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8600 with 128 ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 3D Graphics Problems
Video help needed! Did anyone actually try running any games with this set up yet? I just recieved my new 8600 with the 128 ATI Mobility Radeon Turbo Pro yesterday and I can not run 3D games without getting what I would call "horizontal rain" during game play. This occurs while running Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) and Lock On Modern Air combat (LOMAC). I can boot up the game and play for a minute or two then I start to get picture degradation where blurred horizontal lines begin to appear and spread rather rapidly across the whole screen. In SWG it occurs when my character is standing still. When I move it clears up mostly but then immediately returns when I stop moving. After exiting the program the screen appears fine. I tried LOMAC because it was another 3D intensive program that I own and the same happens about 1 minute into flight. The whole screen experiences this horizontal rain and it is unplayable. This occurs at regardless of what resolution I set the game at (I also noticed the ATI card does not scale for the wide screen beyond 1200x1024..I get bars on the sides with any resolution higher than 1200x1024). 2D games seem to be good and Command & Conqueor: Generals appears to play fine as well. I haven't loaded Call of Duty yet and tried that. I guess my question is could this be a driver issue or is my card and/or display not working properly. With all the talk about benchmark scores has anyone tried running any of the above games to determine the performance of the card? I would appreciate any suggestions on what to do. As it stands right now I am extremely disappointed in the 3d performance of this laptop. The kicker is I just returned a newly purchased 8600 with the 128 NVidia last week and ordered a new one with the 128 ATI. The NVidia card did not give me these problems. Any help well be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
-FoxChaser
FoxChaser
15 Posts
0
December 17th, 2003 21:00
I do not get any video problems. This is really strange. Any ideas what this can be?
Andrew WOT
194 Posts
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December 17th, 2003 21:00
FoxChaser
15 Posts
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December 17th, 2003 21:00
Andrew WOT
194 Posts
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December 17th, 2003 22:00
Use FanGUI to test card temperature.
Andrew WOT
194 Posts
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December 17th, 2003 23:00
The MR9600 also adds some other bells and whistles such as ATI's PowerPlay power management technology, which now includes the ability to dynamically overclock the GPU as performance demands dictate. ATI is calling this feature OverDrive, and it is a combination of very aggressive clock gating, and a thermal sensor that monitors the core temperature. OverDrive throttles the core clock speed to get maximum performance while staying under a maxium allowable temperature.
That's from http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1153557,00.asp.
Can you disable that OverDrive?
RCGamer
33 Posts
0
December 18th, 2003 00:00
does it help getting drivers for ati then modding it?.............. driverheaven.net that mods any current catalyst drivrr to work with the mobility range of cards... i had catalyst versions 3.8, 3.9 and 3.10 beta working on a mobility radeon 9600 with no gaming problems..
dr_jones
100 Posts
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December 18th, 2003 00:00
dr_jones
100 Posts
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December 18th, 2003 00:00
maybe one of the later revisions will help with you problem?
RojasTKD
105 Posts
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December 18th, 2003 00:00
I hope the exchange take ccare of your problem. The odds that you get the same problem has to be slim (at least I would hope so).
Good luck.
dr_jones
100 Posts
0
December 18th, 2003 00:00
there was a fuss about the 3.8's in relation to refresh rates.. and suposed monitor damage....i personally never had a problem but best to be on the safe side :)
FoxChaser
15 Posts
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December 18th, 2003 00:00
Well the problem lies with the speed at which the card is controled by the ATI PowerPlay management (OverDrive?). The default setting when under AC power is "Optimum performance" and when running under battery it is "Balanced". These settings result in video corruption (horizontal lines/streaks) in games like SWG, LOMAC and 3D Mark2001 SE (starting with the third test) when running off of AC and go away immediately once I pull the plug out and it switches over to battery. If I change the settings for AC under the PowerPlay management tab to "Balanced" like the battery setting I no longer have any video corruption under running under AC power or battery. However my 3D Mark 2001 scores go from 9800+ ( when using "optimal performance") to 6800+ (when using "Balanced"). Thats quite a drop. When I disable ATI PowerPLay all together, I get the same video corruption regardless if I use AC or battery (assumption being it is running at "Optimum Performance" all the time). One constant is when the video corruption happens it usually takes 1-2 minutes to start to occur then it gets progressively worse quickly until I exit the program.
So my question to other Inspiron 8600 w/ 128meg ATI Mobility Radeoon 9600 Pro Turbo owners is are you experiencing anything like this or what are the chances I have a bad video card. I think I can eliminate the problem being with a particular game because the video corruption occurs the same way across several games including the 3D Mark 2001 SE benchmarking. I already spent 2.5 hours with tech support reinstalling drivers, etc. only to which a conclusion that they don't know what the problem is. Tech support put me in for a system exchange which will arrive in about 10-15 days but I'm afraid to get my hopes up.
Anyone have any suggestions/ideas? Should I count on a system exchange to fix the problem or is this an ATI/Dell compatibility problem.
Thanks,
-Foxchaser
RojasTKD
105 Posts
0
December 18th, 2003 00:00
If i'm not mistaken the "overdrive" feature only come to play if the individual OEM implements it. Dell may or may not have this feature active. I read a review inwitch the MR9600 in a particular laptop (european company) did not have any of the Powerplay features working at the time. This was to be delt with with a later upgrade. Is there a way to check if the 9600 in the 8600 has all of the powerplay features active?
maybe removing and reinstalling the drivers may help. I wonder if there are Omega drivers available for the 9600?
PURSUIT100
4 Posts
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December 29th, 2003 14:00
UPDATE:
Tried the 3.9 drivers and still same problem.
PURSUIT100
4 Posts
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December 29th, 2003 14:00
I have the same problem with the Power play option enabled and running at max performance under Tactial Ops which is and older Unreal tournament Engine but I can put it to balanced and no problems. I have not tried the other non-dell drivers yet, but just thought i would let you know you are not the only one.
D. Burger
50 Posts
0
December 29th, 2003 20:00
I am having no problems at all playing at either the Optimized or Balanced settings on my I8600 w/ M9600. I have played Rise of Nations both full screen and windowed and Everquest full screen and windowed without any issues at all. I am currently using the Dell video drivers that came with my laptop but I will be installing the latest Omega Corner drivers as soon as I get some time. I think you just got a bad card.