BIG Problem with Catalyst 3.9's on Radeon 9800 Pro

Hey all,
My spec is as below, and recently had the ATI Catalyst 3.7 drivers installed. I fully removed them and then installed the new 3.9's.
BIG PROBLEM
When ever I run any of my games - Max Payne 2, Unreal T 2003, Quake 3 etc, the game will freeze after 30 secs or less after starting, on whatever the last frame was for about 10 secs, but the sound continues. The monitor will then turn itelf off - which scared the s*it out of me initially, after the 10 secs or else a blank blue screen will appear. The speakers will crackle and whistle a high pitched whine, and the computer will restart!



Above is the error that pops up after the restart. Whats going on? Is there something I don't know about the 3.9's, like the 'apparent problem' with the 3.8's?
Any help much appreciated.

EDIT: I tryed everthing at stock speeds, but still the same problem.

I've gotta start searching before posting
Found in another post that the 3.9's are crap and i should revert back to the 3.7's.
Apparently turning off FASTWRITES fixes the problem. I'll try that when i get home. If that doesn't work, i'm putting back the 3.7's. I'm not even gonna bother with the fix.
Thats the first black mark against ATI in my book -> 2 recent sets of bad drivers. Not acceptable.

Oh god that evil message. Right after I got my 9700 pro, I installed 3.8 cats. Monitor would randomly shut off, card would spam that message as well as another message about getting stuck in an infinate loop. For the longest time I thought my video card was bad because of ATI's recent bundles of joy.

I feel for you. Ive been using 3.7s and its so much better now.

hmm my monitor turns off randomly aswell could it be the 3.8's and the 3.9s ????

You should try the 3.7. I havent tried any other earlier drivers for extended periods of time. So im not saying 3.7s are the best out there, Just that the 3.7s have worked 1000x better for me personally compared to any of the other more recent releases.

anyplace to get the 3.7's? cant find em at ati.com

Thats what I heard. I upgraded my brother's 9800 non pro with the 3.9, no games can run well at all. 3.9 is junk, trash, useless. Revert back to 3.7 and that will solve your problem.

Jognt said:

anyplace to get the 3.7's? cant find em at ati.com

Click to expand...

Go to the BOTTOM of any driver page at ATI.COM and you will see listed in red "PREVIOUS DRIVERS VERSIONS" such as HERE on the XP driver page .

I'd try the omega drivers before reverting back. Might fix the problem, and it's worth the effort.

Thanks to all who replied.

THE PROBLEMS CONTINUE

Here's what I did:
1. I went home, and turned off Fast writes on the 3.9's, didn't work.
2. So I downloaded the 3.8's to see if they'd work - no such luck, the game still freezes (Max Payne 2) and then crashes. I had to restart the computer, and was greeted with this message on startup :



3. Am getting pretty annoyed at this stage, so I reinstalled the good old 3.7's. And to my absolute fury, the problem has passed itself on these drivers aswell! The game crashed and burned, only this time the monitor didn't turn off - It went black and fuzzy and I got a monitor message - "Invalid sync" - like when the monitor doesn't detect a video signal.

All this only happens in games, except Quake 3 for some reason.
I have this chilling feeling that there may be a hardware problem here.
Anyway, I'm setting up a 240GB RAID system next week, so I'll be formatting the HD along with the new one, hopefully this may solve the problem.

Anyone have any clue what the problem may be?
Thanks.

turn off VPU recover it always made my F1 game crash but now its fine

hi, sorry for the late reply.

I think I have a solution for you, but you must try everything I say inorder for it to maybe work.

first, please lock your AGP/PCI bus if it is not already.
it could be listed as fixed, or locked at 66/33...
also, set AGP voltage to 1.55v

next, I would do a compleat uninstall of your drivers/ controle panel and so on...in add and remove programs. do not restart.

now go to your C drive and look for any ATI folders...delete them.
also, look at your C drive, programs folder, and look again for any ATI folders....again, delete them.

you also will have some ATI junk in your registry.....
run "regedit"
quickly look for any ATI folders, but do not remove them....at least I never do.
just open them up, and delete all the entrys.

restart.

now start to reinstall all your drivers....I would try the 3.7 first.
follow all directions, then restart.

edit: I would do all of this with the card NOT OCed.

with some luck, you'll be fine now.

mica

Thanks guys,
Steven4563, I tryed that - didn't work. And the VPU recover option is only on drivers 3.8 and greater.

micamica1217, I always follow those steps when reinstalling drivers, checking for folders etc. I didn't go to regedit though, will try that when I get home. And the card is at stock for the moment anyway.
Thanks for your help.