9800 pro...glitch??

[Fliptomania]

i just built my own PC, and at first the video card was a GeForceFX 5600, but that card was probably faulty (well it didnt play any 3d games at all...it glitched...thats a different story), so i returned it and got a more costly (and HOPEFULLY better) radeon 9800 pro.

so i installed it, and everything worked fine, untill i try to use the "tranquility" demo that comes with the instalation CD--to tell the truth, im still not sure what it is because every time i try to play it SOMETHING turns my monitor off, and the little green light next to the monitors power button flashes as if the computer has been shut down.

the same thing happens when i play Deus Ex 2, except it will start, play for around 10 minutes (just long enough for me to get excited about it), then the sound starts glitching (it repeats the same few bars over and over...) and the moniter seems to literally turn off; the screen goes completely black (not like a loading screen kinda black, but like the "off" kinda black) and the power button, as i said earlier, flashes on/off.

EDIT: o yes, i prolly should mention that in the very beginning of the installation manual it tells me to install the VGA drivers for my motherboards chipset, and then gives links to all the websites.

well, go to www.viaarena.com and tell me if you see any VGA drivers for my motherboard. i dont, but then again i dont understand very much on the webpage that has VGA drivers on it... could the lack of an updated VGA driver be the cause of this? if so could someone please tell me where i might find the driver i need? im so lost =P

my system specs are:
AMD athlon XP 3000
1 gb DDR RAM
soyo sy-kt400 dragon ultra platinum edition
radeon 9800 pro
windows XP home edition

im a serious comp noob, if you couldnt tell, so plz go easy on me. thx =)

[TiGgErDbC]

sounds like your computer is over heating... does it "wake up" after the program runs or do you have to turn it back on?

[Fliptomania]

you have to reset it... although i havent tried waiting for an extended period. is there any way to tell which part might be overheating? if there is a way to tell... whats the chance ive done permanent damage?

[TiGgErDbC]

well i would suggest going into the bios and give us a tempature reading, then if the temp is ok get you to boot into windows and run a stress test to see what the temps get to.

but first jump into the bios and tell us what your temps read in there.

[Fliptomania]

the CPU was at 55 degrees C, and inerestingly, the RPMs of the fan were very odd. they stayed around 5.5k, but would sometimes jump as high as 8k or as low as 0... but only for a split second each time.

55 isnt too high is it? 85 is th default shut-down temp

how do i do a stress test?

[TiGgErDbC]

that seems very high for not being in windows did you use thermal paste between the cpu and the heatsink?

[Someone Stupid]

Deus Ex shows more glitches than the artifact tester I use because the engine is so poorly coded. It is just that the glitches are from VERY poor programming or porting it to the computer way to quickly, it was almost a rushed afterthought. So that isn't a good indicator.

As for the demo with the CD, never tried it.

Go into control panel and to hardware, device manager, then look and see if anything has an exclmation point on it, as in you have graphics drivers active for some reason. Also check and see that you only have one driver set (the one's for the card) installed in the computer. If you have two sets, disable the motherboard one. Also make sure in your bios it is set to boot to AGP. Make sure you have the latest 4-in1's from VIA as earlier drivers had a fault with ATI cards and the CD probably has those on them.

[TiGgErDbC]

his computers shutting off on him when he gets into games that start to stress his system, at 55C in the bios i would suggest something is setup wrong with your heatsink/and or thermal paste.

[Someone Stupid]

Case Cooling?

[Fliptomania]

in regards to the overheating theory, i have all of the fans (inclding the one on the card itself) in my case working...and i think that there are like 3 in there. i cant check rite now, as im at school.

deus ex runs fine on my dads computer, which is worse than mine by a fair margin. i dont remember the exact stats of it tho, sorry.

is it possible that not installing the latest AGP drivers (like it says in the beginning of the manual) could have something to do with it? like i said before the insturctions are very vague and AGP drivers are actually not available by the same name (im a noob remember) on the links the ATI website gives you.

i really think this might be the problem... because of the number of times that it tells me its a MUST for me to do it.

btw i DID put paste on my CPU (i built my machine in computer maintenance class, with my teacher, so she didnt let me do anything terribly wrong...i hope)

i installed all hte drivers off of the ATI CD, and in the device manager both copies of my radeon 9800 seem to be working fine.

thanks for all your help! dont stop!

[Fliptomania]

well *****. i tried to DL and install the drivers from viaarena.com, but it just tells me that windows was unable to do it.

this is so frustrating, ive paid like $1500 for this POS and ive gotten NOTHING.

where do i get custom virtual GART (AGP) driver?? its not in the VIA website that i can find... :confused:

[Baddog]

May I suggest swaping your ram. (out or around):t