Hi all,
I think my Sapphire AIW 9800 Pro 128MB has died a death as it will not display graphics properly even in the Boot screens regardless of when at the desktop? the boot screen has garbled colours and text with lines and blocks of all manner of corrupt images, it's as if the Bios of the card has been corrupted?
The problem started yesterday when after the umpteenth time of swapping over the card from one computer to the other because of a problem i had trying to get my new X800 Pro to work properly (explained elsewhere in these forums)
after swapping from one card to another trying to ascertain what the problem was with the X800, i unfortunately forgot to connect the power connector to the 9800 and upon reboot i was greeted with the continuous beeps informing me that i had not connected the cable to it. so after re-connecting the cable and rebooting i now have graphics corruption? Have i killed the card by trying to boot it without sufficient power? i feel this is highly unlikely as not enough power is not likely to "blow" it the way too much power would? I have checked every connection over and over again and the connecting strips on the card and the AGP slot, monitor pins etc etc. It will not work on the other computer either, that too has garbled graphics on the boot screens?
Is it possible that the shortage of power has damaged the cards bios settings and is only repairable by flashing an original bios onto it or is it an RMA back to the supplier?
Incidentally, since i have had this card for almost 12 months, has the warranty expired on it? I've emailed the retailer where i bought it and am still awaiting reply from them. I am getting worried now as i payed over £370 for this "Beast" and i think 12 months lifespan is very short for such an expensive product, given the fact that it has run flawlessly and i have been very satisfied with it's performance both in games and multimedia, i would feel very dissapointed if i had to "toss it in the bin" as it was out of warranty...
I have not overclocked it nor modded it in anyway whatsoever, it has remained as std since the day i installed it in my Gaming machine...
Does anyone know if an original bios flash will restore it's bios settings if it's that that's corrupted? that is, if i can locate a bios for it anywhere? there are hundreds of bioses out there but i can't find one that matches this cards original?
I hope someone can help me out here as i will feel a little bit cheated if i have to bin it because of outdated warranty/support or whatever?
Both of my systems that i have tried it on are :-

Gaming Machine:
ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe Bios 1016 (latest i875P chipset drivers)
P4C 2.8@3.4ghz (1.575v)
2x512MB OCZ PC4000 DDR (7.4.4.4 cl2.5)
Asetek Waterchill cooling (CPU/Chipset/GPU)
Thermaltake Butterfly 480W PSU
2x80GB Western Digital 8meg cache SATA150 HDD's- Raid 0
160 Maxtor 8meg cache ATA133 IDE HDD
Powercolor X800 Pro VIVO 256MB (Cat 4.9)
Sounblaster Audigy 2 ZS 5.1
Pioneer 106 4xDVD/RW
Thermaltake Xaser 3 case
Hyundai Q995 19" CRT Monitor
Windows XP Pro SP2

Slave Computer:
ASUS A7N8X-Deluxe Ver 1.4 (latest Bios/NForce 2 chipset drivers)
AMD Athlon T/Bred B 2100+@2105mhz (1.65V)
2x256 Corsair TwinMX PC3200LL (2.2.2.5 cl2)
1x512 Corsair PC3200LL Pro (3.3.3.6 cl2)
Thermaltake Volcano 9
Enermax 350 PSU
160GB Maxtor 8meg cache ATA133 IDE HDD
2x160GB Maxtor 8meg cache SATA HDD's-Raid 0
ATI 7500 AIW (Cat 4.9)
Onboard Soundstorm Audio
Plextor 40x12x40 CDRW
Sony 16xDVD Rom
Samcheer PC-88 USB Black Aluminium case (8fans)
AOC 17" L720a TFT Monitor
Windows XP Pro SP2



Anyone have any ideas?

