Problem with ATI Radeon 9700 PRO video card

[JRichizzle]

We've got a custom-built workstation with a flat-panel LCD display on which we're running real-time motion simulations using Vizard 2.51c.

OS:
Windows 2000

Video Card:
ATI Radeon 9700 PRO
Potentially relevant Direct3D settings: SMARTGART (tm) AGP Speed = 8x, Fast Write = On, Wait for Vertical Sync = Always Off, VPU Recover is enabled

We are using the DVI output from the card to connect to the display. I am using a timer to create the motion simulation.

There are several problems that are occurring with the world:
1) Motion was visually not as smooth as what has been seen with nVidia cards.

2) The screen would go completely black about every 20 seconds, and unpredictably so.

2) About 15-20% of the pixels were dropping out in an unpredictable manner, kind of like what static interference looks like on a TV with rabbit ears for signal reception

3) When issuing the

viz.framerate()

command inside the timer, the values were between 240 and 480 Hz, depending on content displayed. The timer code was set to update every 0.01 seconds;

viz.starttimer(TIMER, .01, viz.PERPETUAL)

Can you help identify the reasons for the problems described above?

[tobin]

Only two immediate suggestions but ones you should try before we troubleshoot further:

1) Load the latest ATI Catalyst drivers. Go to their website and be sure you have the most recent versions.

2) Turn on vertical sync. There should be an option under the ATI control panel to either force this always on or make it application controlled. If you do the later, then you should issue a Vizard viz.vsync(viz.ON) command in your script. Once done, your frame-rate (you can just press F4 at anytime) should read exactly your monitor refresh (presumably 60 Hz).