ATI Radeon HD 4800 - problematic?

I should have read the forums before getting this card, and went with Nvidia.. Dx.
Either way.. Does anyone else have this card and have problems? I'm getting bizarre issues that I'm assuming is my card.

SL is not allowing me to open any windows ontop of it. If I do, it freezes.. and never unfreezes. I need to close it manually.
Unless.. Whatever I'm opening over SL is maximized and SL is invisible behind it.. Like a maximized firefox will work fine. As soon as i restore it down to a small size, and I can see SL under it, SL dies. Likewise to things like instant messages or error windows- as soon as they pop up over SL.. SL crashes.

I've got OpenGL disabled in the hardware options in SL, when that's enabled I can't even run SL.

Does this sound like any type of wronged setting on my card? Or is it just simply not compatible. I'm not much a tech person. Any kind of help or direction is appreciated. :]

can you return it?

Computer specs would help here. It sounds like you may have a memory problem.

Until then you might try going to ATI's website and checking for a more recent driver. It appears you've already disabled VBO which a common "fix" for ATI cards. For the record ATI cards DO work with SL.......but due to ATI's lack of OpenGL driver support it often takes a little tweaking.

You can get some computers specs in the Help About Second Life when running SL. Highlight them, Control C to copy, then paste them here.

If running Vista you might try turning off Aeroglas. If running SL fullscreen, try running it in a window.

In Catalyst you could try turning off Catalyst AI.

I can run other games like C.O.D 5 and GTA 4 on full and be fine. SL is the only game that gives me problems.

XP service pack 3
AMD Phenom 2 x4 955
3.21 Ghz
3.25 GB RAM

I'm pretty sure my drivers are up to date. I'll go check anyways

SL is an OpenGL graphics rendered program..quite different than your other games so the comparison is misleading. The not being able to have more than one window showing without freezes sounds like a graphics card issue but you being able to run the other games makes it a likely driver problem.

Okay, durr :B There was another driver update. I can now open windows over w/o crashing ( so far)

But I've one more question.. If I run two clients, I can't look at my other self (avatar) without my fps dropping to below 1 fps. The heck is this now :x? Some setting?

What do you having running at the same time you have SL running? All you really need running is your security software, and system processes running.......things like email checkers and instant messaging programs can sometimes take up a surprisingly large amount of resources. Also a heavily fragmented hard drive can make virtual RAM almost stop working all together. Running mulitple instantaces of SL does not take much more than a single.......on my computer it is about 5% more.

I would do a thorough disk clean up.........you might consider CCleaner to help with that. Delete all but maybe the last two or maybe three restore points. Then do a file check of Windows to check for possible damaged sectors on your drive.........and finally a disk defrag. If you haven't done a defrag in a while that can take a good while to complete......but the longer you wait the longer it's going to take. If you get in a habit of defragging your drive at least once a month a defrag will take just a few minutes.

What level do you have your graphics settings in SL at?

What draw distance?

Okay, I defragged, cleaned using CCleaner, registry etc.. disk cleanup-ed, killed my restore points except the last few. And still I lag. Also, My graphics are on full. It changes nothing when I turn them down. My draw distance is inconsistant.. When I've got one SL open it can be maxed w/o any lag. But when I've got two clients up, they can both be at the very minimum and I still have problems.

Its seems like one of the two clients will being to lag, and gradually get worse until the FPS is 0. And of course they both lag if I see my own av on the other client.

Are you sure my card just isn't going to accept SL? I might consider trying a Nvidia soon.. assuming this is my card Dx.. Nobody seems to know what's wrong. My laptop has much lower standards than my pc and can run about 3-4 clients (a bit slowly).. but can handle more than my pc.
If I dare open 3 clients on my pc, the third one sees nothing but black, and a few blips of whats around, but then back to black.

Try using Boy Lane's Rainbow Viewer with the SSE2 patch.

http://my.opera.com/boylane/blog/rainbow-viewer

or the latest Coolviewer with the SSE2 patch:

http://my.opera.com/boylane/blog/cool-viewer-1-22-11-0-r10a-fully-adult-compatible

They're both two downloads, install them both.

I just did a Google for a Radeon HD 4800. Closest I could find was an HD 4830 (no 4800.....just the 4800 series of which the 4830, 4850, and 4870 are part of). I read the specifications for the 4830 where I noticed three important requirements for proper operation. One is a PCI express X16 slot, another is a 450 watt power supply, and the third is a 6 pin power connector available from your power supply. Assuming ATI cards are like nVidia, the card will work without that power pin connected....but not at the performance it's designed for. Also a video card will work with lower than recommended power supply..........but, again, the performance is to subject less than desirable levels. It's easy to install a video card and miss connecting that 6 pin connector and it's also easy to neglect the power supply requirements............sort of like putting a 75 watt light bulb in a socket rated for 60 watts. You can probably get away with it, at least for a while. But if something happens you're pretty much on your own for replacement, repair, etc.

The issue of anytime you "look" at yourself in one viewer and start eating up memory until you crash is puzzling. How much video RAM does your card have...........dedicated, not shared? It could be that if your card is installed improperly you're not using the VRAM at all (or very little of it) and instead the video is robbing your system ram to render the graphics. That pin connector could well be the source of a problem like that. Also, you might want to open your case and reseat your card (actually, remove it completely and reinstall it making sure it "snaps" into the slot). While you're in there, do the same for each memory module you have. And check to make certain the 6 pin connector is fully snapped into it's respective socket. Check to make sure the GPU fan is not bound up or otherwise obstructed. And, take a look at the label on your power supply to make sure it meets that minimum 450 watt requirement.