1.
when you forget to connect the cable ... which happend to me also
you get those beeps and a red message on screen to connect cable but it does not damage the card
2. have you fully pulled the card into the AGP slot
try to give it some extra pressure
3. when flashing a BIOS you need the right one for your supplier ...
what card exactly do you have
4. mal not only to the store you brought the card also mail the manufacturer of the card or even ati ...

and most important do not ask if it was your fault ... you did not do something wrong ... it just stopped working

Yeh, thanx Mersch for confirming my belief that it shouldn't "blow" for not getting enough power. The card by the way is a Sapphire 9800Pro 128MB All in Wonder "The Beast" ( i know, corny innit?) wth Samsung Memory and as i mentioned before cost me a hell of a lot of money not a year ago, so i'm hoping i'm going to get some satisfaction when it comes to trying to get it sorted through the warranty? I'll let you know what response i get from Sapphire/Supplier.
As for the Bios (if it's that, that's corrupt?) i'm having a hard time tracking down an exact same one on the web, maybe some kind soul out there who has one of these cards may "capture" their Bios and upload it so i can flash it and see if i can sort it? :wink: But it appears that there's not many people with these exact same cards, but if ATI suddenly said that they were releasing a 9800XT AIW (highly unlikely) then i'm pretty sure that there would be an awful lot more of these particular Bioses appearing, as the surge of owners wanting to Flash theirs to an XT would be willing and able to "exchange" bioses across the web just as the X800pro-XTPE's are at the moment (sarcastic? me? never!)
Anyway, here's hoping i get summit sorted soon, as i'm missing it already coz it's replacement (supposed to be 2x that of a 9800pro?) is also letting me down bigtime, but i won't go there, that's for another post.

Cheers... :beer:

http://www.techpowerup.com/bios/

here is a large bios collection but no 9800 AIW only 9700 AIW
but you may give it a try ....

if you look very carefully at the flashing process and write down any steps so you can flash it blindly

you can save you actual bios ... and try the 9700 one ... when there is the same problem you know that card it damaged ... if not you can be happy (if it works) or you have to reflash your one blindly ...

its worth the try since the card is of no use for you

I have the EXACT SAME PROB, my 9800 Pro 256Mb Samsung DDRII Sapphire boots up garbled, funny enopugh if i leave it outta the machine for a few days it works again tempoaraly then gos vback to its garbled state, this happened when in a nforce 2 Mobo, but ive tried it in other boards Via KT600, SIS based boards and it works for a while then garbles, id really luv to find a solution to this but i fear it is faulty memory modules Booo Hoo Hoo, what made it worse was that it died mid way through DOOM III the sole reason why i went out and paid £380 quid for it and waitied god knows how long for DOOM III to go gold, and this happened if i cannot revive this card i think im gonna have to go back to buying nVidia Cards as this has put me off of ATI it was the greatest card id ever seen in action and prolly the most performance enhancing upgrade ive made but with it dieing in under a year, while all nVidia cards High end and Low end have lasted for ages and are still running now its a shame a real shame im gonna go and Cry

An event that i know cuased this was putting an ITE RAID card into my nForce 2 ASUS Mobo whilst the Radeon was present, at that moment it died, im very sure that this was what cuased it, u fitting any new cards when it happened to yours?

also i have had endless probs with the nForce board and i hold it responsible for alot of probs, are you suing one too???

A theory of mine was that the ITE RAID BIOS conflicted with the Radeons BIOS in some way, i aint a microengineer and cant confirm any of that but i know that my nForce board has endless probs with many types of RAID cards, even its own onboard Sil Image RAID Chip, lol how silly ASUS & nVidia

if the problem occurs right within onather PC its not the mobo or anything else ... then it must be the card ...
you should straigh return it
just say it stopped working from one moment to another

Well it seems i have some "good" news (sort of) the supplier has emailed me an RMA number and is expecting a turn around of approx 4-5 days if they have a suitable replacement instock, otherwise it's back to the manufacturer which could take over 4 weeks? so fingers crossed and hope it's a quick replacement?

As for your probs Sadist_sly, i wasn't changing anything on the A7N8X, cards etc, jusy swapping cards around trying to determine what was wrong with my new X800 Pro when the 9800 Pro died, so sorry i can't help you there i'm afraid? Maybe the lifespan on this Samsung memory is 12 months, it's strange how both of the cards are of equal age before they died? good luck with it anyway, i know how you feel when you've paid an awful lot of money on a component that in the short-term has shown great promise but in the long-term has turned out to be a dud....... Can you not request an RMA from where you bought it? the response i got from Tekheads.co.uk was very quick and so far satisfactory and has certainly put my mind at ease for a bit, that is, if they send me an identical replacement?

Now onto my X800? lets see if i can get that to run properly?

thanx guys for the replies, i'll update you as and when i get some news on the replacement.... :beer:

great
I was quite happy, too when I mailed cyberdrive about my problem with burner and they right gave me a RMA number