Problems with 9500

[KJ0055]

I have been having issues with my new 9500 card from sapphire. I dont know whats is up with it. Something in my system was failing when I was at work. I came back and unpluged everything in the case that was extra because I thought it might be a power supply issue. In safe mode I tried to find where the problem was and found nothing. I reinstalled my video card drivers and now im having problems with games locking the computer up. Before the failures I installed my videocard and ran 3Dmark2001 and I got 5000 for a Radeon 9500. Is that strange? Anyone seen this problem before? I still get low scores on 3Dmark 6500 is the highest I have got. I figured out that I had not enabled fast read/write on the AGP but still not getting good scores. When I get home I will check to see if it failed again. I dont think its the videocard because would I still get a picture on the monitor, or even post. I really do not want to RMA it but if I have to I will. I got the card from Newegg. I have not overclocked the card or the CPU. Any suggestions?

Specs:
P4B 2.4
soyo dragon lite (updated drivers)
512mb kingston ram 2700
9500nonpro
120/80gb hdds
via chipset
good cooling


Thx
Kyle

[snap1]

Did you uninstall your video driver at the outset, then install the 9500 and then install its drivers? And of course reboot? ATI is strict about that prior uninstall - without which things don't seem to load properly. Just a thought.

[Ultima]

Can't say that I really agree with you on that Snap1.

At work I have 6 testconfigs, both P4 and XP rigs.

All run WinXP Pro, and I have to test videocards on them amongst other parts.

All rigs have both ATI and nVidia drivers on them, and they work without a problem.

I can slap in an 9800 Pro and test it, and after that put in an FX5600 and test that and I have yet to have a problem cause of this.