Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Skuzzy on October 20, 2003, 05:02:12 PM
-
Here is ATI's response on this rumor.
----------
RESPONSE TO ALLEGED MONITOR FAILURE ISSUE
We have spent a great deal of time trying to reproduce this problem and analyzing our driver code. There is nothing in our driver code that has changed since CAT 3.7 to CAT 3.8 that could possibly cause this behaviour. We believe that our drivers are not causing these alleged problems.
We do not currently believe these stories are valid. We have already confirmed that of the nearly 100 OEM customer programs have asked for and received this driver, we have received no reports on any such problem from the OEMs. We have also run comprehensive QA tests on the driver before releasing it and have had no cases of failed monitors.
Since we announced CATALYST 3.8 on October 8th, we have recorded hundreds of thousands of downloads, and thus far there have been absolutely no reports whatsoever to ATI's Customer Support department to report monitors failing.
-
I've been running them since they came out and have observed absolutely nothing unusual. Well, except that I can't get my second monitor working in AH2. ;)
-
This I do know - my 9800 standard overheats at stock speeds with the Cat 3.8s in GTA: VC, Empire Earth, and AH 2 after about 30 minutes of gameplay. It does not overheat with the Cat 3.7s. The 3.8s also caused my monitor to flicker during the Windows 2k bootup process right before the taskbar pops up.
I find it hard to believe that the 3.8s are killing monitors left and right, but I do know that for me they were causing my 9800 to overheat.
-
The overheat is something odd. My 9800Pro runs like it always has with the Cat 3.8's. I really cannot discern any difference between them and the Cat 3.7's.
ATI is still looking into that one, by the way.
The two people that reported the montor thing on the day of the Cat 3.8's release cannot be located by ATI. They created accounts on Rage3D that day and disappeared shortly thereafter. Really bizarre.
-
Skuzzy, what do you figure this is the ultimate troll?
I do know that the issues I was having with the 3.8s were very real though. Regardless, as you said, there isn't much difference between the 3.7s and 3.8s. Since my card doesn't overheat with the 3.7s and does with the 3.8s, I'll stick with the 3.7s.
-
Well bloom, the Rage3D admins know where they came from, but they are not talking. I figure it will all come out soon as to where these guys came from, so I am content to wait.
I really don't even care to speculate about this one.
On the heating; The only thing that makes sense there is that the Overdrive portion of the driver is picking up something it was not expecting from the video card BIOS Rom, possibly.
I cannot begin to explain why one 9800Pro would heat up and another one wouldn't. Logically, the only thing that could be different is the BIOS rom code or possibly the chip revision.
No one has nailed down the commonality of the products doing it or why others don't.
-
Hiya's,
To add to the confusion i lost AH totally with latest cats so dropped back Weird ehh
btw: Only have AH on 98se partition but as a test i installed AH on win2k pro partition (2k/xp drivers of course) and still no AH so as i say back to 3.7
Best add i got cats from ati site not a 3rd party site
-
They are reported cases of sterility after installing the cat 3.8
How is my rumour ?
-
Defiance, did you remove the Cat 3.7 drivers, before installing the Cat 3.8 drivers?
-
Im sorry that I posted it in the first place, but was not thinking good enough.
Shoulda know better but It just scared me and I wanted to warn others, to stupid but done is done sorry !
Atleast it is good to hear that its a fake, I just dw the drivers and will try them later tonite.
-
To me, a rumor is an unfounded statement-- i.e. a 2nd or 3rd hand piece of information with no supporting evidence. Try reading the forms at Rage3D or DriverHeaven. I am not alone in having a 1st person experience and reporting it as objectively as possible.
For me this is no rumor... I am not claiming Cat 3.8 killed my monitor, but my display was showing very bad symptoms consistent with the reports of others at the Rage3D.com forums.
With Cat 3.8, after my computer was on for over an hour, game textures would get severely corrupted. Even when I didn't play any games, the monitor would lose signal and go black even though windows was up (complete with mouse clicks and error dings). If I used my keyboard to get into sleep mode and then come back, it usually restored the desktop, but after that it wouldn't play games correctly. If I shut down and restarted, I could get games to play normally for a few minutes. If I shut down for a long time, I could start up and use the computer normally for up to an hour.
After restoring Cat 3.7, I ran my computer for 8 hours straight yesterday. NO ISSUES AT ALL! So far, I don't think there was any hardware damage. But, the symptoms I saw looked like the symptoms of an overclocked card overheating. I have never overclocked this card because I have been satisfied with its stability and performance at 275/275.
ATI says nothing they changed in the drivers could cause these problems, but their own PR bragged about how big an improvement these drivers would be. Unless I am confused, big improvements require big changes. It just so happens that one of those changes is an automatic overclocking feature for their new XT line. I cite this not to fuel speculation, just to refute their claim that no of the changes they made could possibly cause the problems people are experiencing.
Just because the majority of people don't have the problem doesn't mean it doesn't exist. As it stands now, even some people who previously posted they didn't have any problems are coming back with new posts about some kind of texture corruption or loss of monitor signal similar to what I have experienced.
People have informed ATI of their problems (myself included). If they want to continue to dodge the bullet by saying no one has called them so be it. I used the Catalyst feedback web form at their site rather than pay $1.25 per minute to call them, I am sure most others have done the same.
I am not here to fan flames. I am happy with my Radeon 8500. I certainly don't need a hundred other people telling me I am wrong for spreading rumors. I could have just reverted back to Cat 3.7 and never said anything to anyone. But I have encountered a problem which is very real. I believe the problem to be related to these drivers and feel it is my duty to warn others.
If you don't have any problems, fine. But please don't insult others that speak up because they do have a problem.
