Is this true?

[bkswaney]

http://www.short-media.com/forum/sh...52230#post52230

[-=DVS=-]

You could at least post a sample of whatever you trying to show :rolleyes:
Not a broken link :(




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[-=DVS=-]

Are you talking about Cat 3.8 rumor to kill monitor ?

UPDATE: Monitor Death Issue From Catalyst 3.8 Software:

I've got more information regarding the "Monitor Death" problem with the ATI Catalyst 3.8 driver series:

Known Cards Affected:
All Radeon 9800 XT's
All Radeon 9800 Pro's
All Radeon 9800 Non-Pro's

Possible Cards Affected:
All Radeon 9700 Pro's
All Radeon 9700 Non-Pro's

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.

I'll attest to this problem, as my Dell UltraScan P1110 21" Trinitron has been damaged due to this problem. Running the Catalyst 3.8's on my Corona system @ 1600x1200 @ 85 Hz and playing Unreal Tournament 2003, I exited the game and the monitor started flickering like mad, attempting to change refresh rates. After 8 unsuccessful retries, the monitor displayed the "NO VIDEO SIGNAL FROM INPUT 1" message and the power light turned orange. A burning smell was coming from the back of the monitor. Hooking the monitor up to another system proved useless, as it did not start up.

Fortunately, I still have a few weeks left on the warranty, so I got to exchange for a new one, but the fact of the matter is that even if you have a high-end monitor, you aren't safe from this problem.

A whole bunch more individuals have noticed the same problem, but are running monitors that have some type of refresh-rate detection system that will only change the monitors refresh-rate/resolution if it is supported by the hardware. Those users are protected from this "monitor death" problem.

At this time, the Dell leaked 3.9 drivers do NOT fix this problem. Neither do the Omega 3.9 leaked drivers.

The only way for you to save your monitor is to revert BACK to the Catalyst 3.7 (or previous generation) drivers. Links to these drivers are available on the first post of this thread.

Link 1 (http://www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php?postid=52230#post52230)

Link 2 (http://www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=4820)

[-=DVS=-]

Hard for me to believe , could be a big SPAM ? :wtf:

[bkswaney]

Sorry about the bad link guys. :(

I'm with u DVS. :confused:

I hope ATI address this quickly.:eek:

[AthlonXP1800]

Now it will be total more than 183 monitors destroyed by official catalyst 3.8 driver, you both think this is big SPAM? Think again lots of people like me have Trinitron monitors, I have Sony 19" Trinitron, dad bought it for my early xmas present 2 years ago, it was cost £469, in today price it is £439, it still very expensive. If I had Radeon 9800 Pro with official driver 3.8 destroyed my monitor while the monitor's warranty expired a year ago, then I will sue ATI to pay me £439 to get the new same monitor.

This is very serious issue, but I dont think ATI can fix it after 1 week on Catalystmaker still cant reproduced the bug, ATI driver team is no good as Nvidia driver whom reproduced the flicker bug months ago and released driver 45.33 that fixed it.

Geee I feel sorry for people who lost monitors without warranties, can you imagine what will happened to some guy who playing games on 50" plasma TV worth £6000 with warranty expired last year destroy by the driver?

Catalyst 3.8 driver = Dr Death :D

[Hanners]

I'm still waiting to find out where this '183 monitors' number came from - There was no source or hint of one given, which seems a little odd. :confused:

[Unit01]

Originally posted by AthlonXP1800
Now it will be total more than 183 monitors destroyed by official catalyst 3.8 driver, you both think this is big SPAM? Think again lots of people like me have Trinitron monitors, I have Sony 19" Trinitron, dad bought it for my early xmas present 2 years ago, it was cost £469, in today price it is £439, it still very expensive. If I had Radeon 9800 Pro with official driver 3.8 destroyed my monitor while the monitor's warranty expired a year ago, then I will sue ATI to pay me £439 to get the new same monitor.

This is very serious issue, but I dont think ATI can fix it after 1 week on Catalystmaker still cant reproduced the bug, ATI driver team is no good as Nvidia driver whom reproduced the flicker bug months ago and released driver 45.33 that fixed it.

