Are the 3.8 Cats causing hardware burnout?

**BBThumper** · 10-16-2003 07:46 PM

.....Couldn't decide where to put this so.........

Are CAT 3.8â€™s causing hardware burnouts?
Posted on Friday, October 17, 2003
at 12:50 AM by Dyre Straits - View Article Comments

G.I.Bro posted this note over at RAGE 3D:

"While I was reading through the forums, I noticed a few threads popping up in which are discussing thoughts that the CATALYST 3.8â€™s could be burning out peoples hardware. People on the forums are mentioning that the 3.8â€™s are overheating their video cards, along with monitors burning out! I just spoke to Terry Makedon (aka CATALYST maker) about this, and this is what he had to say:

1) Overheating. We have spent a great deal of time analyzing the temperatures due to the CATALYST 3.8 drivers. We do not under any circumstance see anything near a 10 degree Celsius increase in temperature (but we donâ€™t overclock our test cards either). We do see a slight increase in temperature in certain cases (3Dmark2003 Nature Scene for example). However any temperature increase is well within our safety range. Investigation continues and we are trying to determine why this change in temperature exits

2) Monitors. We have spent a great deal of time trying to reproduce this problem and analyzing the driver code. There is nothing to be found. At this point we are working very closely with an ATI Beta Tester who experienced a monitor loss. There have been zero reports in our customer support of monitors dying.

Thanks goes out to Terry for taking a few moments out of his extremely busy day for us! "

**BBThumper** · 10-16-2003 07:46 PM

.....anyone here seeing this?..........

....and new Omegas came out today-2496b:

link

**shrae** · 10-16-2003 08:07 PM

This was posted over at short media yesterday. Sounds pretty serious, hope no one gets their cards ruined. Amazing this could slip by QC/testing really.

http://short-media.com/forum/showthr...&threadid=4820

**LBJGH** · 10-16-2003 08:20 PM

Sounds like Nvidia rumors trying to save Nvidia from the 3dfx fate.

**Holst** · 10-16-2003 11:42 PM

I agree LBJGH sounds like BS to me.

The 3.8 haent affected my temps at all and im on stock cooling and a decent overclock

**PTK** · 10-16-2003 11:46 PM

I have used the 3.8 set a looong time and never had any problems with heat on my 9800 256.. the card was allways hot as hell.. even with 3.7's.

Since im doing betatesting with the card, i did keep it stock all the time [ well and since it was so damn hot

] i didnt notice anything so different with the card. Allways working like it should be.

The thing is that IF the temps went up a bit, serious ocers or people using softmodded cards with the stock cooling could get some pic errors, but i very much doubt that it would KILL a card. But if a R300 core that was bit flakey at best was slapped on a 9500 and then used as a 9700 with high oc and stock cooling.. that might be a different story.

The monitor issue is bit different, one beta guy did loose his monitor a while ago, but was it the drivers or the monitor just crapping out.. who knows. They are trying to figure it out right now. The fact that ATI had ZERO complaints about the issue reported shows how much people have blown this up on forums.

PTK

**BBThumper** · 10-18-2003 01:09 AM

......whats really strange is the new Nvidia drivers on guru.com. Read the warning:

Nvidia warning

GJ · 10-18-2003 03:54 AM

i installed 3.8 when i got my radeon 9600,and it is defective,maybe because that..

**phil stanbridge** · 10-18-2003 03:57 AM

I used the Cat 3.8's and the Omega 3.8s for a short time after they were released to the public. I noticed a dramatic system temp increase. It went from around 28 degrees to 39 after half hour playing the call of duty demo. I wasn't satisfied with this, and as this was the ONLY reason for my temp increase I decided to roll-back to the Omega 3.7's. I did so and within half hour my temps were back to normal. Go figure. There is *definitely* something odd going on there.

**LBJGH** · 10-18-2003 05:00 AM

I've used both the cat3.8 and the omega3.8 and didn't have any difference in temps... phil, it might just be time for you to clean your case fans.

**phil stanbridge** · 10-18-2003 05:27 AM

Unlikely mate, this is a new MachII system with new fans.

**Colin** · 10-18-2003 05:47 AM

While my card seemed to remain the same temps, I can't overclock as high with the new Det 3.8's with my 9800 Pro!

When I move back to the 3.7's everything is fine.

**hollywood** · 10-18-2003 10:05 AM

Originally posted by Colin
While my card seemed to remain the same temps, I can't overclock as high with the new Det 3.8's with my 9800 Pro!

When I move back to the 3.7's everything is fine.

OOPS!!! He had an "nVIDIAN Slip" !!!!! :smileysex

**shortcircuit** · 10-18-2003 03:37 PM

This sounds like total BS to me. I'm running the cat 3.8's now. I seem to score higher with them in 3dmark 2k1, and the card overclocks the same (540mhz with room-temp water cooling and 2.05v vgpu).

