Catalyst 3.8 : Overheating and Monitor problems??

Posted on Monday, October 20 2003 @ 17:18 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck

The problems with drivers continue.. Short-Media has a few pages about the latest issue with ATi has Catalyst 3.8 drivers in their forums :

Overheating
While we're not quite sure what part of the Catalyst 3.8 drivers are causing this, some part of the driver (whether it's the new VPU Recovery feature, HyperZ Enhancements or the ATI Overclocking software) is causing the core on BBA and OEM Radeon cards that are identified as "RADEON 9800 XT", "RADEON 9800 PRO" and "RADEON 9800" in Windows to have their GPU's overheat by as much as 15*C over normal during 3D graphics sessions. This has caused a number of fans on the Radeon 9800 XT series to fail, allowing the heat to completely destroy the card.

Alleged Monitor Damage
So instead of having the monitor "flicker" once when it switches to the desired resolution/refresh, monitors are "flickering" between 4 and 8 times, with resolutions and refresh rates that are beyond the capability of the actual monitor.

As a result, some monitors have been damaged, while others have blinked out and recovered.

ATi already replied that they were not able to reconstruct the problem. I don't know how big this problem is, but some people are reporting problems in forums. So maybe it's smart to downgrade to the Catalyst 3.7 drivers until there is more clarity.

You can read it here at their forums

About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.

Loading Comments

Use Disqus to post new comments, the old comments are listed below.

Re: Catalyst 3.8 : Overheating and Monitor problems??
by CAG on Monday, October 20 2003 @ 18:10 CEST

As for the heating issue, one of the DriverHeaven forum members tested the stock Cat. 3.7's and 3.8's from ATi and the lastest Omega drivers on a number of different cards and the conclusion was that the stock 3.7's and 3.8's caused a small temperature rise in all of the cards (it was concluded that this may be normal) while the Omega drivers caused a much larger rise. Here's the thread http://www.driverheaven.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=28844

But there is nothing "official" about these tests and I went back to the 3.7's until there is something further from ATi on the heating and monitor issues.

Share this story!