I have just lost all faith in ATI

I've been spending a good long while building a computer for my father. This was meant to be an amazing video editing/photoshopping/3d animating computer so I had to look for high quality, high performance components.

The system the card is used in
Anyways, I was planning on using RAID and was going to have several hard drives in this system so I opted for the Soyo Dragon2 v1.0 black label motherboard. It's a pentium 4 board using the i875p chipset and its got 2 raid controllers and can support up to 12 drives. To go along with this, I got a p4 3.0C, 1GB buffalo pc3200, 4 (yes 4) hard drives, a built by ATI radeon 9800pro 128MB, a matrox rt.x100 video editing card, and an antec truepower 430w to keep it all running smoothly.

The horror story
So I get all the parts, put the system together, and, of course a single part has to be busted. It was the 9800pro. To ensure that it was the card and not any other part in the system, I tested using my friends built by ATI 9800pro (bought from ATI) and a 9700pro he had sitting around. Both of those cards worked perfectly. Soo I RMA the video card back to newegg and keep the 9700pro in the system in the mean time. A week or two later, I get another build by ATI 9800pro 128MB from newegg. I toss it in the system, boot it up, and discover that this card, too, is DOA. So now I'm thinking that I may be crazy or something to be getting 2 dead cards in a row. I call up newegg and verify that they do indeed check to make sure the cards are dead when I RMA them and that my card must have been dead if they processed the RMA. So I decide to give it one more shot. I RMA the second video card. The new card has been sitting at my parents house for a couple weeks now and I came over today to install it.....and guess what....

THIS IS THE THIRD FRIGGIN 9800PRO VIDEO CARD THAT HAS ARRIVED DOA!!!

The inquiries for any help out there
I don't see what the problem can be. Considering I've ran old pentium 2 computers with 4 hard drives on a 250W psu, 430W should be more than adequate for this system. I'm low on molex connectors so the card is not on its own dedicated line, but it's only sharing it with a single hard drive that is rarely used and with a floppy drive. I have successfully used my friends 9800pro in this system with no problems. The first 9800pro I got would not display anything at all. The second 9800pro would display multi colored garbage to the screen constantly. The third 9800pro would switch off between displaying multi colored garbage and displaying nothing at all.

Is there, perhaps, some sort of difference between the built by ATI video cards that you order from newegg and the built by ATI cards that you order from ATI? Or am I just the most unlucky SOB in existance to get 3 dead video cards in a row?

I'm going to take this 9800pro down to my apartment to see if I can get it functioning in my system but I doubt it will work there either.

instead of assuming it's the video card..think about this...the 9800 pro consumes alot of wattage plus you have a video editing card mayb you need a better PSU...seems like you dont have a problem spending cash so get a PC Power & Cooling 510(650w max) Deluxe....mayb your motherboard is messing things up because 3 in a row is ridiculous unless your unlucky and gettin ripped off

I'd say you're super-duper unlucky. NewEgg would be to blame more than ATI, doa cards aren't common.

By any chance are you running around in your socks on a nice carpet before you handle them? j/k

i wouldn't worry about your psu just yet... but it can't hurt to upgrade

Sophisticated said:

instead of assuming it's the video card..think about this...the 9800 pro consumes alot of wattage plus you have a video editing card mayb you need a better PSU...seems like you dont have a problem spending cash so get a PC Power & Cooling 510(650w max) Deluxe....mayb your motherboard is messing things up because 3 in a row is ridiculous unless your unlucky and gettin ripped off

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The video editing card doesn't even require its own power source. It runs off of the power provided by the PCI slot. Also, it's the ONLY item in the PCI slot. I have 1 motherboard, 1 cpu, 4 hard drives, 2 optical drives, 1 floppy drive, 2 RAM sticks, 1 video editing card, and 1 video card. An Antec truepower 430 should be more than adequate, especially since the manual for the editing card recommended only a 300W psu for running the extra hard drives and the editing card.

Also, I was incorrect when I stated that a hard drive was on the same molex line as the video card. The line the video card is hooked up to has only a floppy drive sharing it.

I would say you are seriously unlucky, maybe try and get a saphirre card, though it really shouldnt matter that might change your luck.

Try the card in your friends system FIRST. Myabe your system's killing the cards for some odd, unknown reason. Otherwise I'd have to say that you're VERY unlucky...

Cyrix_2k said:

Try the card in your friends system FIRST. Myabe your system's killing the cards for some odd, unknown reason. Otherwise I'd have to say that you're VERY unlucky...

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That one has definately crossed my mind. In hindsight, I wish I had taken this card over to my apartment to test it out there first. I'm begining to think this may possibly be the case.

This really shouldn't be the problem though because if it were killing every single 9800pro during POST, then you'd think both the 9700pro used in there for the past month and the 9800pro that belongs to my friend would have died as well.

hmmm. i wouldnt jump to assume that 430 would adequate for that setup at all. 4 hard drives and 2 optical drives alone is a severe drain.

I would troubleshoot backwards by starting the machine with only the most basic parts installed, video, processor, ram. if it starts, then keep adding stuff.
its possible your not seating the card properly but if you got other cards to work in it <_< thats definatly wierd.
for you to get three cards bunk doesnt seem very likely at all, unless newegg did test it, figured it wasnt defective and sent it back. or you nuked it.

It's rather obvious and maybe stupid, but are you sure that they won't find anything wrong with the card and maybe sending back the same one over and over again?

