My first ATI purchase gone bad. Please help

[Pack'nHeat]

This is a brand new Sapphire card from Newegg.
Also, first ATI card.

The card didn't detect my monitor as a dell p991, but I went in and manually told it to load that specific drive. I changed it from 800x600 to 1024x768 then stretched the screen to fill in the black boarders.
Now when I do a normal reboot it may be fine or it may go back to having black boarders with a really really bad refresh rate. I go to monitor's settings and they are the way they should be.
To fix the problem, sometimes I change the res back to 800x600 then back to 1024x768, sometimes I have to change the refresh to 60Hertz then back to 85Hertz. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes I have to reboot several times to get one of the above methods to work. If all is fine, then it stays fine until I reboot again or maybe after 3 good reboots. I even updated the drivers to 3.9, but it did not help.

Does this sound like a driver issue or borked card?

[scottluebke2003]

The newest ATI Radeon family drivers are the Catalyst 4.4 You might try downloading them from the ATI website.
What video card were you previously using in this system?
Try updating motherboard drivers too. What mobo you got?

[Pack'nHeat]

gf3 ti500

IC7s

[bob05]

It may sound like a Windows repair/reinstall might be necessary. What Windows version do you have?

[Pack'nHeat]

xp

[Bigjakkstaffa]

The monitor detection should have little to do with the card, download your monitor drivers and the latest catalyst drivers (4.4) from www.ati.com.

Then uninstall the Ati drivers and run a utility such as Nasty File Remover (availiable at www.guru3d.com) and checd for driver remnants from any of the listed manufacturers whose cards you have had installed both past and present, and delete them. Once that's done boot back into windows XP and install the Cat 4.4's, reboot and install the monitor drivers, then download an application such as RefreshFix 0.9.9.7 and use that to configure the monitor refresh rates automatically from the Monitors driver .inf file.

Also, you did uninstall the Nvidia display drivers before putting the ATi card in, yes?

--Jakk:t

[rsfnatik]

Originally posted by Bigjakkstaffa
The monitor detection should have little to do with the card...

^ Yep.

It is absolutely crucial to remove the previously installed drivers when upgrading/replacing a device. Follow Jakk's directions and see how you make out.