9700np issues

Ok I was running my 9700np just fine at default speeds and I was playing CS. Then mid game I started to get alot of artifacts on the screen. So I rebooted to see if that would help it (maybe it got warm) but my temps were fine and it did the same thing. One thing that I had changed was the voltage to the card since it was locking in game before......from 1.5 to 1.6. Well I tried putting that down to 1.5 and even downclocking the card..............still had artifacts. So I came on here to look around and see if anyone else had problems with their's and noticed that the 3.6 cats were out. So I downloaded them and followed the advise from retrospooty here http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=215009 on uninstalling them. Upon installation and rebooting my computer hard locked so I rebooted and tried again.......but it wont get past the bootup. So any ideas on what I could do? I had DX9 on there as well but there is another version of dx9 from windows update i think.

Sounds like you might have yourself a faulty card, my advice would be to take it out and test it in another computer. If you have your old card laying around put it back into the system and see if you encounter the same problem.

That would suck if it is faulty since I don't have that much cash right now to be tossing around for vid cards. If it is indeed toasty.........what suggestions do you have for a replacement card (up to $200)?

If it is indeed a faulty card you wouldn't have to buy a new one, just take it back where you bought it, tell them the problem and they should exchange it for you. Unless you damaged it somehow yourself ( which it doesn't sound like ) there shouldn not be a problem returning it. The 9700 NP is an excellent card and with a simple bios flash its a sweet card, just try and get that exchange.

Yeah well you see I got this powercolor card from neweggs refurb section and when I called them up about it the warranty was already past. The reason I got the np is cuz you guys said that it was a good OC'er so I had to flash a bios in order to do so. When I flashed it with that 97pinfin.bin bios I got artifacts on the main screen so I put another bios in the 97npherc.bin and it seemed to go away. But then my posts above happened and I'm at a loss as to what to do. I tried flashing the original bios back in since i saved it befora flashing the new one..........but its to no avail. I've tried 3.4 3.5 3.6 cats on my system and after it gets done and reboots it hard locks. I also tried putting DX9a on to see if that would help with the 3.6 cats.........no change.

And that is why I was asking what a good vid card would be. I've seen the 9800 np's for about 250 so that was mighty tempting but its still 250 =/ . You see this is my 1st experience with ATI cuz I had a bunch of GF4's before that.........and I never had a problem with those. Lets just hope that I got a bum card and not all ATI's are like this .

What ram do you have on your 9700 non pro. And did you try atiflash or flashrom when you flashed your card. Also can you get into safe mode just find or does it freeze during that also. If you have 3.3ns infineon ram I can send you my backup of my bios and see if that helps. Let me know.

It has the Infineon memory on it. When I flash it I booted from a floppy and used atiflash. It allows me into safe mode and thats how I can sorta get it running. I can uninstall the ati driver from there and reboot and it will boot up and try and install the drivers for it. Problem is whenever it tries to load up the driver for the 1st time it hard locks and won't work until I uninstall it again from safe mode. I've tried many diff cat drivers and they all give me the same result.........hard lock upon booting them up. At this point I'm willing to try about anything since I'm fresh out of ideas.......so I would be willing to give your bios a run .

Do you think that the 9800np would be as fast or a lil faster than a 9700pro? Cuz I found one for about 250 and that seemed like a good deal to me. Thats of course if I try everything to save my 9700np and it fails.

You should have said off that bat that you had an infineon ram card. They really don't like to be modded to a 9700 Pro, the ram is really **** and can't handle the default speeds. Did you use mufus infineon bios or did you use the regular one. If you did indeed use the regular NTSC one that could explain the instability that you're seeing.