That's about all I can think of right now. I don't think you'll "fix" anything by trashing that card and getting an nVidia replacement. Like I said before ATI works just fine with SL....they just have a querk that nVidia cards do not. Disable VBO and the ATI cards perform quite well. There is a possibility (as always) that you have a faulty or damaged card.........so a call to where you purchased the card or whoever is responsible for any warranty would be something to give serious thought to.

I haven't checked the above yet, but i do know my power supply was either 850 or 1k.. I forget @_@. Ama check it out for sure, but until then I wanted to say thanks for your help so far.
I've been looking into this, admittedly a bit half heartedly, and have not been able to find any leads, and previous posts were usually ignored or recieved 'I don't know's.
It's appreciated :]
I will let you know if what you found is one of my problems :B

@_@ i'm honestly not good with insides of computers.. I emailed my friend, the one who built this comp for me. I told him what you told me.. and everything is set up fine to run.
Also, if it WASNT connected right, wouldnt CPUZ not pick it up? It seems to be saying I've got everything that I'm supposed to.

Vid card as 1024 Mb of memory. Also, yeh, I was wrong. Its in the 800 series.. But my card is a Radeon 4890.

"system has 4gb (3+ 32bit). it could be a problem with what you are doing an multicore cpu? your power supply, vid card, ram, cpu, etc, should be able to handle any game without a problem."

--Is there some kind of program I can let run and monitor what is going on when one client begins to die? D:

You can pull up your device manager and watch what is happening to your memory, CPU usage etc. Not sure what it's going to tell you that you don't already know though.

And, yes your computer certainly should be able to run SL quite easily.........and more than one client at the same time (probably a dozen or so if you wanted.......multiple clients take very little additional resources once the first one is running). Problem is, it apparently isn't doing it. Something's amiss.........most likely the way everything is set up with your system. Either that or you have some faulty device.

I can't speak for ATI since I use nVidia but the card will certainly work without the power pin connected. It will not perform anywhere near what the card is capable of doing..........which is why I suggested checking that connection. And the only indication you would see is low performance or problems similar to yours.

No one is trying to tell you your card or anything else is not installed properly. No one is trying to tell you your card is not good enough for SL. And no one suggesting your friend hasn't done an excellent job of putting your system together. We are only making suggestions as to why your system is not working like it should. If you cannot or your friend cannot check a few things then I really don't know what else to suggest to help. Hardware devices do, occassionally, come out of the box broken or faulty........it's not likely but it's something to think about.

x] I know, I never implied anyone was saying anything. I'm just trying to get help.. and I don't know what i'm looking for in an open computer xD. I'm a tech-dud.
It just baffles me that out of all the other games I play SL is the only one that gives me problems.. and this is the first time i've gotten persistant help, so thanks regardless of whether or not i figure it out.

I would have returned it (the video card).

Egh @_@ I wasn't sure it was the video card.. since I've been running much more demanding games just fine. I'm not sure. My friend is coming over for thanksgiving, I'll ask him to open up the comp and look.. or figure it out some other way.

The problem is those "much more demanding games" are no where near as demanding as SL. Aside from a few commercial graphics programs used mainly for motion picture video editing and architectural design, there probably is not a program you can install on your computer that is more graphically and computationally demanding as Second Life. Add to that the fact that roughly 95% of what you "see" in SL is created by ordinary people with no professional training or expertise in the proper creation of most anything you might see or experience in SL......very inefficiently done graphics that make rendering the scenes, textures, pictures or anything else twice or more work for your hardware.

The minimum requirements to run SL satisfactorily are about as high as the requirements for semi pro video editing. Sure you can get by with less power but you are not getting good quality........not even close.

But, if you are not comfortable in opening your case, then don't do it. But, when your friend comes over Thanksgiving look over his shoulder.........it's not nearly as scary as it may sound.

Returning the card may be the solution but if there's nothing wrong with the card you are right back where you are now. I'd exhaust the other possibilities before I'd do that. It's not likely a brand new card is the problem. Possibly some minor misalignment when it was installed or maybe not seated completely but the card itself being the problem is not a likely fix. Like I said before, a faulty brand new device is always a possibility........but it's seldom that way.

I had all your issues with my 4850 and WinXP then upgraded to Windows Vista. Everything runs good in Vista. No problems at all. Maybe ATI's OpenGL drivers are better done for Vista.

i have 4800 series graphic card 4850: it seems that for the use of sl dont update your drivers, i went back to old ones and its working for me

but yes seems that sl is more nvidia friendly

Whatever driver works best for you and your card/system setup is the proper driver to use. Normally (not to be confused with absolutely) the latest driver is best.......but as you see it's not always so.

A good rule to follow is that if there is no reason to update any driver (eg: error messages, obvious graphics failings, colors not displaying properly, etc) leave the drivers alone. However, it sometimes is very hard to know if you are fighting something other than a driver problem. Most to the time it's a setting that got changed somehow and not a driver that is causing your problem. A more recent driver is probably a better way to think instead of the newest.

I've found that, for the most part, any driver I install on any of my devices last for 6 months to a year (even longer) before there is any indication they need updating. After you've exhausted the settings and such then you should start thinking new driver (just not the first thought). If your computer is over a year old or you just installed a new card then, of course, you should check for a newer driver. Once you have one and it's working don't udpate till there's evidence you need to do so.

My old issue is gone. I now got have windows 7. I can run two SL's perfectly smooth. But now my own avatar is going phantom on me. I think I may start a new thread.
All other avatars load fine, all attached prims load fine. It's only MY base avatar.. skin/clothes.. that will go about 50-60% phantom at certain (most) angles.
EDIT--
NEVERMIND. I just now noticed.. OTHER avatars are doing it to.
Edit2--
I found a fix for the phantom problem.. but now after having two SLs running for awhile, they are dying. My fps is at 20-30.. but then as soon as the other account av comes into view it drops to 1-3 fps.