What's wrong with it!?!

[daddyrief]

hi. i just bought a powercolor 9800se off of the forums on here. after receiving it, i put it in, and on the bios screen/windows loading screen, i get squares across the screen. ive messed with this god damn thing for 5 hours. omega drivers, ati drivers, nothing, nothing works. tell me whats wrong! please!

BIOS screen (They are squares)
Windows Loading Screen

Also, while windows is loading, if the agp card is slightly pushed on the squares move slightly..connection problem? argh.

 

[daddyrief]

also, i have an ABIT sg-72 mobo, dont know if that helps at all...

 

[Avalon]

What powersupply do you have? Bad/insufficient power can cause those sort of artifacts when you install a video card that consumes a bit of juice.

*Edit*
I wouldn't be wiggling the card around while the system is powered on.

 

[rbV5]

Some kind of attempted mod/flash issue perhaps?

 

[gorcorps]

I had that happen, it was heat related. I had a massive overclock going and it didn't like it. Reduced the clock, cleaned the fan, all was good again.

 

[mwmorph]

yeah cooler on 9800s were pretty weak. clean it to see if it gets beter.

 

[jiffylube1024]

It looks like someone enabled the disabled pipelines on the card but the mod didn't work.

Try installing ATI Tool and check how many pipelines you have enabled. It should be 4 but my suspicion is that you have 8 active.

 

[daddyrief]

Thanks for the replies.

Avalon -- Just had a new power supply put in, 430 watt i believe. It should be sufficient....right?

rbV5/jiffylube1024 -- I bought the card off a guy who said he had all 8 pipelines enabled, and it worked fine... and i installed the card trying to use the ATI drivers first, which would only enable 4.

mwmorph/gorcorps -- it has a VGA silencer on it...that should cool it enough, its not overclocked.


urrrrrrrrrrrgh. any other ideas?

[edit] it is a powercolor 9800SE (thats why the guy had it softmodded to 8 pipelines.)

 

[daddyrief]

bump for help?

 

[jiffylube1024]

Are you sure only 4 pipes are enabled? Those definitely look like artifacts from enabling all of the pipelines.

Maybe he flashed the card's BIOS instead of doing a softmod?

 

[Avalon]

Originally posted by: daddyrief
Thanks for the replies.

Avalon -- Just had a new power supply put in, 430 watt i believe. It should be sufficient....right?

Wattage doesn't tell us nearly as much as what brand your power supply is and what its rated rails are.

 

[nitromullet]

Have you contacted the previous owner? I wouldn't put up with that.

 

[MX2]

Definitiely sounds like a bad flash attempt. I bought a card awhile ago that had a bad flash attempt and it did exactly that same thing. Turned into a nightmare ordeal with him admitting he was at fault.

 

[daddyrief]

thanks for the support.

avalon -- i had a computer shop put the power supply in (i know, i know...) so from what i gather from the sticker, it is: @-power, model ep-43057
i dont know much about psu', so as far as rated rails go, id need a bit more info

how/where/can i flash the video card? is there a way to say, flash it to 4 pipelines just to be sure? i do not know the nitty gritty of the dynamics of video cards...thanks again.

 

[daddyrief]

i was also looking at some forum, i dont remember where, and i think it said 9800's had some compatibility problems with SiS...?
maybe this could be the case?

 

[daddyrief]

bump for any more possible help..?