[Edit]
Not every Ford Pinto that was hit in the rear blew up, but it did happen enough times to force a recall. More recently, Ford and Firestone assured people that there was nothing wrong with their tires, just the media blowing a few coincidences out of proportion. I guess since Ford and Firestone denied the problem, it was just a rumor blown out of proportion by the media.
-
Interesting thread on this subject (http://short-media.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=4820%3Cbr%20/%3E)
-
That was an interesting thread JimBear. I'm running a 9700 Pro and a 21" Dell Trinitron and have noticed nothing reported by others. No flashing through different modes, no texture corruption, no evidence of overheating.
Not saying it isn't happening to others and I am a bit concerned about it. If the 3.8 drivers hadn't solved a slow scrolling problem for me I'd be tempted to roll back to 3.7.
Seems to me that with the problem reports being very specific ATI would be able to confirm them and release a fix ASAP.
-
since I installed the Cat 3.8 my 19" trinitron has been going in & out of focus. It's crystal clear, then a horizontal blip line bops in for a sec, everything gets slightly fuzzy for about 2 to 3 secs then another blip and clear. Happens about every 20 to 30 seconds - almost can time it - when it is hapening.
I do not really think it was the driver, I think it is that I may have just worn out the monitor - about 3 years old now. I didn't even tie the problem to the driver. Problem seems to happen less if I shut off my monitor for a while. It is still intermittent, not everytime I boot up.
If it continues & gets to the point of annoying me, I'll try slipping back to 3.7 drivers before I get a new monitor :)
dunno about temp on my 9800 pro - where/how do you check that?
-
streak, you are confusing the monitor debacle/rumor with the heat related issue. Two different things.
And the monitor *blowing up* is completely unfounded. Please get a handle on what the problem is and stop trying to propagate this particular rumor. It just creates paranoia.
Rage3D is a good source for a lot of things, but it being the only ATI fan site, it gets a lot of garbage as well.
-
Originally posted by Eagler
since I installed the Cat 3.8 my 19" trinitron has been going in & out of focus. It's crystal clear, then a horizontal blip line bops in for a sec, everything gets slightly fuzzy for about 2 to 3 secs then another blip and clear. Happens about every 20 to 30 seconds - almost can time it - when it is hapening.
I do not really think it was the driver, I think it is that I may have just worn out the monitor - about 3 years old now. I didn't even tie the problem to the driver. Problem seems to happen less if I shut off my monitor for a while. It is still intermittent, not everytime I boot up.
If it continues & gets to the point of annoying me, I'll try slipping back to 3.7 drivers before I get a new monitor :)
dunno about temp on my 9800 pro - where/how do you check that?
Check your display refresh frequency , the autodetection should be trying some weird setup
You probably need to set your refresh freq. manually
-
Skuzzy,
Sorry for late reply as i been busy he he
Yeah removed old drivers as per long-winded removal procedure (removing reg leftovers etc)
-
A little more information bloom. It appears to have been a troll after all.
The *Cat 3.8 drivers fried my monitor* guys were all posting from one IP address. Rage3D admins are not saying what the IP is, but they have given the information to ATI.
Some people should not be allowed near a keyboard.
-
Originally posted by Skuzzy
A little more information bloom. It appears to have been a troll after all.
The *Cat 3.8 drivers fried my monitor* guys were all posting from one IP address. Rage3D admins are not saying what the IP is, but they have given the information to ATI.
Some people should not be allowed near a keyboard.
The IP trace pointed HERE (http://www.nvidia.com/page/home)
:)
-
how the heck could they blow up a monitor anyhow ... my cheapest monitor just goes into black screen and says outta range . when i exceed its limits ...
-
should We install the cat 3.8's? the website says not to unless we are haveing issues with our currnet drivers?
-
I've got to admit, it's a pretty good troll. I think just about every major hardware website posted links to Rage3d.
I found out my monitor flicker was caused by something called SMARTGART in the ATI drivers. It supposedly does hardware tests, which seem to cause my NEC monitor to flicker. For some reason, the 3.8 drivers did this at every reboot and after clicking apply for direct 3d and open gl settings. The 3.7s do it after changing settings, but not at bootup.
One other weird thing, my 9800 standard shows up as a 9800 PRO under device manager with the 3.7s and 3.8s. Since they are the same GPU, just clocked differently, this doesn't surprise me too much. I'm just wondering if the 3.8s could accidentally be overclocking my card. If they did, it didn't gain me any performance that I could see. Monitors may not be dying because of the 3.8s, but a lot of people are reporting their cards are not overclocking as well with the 3.8s, so there still may be something going on. I can tell you my card definately was overheating. After the system would lockup and I had reset the computer, the bios post screen was flickering and the text was scrambled and colored strangely. I've seen this before when video cards have overheated, and the card was definately too hot to touch the heatsink.
It may be partly a giant troll, but the 3.8 drivers did cause problems for me.
-
The Overdrive feature of the drivers is only supposed to apply to the XT line of cards as they are the only ones with a temp sensor in/near the GPU, which Overdrive depends on. The RV360 actually has the temp sensor in the chip while the R360 has it in mounted under the die, if I recall.
The heat issue, again, is rather bizarre. Not doubting you at all bloom. My 9800Pro is not running any hotter than it did before. However, I went back to 3.7's as I like the control panel better with the 3.7's than the 3.8's combined D3D/OpenGL panel.
By the way bloom, you can disable SMARTGART if you want. It is there to try and optimize the AGP bus settings for optimal performance, but it can cause issues if the motherboards AGP bus timing is a tad off.
-
Very pleased with Cat 3.8's on my early model 9700 Pro. They took care of blurred text in AH, and the card seems faster ...