Anyone know about ATI Raedon Graphics cards?

[Crosshair]

I thought I'd give it a shot posting here about my problem.

I have a 9550 Raedon. In every game (even 2D ones, but predominantly 3D ones) It plays well for a time, and then just... freezes. No sound, no "Ghrrrrhrhr" noise thing... and then the monitor just switches off. I've a CRT Monitor and I can hear it like fizzing as if its half way between turning on and turning off. then eventually it just restarts ( Auto restart, due to the settings my XP is on. If i didnt have it on I'd have a Blue Screen of Death) I've had this problem before, and people thought it was the RAM. I fixed the RAM, and reformatted, then reformatted again cause my Hard Drive died.

Specs:
DDR Dual Channel 2x 512Mb RAM
ATI Raedon 9550 (AGP)
Abit Motherboard NF7 series
Western Digital Hard Drive 160Gigs.
AMD Sempron 1.8GHz (owwwch!) Processor.

[Nakranoth]

Well, I'm not completely familiar with the 9550, but these days 9600's are reasonably cheap and support even the newest games (albeit a little slugishly)... I'm not saying a new video card'll fix your problem, but if the video card is the problem it should.

[Crosshair]

Well, at this moment in time i'm not fond of getting a new one... d'yknow any way i could possibly fix it?

[Black Canyon]

You've probably already thought of this...but have you checked the website for any driver updates?

[Crosshair]

I have, and i've updated God knows how many times... but still no Joy... thanks though

[formerly known as hf]

I had a very similar problem, but it wasn't the graphics card...

My Intel P4 (yes, I will ditch the Intel next computer - I was naive...) runs hyperthreading under windows - does the AMD do the same?
(If not, ignore the rest...)

Some older games can't handle hyperthreading, so they just freeze at random points (about 1-10 minutes of playing).

The solution was to CTRL+ALT+DELETE once the game is running, right click on the process, and select 'set affinity'.
If there is more than one CPU as an option, the processor is hyperthreading - try deselecting one, if that doesn't work, then try again and switch off the other - that works for me.

[Rusalka]

I have the same graphic card. I admit that my radeon sometimes can shut down without any reason, but never in the way you described. If it freezes mostly in 3d games, it means that is rather a graphics card fault. But it can be processor as well

In most cases, when everything freezes over time, reason is the temperature (everything works fine until processors get warmer). Perhaps you don't have radiators working properly, or just have not adequate ones. The air entry at the back of the case might be covered. Also too much dust inside is no good.

Thank god it is freezing rather then burning! (intel processors are the best protected from getting to warm, and usually are automatically shut down when temperature goes to high)

[ebenezer]

I also suspect temperature. Check the card's fan while working to see if it works properly. It may be due to heat caused by faulty or dirty fan (too much dust slows the fan) . I had this FX5200 once suddenly it began to crash once I began to play games so I changed the fan and the problem was fixed.