Hows it goin guys? good here. My father bought an ATI radeon 9800 pro 128 mb card, actually made by ATI. A month or two later, I bought the same card from the same place. I put an ATI Silencer rev. 1 gpu cooler on mine, and then about a week ago, I flashed it's bios to the 9800xt bios, raising it's clocks to 412 core, 365 memory. I havn't had a single problem, and quite the contrary, am most pleased with the substantial gain in performance. Heres the guide I used in case anyones interested. http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=3&var1=92&var2=0 . Being so pleased with the inexpensive (the cost of the aftermarket cooler and the time) boost in performance, I wanted to do the same for my father. I went to his office today with the floppy I used to do my mod, and he tells me his card fried! I cant believe his STOCK 9800 pro would fry when my modded card runs beautifully. Has anyone heard of this happening to stock 9800 pros? He said the vpu recovery came up a few times and he would restart, then it fried. He put another card in and no probs, so its definatly fried. He still has the origional reciept, so ATI will be sending him a new card. If anyone has a 9800 pro, you may want to get aftermarket cooling, the stock cooling is obviously shitty! This Arctic cooler works great!

I wonder if it might not be a fraud card. Geek.com has a story about a guy who bought a card from Best Buy and it turned out to be counterfeit. http://geek.com/newsletter/nl04202005.htm

I doubt the same thing happened in your Dad's case, but it might be something to consider. Sometimes stores will overclock a card and sell it as the next model up, but since it has a stock cooler it burns out in a short time.

What a bummer for that guy! Wouldn't that be the worst! You get home all jazzed about your "new card", I think I would go postal! $500.00 is a lot of cash. My father and I both bought our cards at Best Buy. I wonder if the guy bought the card in San Francisco, cuz I have a buddy who works at a Best Buy in San Fran and.... He would definatly do something like that. He has a genious I.Q., and not a lick of common sence. I can't count how many times he's almost gotten me killed in the 27 years I have known him. Always fun to hang out with if you love over the edge excitement that frequently strays left of the law. Anyway... My fathers card was definatly a 9800 pro. Looking at the card there is no Physical Changes. (i.e. blown capacitors, discoloration). No loose or ill fitting stickers. His last card was a 9700 pro, it had overheating problems for awhile, but I thought it was the drivers. Catalyst put out drivers that would cause the 9700 pro to heat up by like 10 degrees, it was well documented in some forums at the time. The Arctic cooler that I have on my card right now, was bought by my father for the 9700 pro. to get the stock fan/heatsink off the 9700 pro you have to heat it with a hair dryer, as he was heating it up, a capacitor fell off the board. Another thing that was well documented in forums, shoddy soldering workmanship. The loose capacitor probably contributed to the overheating, but on the 9800 pro I think it just comes down to poor cooling. Before I put the Arctic Cooler on mine it would get VERY hot to the touch when I was playing Enemy Territory, or running 3dmark03/05. Now it gets warm.

Sounds like it's just a quality-control issue, or just one of those "laws of probability" in action . Is the inside of his case abnormally hot? Maybe a case fan or two might help. While I'm thinking about it, when was the last time his case was dusted out?

He has a full size tower that was suposedly built to keep cool with the proper fans, which he has, and an Azus a7n8x deluxe, and azus probe runs 24/7. It never reported abnormally high temps. I realize it can't monitor video card temps, but being that the card wasn't o/c, or modded, it should be able to cool itself well enough to compensate for mildly higher case temps anyway.
Or at least you would think. ??: He buys Duster by the case because it's cheaper, so thats never an issue. ATI needs better quality control, and cooling. You'd think you'd get that for $275.00. ATI's new x series cards look like their better cooled though, so maybe they've learned their lesson.

I really want to like ATI; technologically I think they have better cards than Nvidia. But nearly every review I read always complains that ATI's drivers suck, and I've heard of several people that have quality issues w/ ATI-based cards. Very few people complain about Nvidia. Plus Nvidia has better support for Linux. Too bad Matrox isn't really a competitor anymore. They might have been able to keep ATI and Nvidia in better competition.

Actually Cody, I have found that ATI support for Linux is more than acceptable. I am (was -- still am?) a big fan of NVIDIA because of their Linux support and it is something that ATI lagged behind on. My latest laptop came with an ATI card and I was a little worried. The ATI card was actually very easy to get set up and it doesn't give you those nasty "Kernel Tainted" messages. I still use quite a bit of NVIDIA, but I am not so wary of ATI anymore.

As for the card getting fried partslinger, I think sometimes things happen. I built myself a "killer" system at the first of the year. I didn't skimp on anything. High end case, huge power supply, top of the line motherboard. I set it up and it worked awesome. Fastest thing I have ever used. I took it into my office one day to use while I was waiting for another machine. I plug it into an UPS and fire it up without a hitch. I leave the room and come back and it is dead. I figure it is just a power supply, but I am still pissed because it is only about 2 months old.

In the end, I replaced the power supply, motherboard and CPU. Even plugged into an UPS, I guess something spiked and took everything out. Luckily, everything was covered under warranty. I even got an upgraded CPU (I LOVE AMD!). I was out some shipping costs, but I finally do have my super computer set back up.

Kind of a long post, but I wish you good luck partslinger....