Yep, we need system details. What video card in particular. As for requirements, well, this thing will run on some pretty low end hardware. According to the box, as low as a Geforce 3 or 4 MX or a Radeon 8500 (note that 9200 = weakened 8500, so performance may be somewhat lacking despite the fact that it sounds like it's a better card.) Heck, since it supports MX, it may actually run at absolute minimum settings on a good Geforce 2 (I'm thinking GTS would be the best bet,) and I saw someone mentioning it running on a 7500 tolerably. Simply put, if you have a video card made since 2002 or so, you're probably going to eke by. It's 2006 now, if you have a video card from before then, UPGRADE ALREADY!! d-:
Anyway, from your description of the problem and the fact that it's happened all of a sudden, I'd say you should look into the possibility that your video card may be getting messed up. Perhaps the cooling has failed, or perhaps it's just getting old. I've seen failed cooling many times before, so see if its fan is still going if it has one. Download a tool called ATITool (it's free, and don't worry, it works on Geforce cards just fine for our purposes) and run the artifact test. If your system crashes or it tells you artifacts detected, your video card is either already damaged or getting there. I've seen in the past a card where the core would just sort of crash and games would give me a message much like you saw because they'd essentially detect no 3D at all. The 3D part crashes and all it can do is 2D from that point until it's reset (which usually means a reboot, though that's why they now have a "VPU recover" option in the video settings to try to hopefully handle such a crash.)
Last edited by Nazo; