New 8500 suddenly stops working with older games (o/c'ing damage)?

[Vostok]

This is a repost from rage3d since the tech support forum there seems dead.

I got in on the newegg.com deal and was suprised with my cards performance. Everything ran fine - UT demo, Serious Sam demo, Il-2 Sturmovik, ect.. all the 3d RTS games i tried worked fine as well.

Now although i had been running the card o/c'ed at 275/301 (from 250/275) and had no problems whatsoever, i decided -out of a concern for safety- to lower the memory speed back down to 275. So now its at 275/275. I had been running the default settings in Sturmovik but now with the new card i tried cranking up the settings a bit - specifically, i enabled 'vertex array extentions', and 'texture ansitropic extentions'. I fired the game up and it was fux0red - it took 3 times as long just to load and the framerate was utterly unplayable: maybe 1 frame per 5 seconds. I mean completely busted slow.

So i fire up Unreal Tournament. Same problem. Serious Sam - utterly broken. I'm starting to get worried now that my card is now broken somewhow through o/c'ing. I reinstall drivers (being sure to delete registry keys, ect), uninstall and reinstall rage3d tweak, try several different o/c settings. Nothing helps and in fact i think made things worse.

So i fire up Morrowind. The game runs perfectly. WTF? I play my 3d RTS games. Everything is fine and dandy.

Whats going on here? Anyone seen a problem like this before? At first i suspected that the card was damaged, but why then would the -most complicated- game still run without any degredation of performace, but other more simpler games are totally tanked?

Moreover if i damaged the card is may have been by -underclocking-. the highest i ever went even for a moment was 275/300; but the lowest was 230/250 (out of experimentation) - and that tanked almost immediately. But im wondering if trying to enable these 'vertex' extentions in Il2 caused the card to choke up; which implies software damaging the hardware, which sounds rather nuts. But somewhere in some extention -something- is fuxored and i can't figure out what it is.

Any ideas? Is it tanked or can i salvage this?
Duron 950
ECS K7S5A
256mb 2.5 Crucial DDR
Radeon 8500

I'd add that ive done some additional experimentation and have yet to find any real pattern as to the problems: im hoping someone can identify a pattern here that i have yet to...i'll just repeat what ive found so far (btw all tests were done at stock speeds - changing clock doesn't affect performance now anyway; remember everything WAS working fine, it just suddenly seized and now is very sketchy with many games - using latest official ATI drivers)

3dmark2001SE: score down 1200 points (from about 5200 to 4000); Matrix demo is very jerky but still plays
MedalofHonor: unplayable
Il2Sturmovik OpenGL: unplayable
Il2Sturmovik Direct3d: works fine
Counterstrike OpenGL: works fine
Counterstrike Direct3d: slower by about 25fps but still playable
Morrowind: works fine
Operation Flashpoint Direct3d: seems fine but jerky during cutscenes
Empire Earth: works fine but black smoke flickers to white occasionally
Serious Sam Demo: unplayable
Unreal Tournament Demo: unplayable
DirectXDiagnosisTests: works fine
Warcraft 3 video test: works fine

So, any ideas what to do next?

 

[Adul]

might be a setting somewhere that you have messaed up

 

[RemyCanad]

Have you tried it in another machine?
And I just skimmed through what you posted but it seems like you said it just messes up when your in a game. To me that points to a setting. Maby AA is enabled or something. Just go into the properties and set everything to default. And I am quessing you are using an overclocking utility to overclock your card. In most of thoughs there is a defualt option, try it.

 

[Vostok]

thx for the help but ive already tried reinstalling drivers as well as changing most settings.

See i didn't change anything for the video card (except for the o/c) i only adjusted one games' settings - and then the card tanked. Ive checked AA/Ansiptropic ect, but they're all off. Im not running the card o/c anymore but the horrible performance still persists for many older games. -_-

 

[RanDum72]

Just start over, reformat the harddrive and re-install everything.

 

[Vostok]

Eek, its not reformating in and of itself its making sure i dont' delete anything of value, and then getting all that i saved to reinstall correctly -_-. Its not the video card at least! as reinstalled my older card and its doing just as poorly. So any more suggestions now that i know its not a video card hardware issue?

I've already reinstalled 8.1dx but no help. Tinkered w/ bios settings but no change. Tried older drivers and no go. Uninstalled my sound card drivers and nothing (im about to take it out just in case). An AGP port conflict with 8.1 directX? How do i get rid of newer directx versions (no easy uninstall available)?

 

[RanDum72]

Well, if you want to make sure there's no software 'trash' that messes up your system, either you can troubleshoot the hell out of it or do it the easy way, which is save any important files, boot up to a WinMe boot floppy and type 'format c:'. That way, you start from scratch and everything is nice and clean.

 

[Vostok]

Grr well ill probably have to do that since im really stumped as to what caused these errors. Gotta go dig out my mb cd now i guess

 

[aka1nas]

When in doubt, reformat.

 

[RemyCanad]

Hmm now that you mentioned direct x that reminds me of a computer with the same problem. It had directx 7 on it and when I reinstalled it, it didn't fix anything. But once I upgraded to 8.1 it fixed it. I would try out dx9 since you are reformating anyways.