. If that board is used I would be more than a little worried that it might continue to get worse. A 9600Pro costs just a little over $100 these days and they run at 400/300. You might consider that as an option.

Sarkast

Thanks for your replies - i appreciate it.
I already replaced the card and reinstalled my regular OS with all apps so i guess i'll dig another HDD out to run some more tests over the weekend.

About the artifacts - yes i can see them. At clock speed there can be big yellow areas all over the cube - when i go down... 270...250 etc then they get very small dots. Like i said around 230 they disappear.

The thing is: i bought this card for 36$. I think thats a deal and even at reduced speeds its still much more powerful than my MX440 - and seeing that i dont play 3D games like Doom etc. it wouldnt matter much. Aslong as i can figure out if the card works ok when underclocked then i'd be all set. The kind of games i sometimes play are RTS (Warcraft) or Simulations...

I'll try your suggestions and get Radclocker and try 3dmark2001

Also another question - as usual i did a lot of reading and came across several people saying they are using Omegadrivers. Could that be worth a try ?
And if i stick with the ATIs - is there a particular set that is known to work better than others ?

TKD2

On the grounds you can visually see the artefacts - using different driver versions won't help you.
The problem is undeniably a hardware issue and the reason you picked up the card so cheaply is almost certainly due to that fact.
The previous owner may well have been messing around with the cards bios settings - he/she most like just clocked the mem so highly that it permanently damaged it. However it could be possible that the bios was just flashed with the wrong bios which uses incompatible memory timings for the GeX. This situation is fixable but begins to get very technical and complicated if you don't know what you're doing... but i'll gladly help you out if you can be bothered exploring the option (which will mostly likely be a blind alley).

Still, a $36 500/230 ATi 9600 is a great buy. Especially if you're not a hardcore gamer.

Sarkast

Well the card was bought from a "refurb" company so i can still return it. I would've done a BIOS update but when i go to the GeXcube page and try to download the BIOS but it seems theres something wrong with the download link. I doubt i can find the BIOS anywheres else....

I am still willing to mess with the card untill i have to return it next week. Even if i screw it up - not a big loss....

TKD2

GeXcube Bios Files

Those are the three possible bios's that your card will need - you just need to determine whether it's a C3 or a D3, and if it has Hynix or Samsung ram. The latter should be easy but i'm not too sure how you'll work out the C3/D3 bit.

I haven't flashed an ATi card for about 6 months now so i've forgotten the syntax - but i beleive it will be something like:

flashrom.exe -p 0 R9600C3.S2

-But you better check that, especially since GeXcube are using this .s2 file extension.
Otherwise you could just type FLASHS2.bat from the A:\ prompt in dos if you just copy all the files in the directory to a boot disk. Then have it all done manually

Sarkast

Thanks TDK2. First i figured out what card it was - the mem was Samsung and the C3 was conviniently printed on the circuit board. (agp hook)
I think the BIOS files you posted were the wrong ones though. I tried to flash the BIOS with a boot disk but it told me it was the wrong BIOS. I tried both Samsung ones C3/D3 but it always said "failed".
Well i did (forced) the update anyways... LOL

So after that the screen was all garbage. For a moment i got a little worried but then went on my other pc and after some internet research located the right drivers for the XT extreme (i think the file you sent was for the PROs or just XT).
I did a "blind" BIOS flash ... cause as i said the screen was just a rainbow of colours... ;-)

After that the card worked again. I went through the whole /drivers/ dx9/ atitool routine and the artifacts still happen if i clock the card higher than (oddly now) 500/240.

So it was fun - but the card will go back tomorrow. ;-) Maybe the company can sell it to someone else who either doesnt use 3D or doesnt care about artifacts... lol

Thanks for the ideas - first time i did a flash update on a video card.

I think i'll get a 9800 Pro from newegg... i saw some for under 200$... i'll just clear out some junk to sell on ebay and then it should be ok. ;-)