[GrimGriz]

I h@te the 9800 PRO that I mistakenly purchased. It is sheer and utter crap. It likes to randomly stop sending information to my monitor, just for chits and giggles. SUCK SUCK SUCK.

[Jump]

Do you have the right dirvers? Big enough power supply? Maybe it's just a bad one and you need to exchange it.

[GrimGriz]

They've updated the drivers twice since I bought it to address issues like mine with various games. I've learned my lesson, the people at Radeon don't know what they're doing.

[Jump]

I gave up on ATI many years ago. I pretty much am a Nvidia loyalist now.

[fluid]

If I recall correctly, the 9800 uses its own power source. Perhaps your power supply can't provide enough power to the +12v and/or +5v that it uses. If you don't know how that works you could check it out what I wrote about it in another thread.

[Mickey_D]

I don't know. Maybe I just got lucky with mine, but I haven't had problem one with my Radeon 7500 All-in-Wonder. It works great!!

Totally plug-n-play. Even the TV tuner. Sound worked right the first time, which is more than I can say for most of the sound cards I've had.

It even worked when I had to take it out of my system and return it!! (which for me generally completely borks everything....)

Another forum I belong to is for overclockers (you know, those nut jobs that take an AMD Athlon 2500+ and overdrive it from 1.83GHz up to 2.7GHz) and they all swear by the 9800 as the best vid card out there (ok, there are some die-hard nVidia fans, but I'm talking majority here).

Mind you they are all talking about the Sapphire 9800 and other variants. But it's still an ATI card....

Sorry to hear you're having a problem with it. I'll never use anything else but now. There's no way I'd be able to do without the ability to record live TV into any video format I want, output it in digital format to both my monitor and my TV, and also take footage from my analog cam corder and record it into my computer for editing, then output it back to the cam corder again. All from one card that still allows me to play Command & Conquer Generals : Zero Hour seamlessly.

Especially since I could (if I wanted to) overclock it from the 66MHz AGP bus up to 75MHz and have it perform like a 9250 card with only the addition of a $4 fan to the GPU heatsink!! LOL

But being that I'm unemployed right now and couldn't afford another card if I smoked this one, everything on my computer is back to stock (except my AMD 2500+. It's still running at 3200+ speeds).

[Romulus]

My son has this card and it has quite a few problems but one thing that he has done is take the side of the case off and runs a fan to keep it cool and now appears to have no issues.

[Veloxi]

Last ATI card I owned was many years ago, decent tech, horrible drivers. I've used Nvidia since and haven't looked back.

[Radi]

Yup, I bought first and last ati card.

[Diver012]

Ive got a 9800 Pro... Mine has been flawless...

Just curious.. what do you mean when you say it stops sending a signal to your monitor? Does your monit or turn off?

[Babylonandon]

Beware mating the 9800 series on newer AGP motherboards. There are power spiking issues with this series that didn't show up on earlier systems that give the P4 m/b's fits (some sensitivity power sensor deal). As long as you have over 350W you should be okay.

I spent about $1000 rebuilding my system around an 9800 AIW Pro only to fight with it for 4 months of boot failures and RMA'ing everything BUT the video card (which I'd had for over 2 years mated with an antique Abit BX6 2.0 and it worked well. I ran into USB/boot sequence issues and had to upgrade and thus began the nightmare!).

There are folks out there using this card by waiting about 1 1/2 seconds after power up to plug in the secondary power cable (which appears to get it past the spikes - what a pain in the butt!).

Buy a new card, buy a separate TV tuner and grit your teeth.

[Babylonandon]

The power issue threw me for a while. My ABIT AS8-V guru kept saying power issues, I started with 450W, RMA'd the M/B, and went to a 700W OCZ p/s and when it still didn't work, I knew I was screwed.

ATI is dancing around the issue and won't admit the sporadic compatibility problem. Its an obsolete card and now that they are with AMD, I suspect you won't find any driver fixes, software tweaks, or any other assistance.

As annoying as ATI has been from time to time this is only going to be worse.

I do really miss the TV, though.

[WileE]

Roll back to the Catalyst 6 drivers and you will not have a problem. I have been running ATI for years and have only had a few problems. I recently upgraded to the X1950Pro 512 and it is a crusher. The problem was with the drivers. The Catalyst 7.x drivers are the drivers for Vista, and have been either blowing up XP or Vista, depending on the specific driver you have.

That power issue bit just doesn't sound logical at all. I know for a fact that there are some problems using ATI AGP cards with some newer boards where you have to underclock the slot to 4x because of some of the shortcuts some of the chipset/board mfg's have done with AGP in the newer boards. There is also an occasional chipset/video card compatability issue, but that is a small percentage. Powering on a machine with a video card installed, but without the supplemental power hooked up, and then hooking up the supplemental power is NOT a fix, but an indication of a larger problem. Depending on what all you have in your machine besides the abit board, running a 450 may not have been enough. IIFC, the 9800 series has a standard 4-pin molex for additional power. The fact you ran it on a 450W PSU on your old board without a problem, then with the new MB you suddenly have a problem means that the motherboard change has likely damaged the card. Can you test it on the old MB and see if it is still 100%?

ATI is not going to admit a sporadic compatability problem with what is now a legacy card. You are dreaming on that one.

Being a contrarian, I am all but forced to use ATI. Truth be told, they make a damn good card once you get your drivers sorted out. The rule of thumb I have learned from working with ATI for years is if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I ran catalyst 4 drivers on my 9600XT for 3 years. Only when I had a game issue did I update to catalyst 6 drivers. The vista drivers are problematic, but the nVidia drivers are not that much better (though they have made steps -- as ATI has).

I know it isn't very witty Jump, but it is a post.