Geee I feel sorry for people who lost monitors without warranties, can you imagine what will happened to some guy who playing games on 50" plasma TV worth £6000 with warranty expired last year destroy by the driver?

Catalyst 3.8 driver = Dr Death :D

How constructive, innovative and contributional to the topic :rolleyes:
Please add some more :bs: to this thread.

Sounds like the same crap like the old Bull**** about ATI's drivers being a trojan or some crap like that.

[AthlonXP1800]

Originally posted by Hanners
I'm still waiting to find out where this '183 monitors' number came from - There was no source or hint of one given, which seems a little odd. :confused:

I think I found the source, it a message from dementor at Rage3D (http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=33717516&perpage=20&pagenumber=9):

Everyone whose monitors have died please contact me at dementor@drscomputing.net
Please provide me with info on exactly what happened, what you noticed, make/model of monitor, resolution, refreshrate...etc. Anything you can gather up.

Thank you.

If it was dementor who received emails from hundreds of people and counted how many monitors died from catalyst driver 3.8 and then he reported to SimGuy at ShortMedia forum.

[Hanners]

Originally posted by AthlonXP1800
If it was dementor who received emails from hundreds of people and counted how many monitors died from catalyst driver 3.8 and then he reported to SimGuy at ShortMedia forum.

That seems like a wild guess to me - If that was the case, why haven't there been hundreds of 'ATi killed my monitor!' posts on Rage3D?

[junkheap]

Originally posted by Unit01
How constructive, innovative and contributional to the topic :rolleyes:
Please add some more :bs: to this thread.

Sounds like the same crap like the old Bull**** about ATI's drivers being a trojan or some crap like that.

He is just angry cuz he way overpaid for his monitor.

[Kruno]

Originally posted by Hanners
That seems like a wild guess to me - If that was the case, why haven't there been hundreds of 'ATi killed my monitor!' posts on Rage3D?

Hundreds? More like the forum will have thousands of posts about the issue. Not only under 1 forum topic either.

Thousands spread out across every forum topic. :lol:

[Toaster]

After reading ( parts ) of that Rage3d-thread it seems that it happens to a small portion of all the cat3.8 users.

Looks like it might be a combination of factors: cats + win version + monitor-type ( or something like that )

I do feel sorry for those who have experienced this 'new Cat3.8 feature'. Just imagine that your monitor blows up in your face due to a faulty graphics driver.

[junkheap]

yea, thats pretty harsh...wonder if this affects the 9600xt's.

Side thought: It couldn't happen to be the overclocking stuff in the drivers or it woulddn't be a problem with non 9800xt's right? I see 9800 pro's and non pro's affected also. Unless the overclocking feature is trying to oc the non xt's and is screwing up.

Eh, too much speculation. Either way, ati has got to fix it asap even if it happened to 1 or 2 people let alone 190.

[AthlonXP1800]

Originally posted by Hanners
That seems like a wild guess to me - If that was the case, why haven't there been hundreds of 'ATi killed my monitor!' posts on Rage3D?

Hmmm I bet lots of them has no jobs and cant afford a new monitor after the driver destroyed it and they cant use their pc to post 'ATi killed my monitor' without a monitor, or not too bothered to register Rage3D and waited days to received email from Rage3D to activate accounts.

Here is likely second source (http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=239821), this link was posted at Rage3D and Amdmb.com (http://www.amdforums.com/showthread.php?threadid=265009&perpage=15&pagenumber=3) forum, asked for the link to be spread to all forums so that the user MassiveOverkill who post the link are to create the database with the full lists of details of monitors died from catalyst driver 3.8.

Hmmm MassiveOverkill to take some action? I have a funny feeling that he is create huge database to get people linking to build a Skynet program to create Terminator 9800 XT. MassiveOverkill will sent Terminator 9800 XT back in time to last week. Catalyst Maker will panic when his ATi's network infected with catalyst 3.8 driver become self-aware and he will pull the plug his PC and elimated by Terminator 9800 XT. :D

[Unit01]

Originally posted by AthlonXP1800
Hmmm I bet lots of them has no jobs and cant afford a new monitor after the driver destroyed it and they cant use their pc to post 'ATi killed my monitor' without a monitor, or not too bothered to register Rage3D and waited days to received email from Rage3D to activate accounts.