Just covering all the possibilities

Perre said:

It's rather obvious and maybe stupid, but are you sure that they won't find anything wrong with the card and maybe sending back the same one over and over again?

Just covering all the possibilities

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That's why I called them after getting the second dead card in a row. I thought that they might just send it back if they saw no problems with it. They said that, since the RMA went through, the item was found to be defective and was replaced.

Also, the packaging was different on the second one I got. In the first box, the cardboard was all weird and wrinkly. The second box was all crisp and clean.

ok think about it krusty...if they recommend 300w PSU for the editing card and extra harddrives...how many extra harddrives do they mean what if only 2...you have 4.....and that 300w is for those things alone...your motherboard 9800pro which uses alot of power and other devices......i dont think 450w is not enough to be honest...think about it.....

You also have to remember this is no ordinary computer your building.....your using things that consuming alot of power....as mentioned above you should start wonderin if its your motherboard or other devices thats killing your card then blaming the card itself

Sophisticated said:

ok think about it krusty...if they recommend 300w PSU for the editing card and extra harddrives...how many extra harddrives do they mean what if only 2...you have 4.....and that 300w is for those things alone...your motherboard 9800pro which uses alot of power and other devices......i dont think 450w is not enough to be honest...think about it.....

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The matrox card requires 2 of its own dedicated hard drives and a 2Ghz or faster processor.

So the minimum specs they would wind up having is 3 hard drives, a 2000+ or p4 2.0, and one optical drive. The manual says that the matrox card itself does not draw much power, but they recommend a 300W psu because the computer you are putting the card in will likely need to be a powerful computer.

With the 9700pro (which also requires its own power), the system runs 100% stable for days at a time, passes memtest86 with flying colors, passes a Sandra burn in for several hours, and passes a 3dmark2k3 loop for an hour or so. Additionally, of course, it runs photoshop, afterFX, and Premier flawlessly while actively using all 4 hard drives.

With the 9800pro and no case fans running (disconnected them while working inside the computer), the there will be no display on POST.

Sophisticated said:

you should start wonderin if its your motherboard or other devices thats killing your card then blaming the card itself

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That has crossed my mind as well. I'd think that, if a component is killing video cards, it would kill ALL video cards --especially two identical cards or a similar card such as the 9700pro.

I'm heading back down to my apartment tomorrow so I'll test it out in my rig and see if it still functions.

Rather than RMAing to NewEgg, try RMAing directly back to ATI and see if you get luckier.

well does the 9700 pro consume less power? maybe your friend got super lucky and got a card that can run on a less stable power supply or lower power. its just anouther possibility, when you get your next one just test it out first on anouther system.

Is the BBAti 9800Pro that you borrowed from your friend the same card that you have been dealing with? Same memory bit width, same memory, everything the same, or is it slightly different? If they are the same, then I would guess really bad luck, but if they are different, there could be some odd incompatibility.

Occassionally I have run into similar problems where a particular mobo and a specific card won't work together. I built a machine for a friend once and we RMA'd the mobo, vid card, and RAM twice each before we discovered that the 8500 AIW 128MB just wouldn't work in that mobo (possibly version specific) for some reason. 8500 AIW DV worked, 8500 worked, but it just didn't like the 128MB 8500 AIW.

This isn't an ATI problem. This is something with the system. I don't know what the RMA process is for you Americans, but I'm close to the ATI headquarters and RMA is the best from ATI than with any other company I have dealt with, but like Oni said, I'd deal with them.


Anyways, I might have missed this, but did you try all 3 in other systems? Did they do the same thing, if you did?

hmm i think that it is ur board 4 some reason...since u seem to have MAJOR cash just get eh x800pro or XT......also go to ur local BB and try a card from them if it works keep it and "bring back" the newegg card....

druidelder said:

Is the BBAti 9800Pro that you borrowed from your friend the same card that you have been dealing with? Same memory bit width, same memory, everything the same, or is it slightly different? If they are the same, then I would guess really bad luck, but if they are different, there could be some odd incompatibility.

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AFAIK, the cards are identical. They are both retail built by ATI 9800pro 128MB. The only difference is that he bought his from ATI and I bought mine from newegg.

Hurk said:

Anyways, I might have missed this, but did you try all 3 in other systems? Did they do the same thing, if you did?

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Nope. Haven't tried them in any other systems. Only the first card was installed when I was near another compatible computer. That was my friends computer. Since I had just finished building it for him like 2 hours prior, he said I couldn't test the dead card in his computer because he didn't want me cursing it or letting out the blue smoke. Instead, we tested his card in my system and his card worked. I'm taking this card over to my apartment this week to test it out and make sure it is dead.

Dukemurmur said:

hmm i think that it is ur board 4 some reason...since u seem to have MAJOR cash just get eh x800pro or XT......also go to ur local BB and try a card from them if it works keep it and "bring back" the newegg card....

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I think I'm actually a little annoyed by that comment. First off, it's not MY system. Second off, it was my job to build the system to my fathers specifications, not to waste money on useless upgrades (I was originally planning on getting a 9200 but my dad said to spend a bit more to get the directx9 compatibility just in case). And third, I would think that the fact that so much money was spent on the system so far would mean there is significantly less money to spend on a different video card.

As for the "returning" to best buy, I had thought about it, but figured I would go the legal route and use neweggs RMA process instead. The newegg guys told me just to fax them the shipping recipt and they'd reimburse me for the cost of shipping as well.