This statement really confuses me:

This has caused a number of fans on the Radeon 9800 XT series to fail, allowing the heat to completely destroy the card.

How can heat cause a fan to fail? Unless of course the fan itself melted. Sounds like total crap to me.

**LBJGH** · 10-18-2003 03:42 PM

nvidia rumors... 'cause they can't keep up in performance.... sort of like all the b.s. about heat and AMD... now the P4's run hotter.

**Soulburner** · 10-18-2003 03:45 PM

Originally posted by LBJGH
nvidia rumors... 'cause they can't keep up in performance.... sort of like all the b.s. about heat and AMD... now the P4's run hotter.

For a reason

.

**Admiral** · 10-19-2003 01:06 AM

I dont know about temp increasing but since i ve put 3.8s the cards cooler (sapphire 9700np) is DEFINATELY ROARING until monitor reaches the xp weclome screen.

**Jin** · 10-19-2003 07:40 AM

Well when I installed them my moniter started going crazy, blurring up really badly (even in bios) and my temps were higher. So I'm fairly confident there is a problem though some people might or might not have it. Needless to say when I re-installed the 3.7's everything was fine.

**mkleingeld** · 10-19-2003 07:46 AM

Even in BIOS?
Then the drivers have nothing to do with it...

**st0nedpenguin** · 10-19-2003 07:48 AM

I have been running them since release, my card is no hotter, my monitor still works, and my room doesn't resemble Chernobyl.

I still don't understand how the driver could be causing this, and even if it is, bad publicity or not, ATi would have issued some kind of official warning by now surely?

**st0nedpenguin** · 10-20-2003 01:32 AM

Yesterday I e-mailed ATi to see what they had to say on the subject:

Hi, this isn't exactly a problem per se, I just have a question regarding the recently released Catalyst 3.8 driver.

I have been reading quite a few articles and forum posts online at the moment with people claiming that the new driver release is causing drastic increases in operating temperatures, and as a result is causing the failiure of both graphics cards and monitors.

Personally I am having trouble believing these rumours, but I just though it would be prudent to get some information from the horses mouth so to speak, and ask yourselves directly

Are there any increased temperature/hardware death issues related to the Catalyst 3.8 drivers known to yourselves, and if so, should I roll back to the 3.7 Catalysts?

This morning, I had a response:

Based on our experience, the issue(s) you describe are usually due to system configuration errors. We believe that the troubleshooting steps listed below may help to resolve this issue.

If you own one of our Radeon products, you may consider reviewing the information at:

http://www.ati.com/support/products/...eonissues.html

If the ATI display adapter you have is an AGP card, you should also consider reviewing the information at:

http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/3179.html

You may also consider using the new SEARCH ATI function on our web site. It can be found at:

http://www.ati.com/search/index.html

Smells like a standard response to me, but I just thought you might like to know.

**PTK** · 10-20-2003 01:59 AM

http://www.driverheaven.net/showthre...threadid=28844 [ reg. is req. ]

Test with 3.7, 3.8, Dell Omegas and Asus leak.

3.7 and 3.8 ~ same temp.

DELL OMEGAS.. +8-9C !!
Asus leak ~same temp as 3.7/3.8 but the room temp was 4.4C LOWER... so those are running pretty damn hot too.

So you might wanna stay away from those if you are running really oced 9800's... that guy was running a 9800 Pro.

PTK

**st0nedpenguin** · 10-20-2003 02:08 AM

Thanks for the link PTK, looks like I'm safe on 3.8 then.

**st0nedpenguin** · 10-20-2003 08:30 AM

Or maybe not.

The plot thickens.

It seems like the new driver series is attempting to pass way too many unsupported resolution/refresh rates to the monitor, overloading the monitor's relay system and frying the monitor. Instead of reading the refresh rates from the PRIMARY display INF files, it is reading the SECONDARY display INF refresh rates. For those of us with only 1 monitor hooked up, there is no SECONDARY display INF refresh rate file, so the video card starts at its own highest supported refresh rate and starts passing that onto the monitor. With Radeon 9800/9700's capable of syncing @ a refresh rate of up to 200 Hz, that means 99% of the world's monitors are at risk of damage.

So far, a total of 183 monitors, ranging from high-end 22" Viewsonic P225F's to lowly 14" Compaq SVGA monitors have been reported as dead/damaged due to this problem. It is to be taken seriously.

**PTK** · 10-20-2003 08:51 AM

Well dont know where that guy got the number 183... What i have read 3 might be bit closer... used those drivers more than a month, no problems here.

So if you wanna be REALLY on the safe side, you could slap 3.7s with the 3.8 openGL [ 16-bit bug fix ].

PTK

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