Yeah you're probably right. Most ati card owners probably don't have any jobs. And they probably only have one computer and no warranty on their monitor. :rolleyes:

[sxotty]

Actually tho, this is making me worried and now I am debating switching back to 3.7, I don't have a warranty on my 21" Trinitron and I don't want it to die believe me.

[Moose]

I'm running a new monitor and a R9800Xt and haven't had any problems.

This whole thing seems to be taking on "urban legend" status if you ask me.

Of all the posts I've read on this subject I see a possible of 3 legitimate cases of monitors going bad with no verifiable reason as to their failures.

I'm sure if ATI had any reasonable doubt as to the safety of these drivers, they would pull them immediately for liability reasons if nothing else.

Seems like the same thing with the overheating issue. The only one I've seen that actually tested the 3.8's found them cooler than the Omega 3.8's and the 3.7's as well.

:rolleyes:

[betterdan]

Well beleive what you want but I know there is a serious problem with these drivers it happened to me but luckily it didn't seriously damage my 17 inch monitor I don't think. I ended up putting the 17 inch on the upstairs computer (wanted to replace the 15 inch anyways) and that computer started acting up with it. I had to reinstall the geforce 3 drivers to get it to work right. I now have a 19 inch on the 9700 Pro equipped computer and refresh force stopped anything weird going on. Refresh force wouldn't work on the 17 inch. ATI better be seriously looking at this, it is a terrible bug. i wonder if sending ATI the monitor infs from the ones having trouble would help?

[sxotty]

Back in the old days you had to be careful when programming because you could ask the monitor to do things that would destroy it. Supposedly monitor manufacturers fixed this flaw, by simply disregarding things that the monitor could not do such as telling it to refresh at 200hz, when it can only do 100. But I guess there still could be some weird flaw no one has uncovered until now, or perhaps it is a monitor manufacturers fault, or most likely as was stated it is an urban legend and was unrelated event that caused it still...

[Edge]

Didn't some viruses back in the early '90s change your monitor setting to something that would break it? I remember some people talking about how a virus causes their monitor to start smoking:D

I just wonder what settings the 3.8s change in the monitor if this is true. Does it run some kind of "test" on the monitor to see what refresh rates and such it's capable of? It just seems odd that it would appear to work fine but behind the scenes be somehow damaging your monitor. Wouldn't this only affect it if you changed resolutions/refresh rates?

[Moose]

I don't want to say that this isn't happening, but it would be pretty hard to trace with all the variables involved.

What video card???

What Monitor???

What inf's installed???

What driver used???

Overclocked or not???

Vga port or DVI???

What OS and revision???

Refresh force or other program used for refresh rates???

Rivatuner or other 3rd party app used???


etc... etc... etc...

I just find it hard to believe that ATI would keep these drivers out there if there were this serious of a problem with them since the potential for damaged hardware claims would be huge in this case.

Of course due to the number of variables involved they may not be able to identify the problem if indeed there is one.

I'm erroring on the side of caution and have made sure that both my primary and secondary displays have the same, correct inf installed.

As of yet I haven't seen anything suspicious.

[digitalwanderer]

I really don't know on this one. I guess it isn't beyond the realm of possibility, but if there are so many people with monitors dying out there I'd really expect to be hearing from more of them on the boards.

I'm waiting, the truth will out in the fullness of time. :)

[Rogozhin]

I don't believe anything without VALID sources-this person doesn't even tell what his source it ;)

it could be his own mind, or maybe some stories fed to him, but if it was the "truth" then I would have fried my cheapie monitor by now.

rogo

[gmontem]

Originally posted by AthlonXP1800
This is very serious issue, but I dont think ATI can fix it after 1 week on Catalystmaker still cant reproduced the bug, ATI driver team is no good as Nvidia driver whom reproduced the flicker bug months ago and released driver 45.33 that fixed it. NVIDIA had problems trying to reproduce the flicker bug, too. In fact, didn't someone from NVIDIA post here looking for people who can reproduce the flicker bug? Looks like the NVIDIA's driver team's no good, too. :p

But it surprises me... didn't any of the CATALYST beta team members get their monitor zapped, too? Maybe it's time ATi recruit more beta testers.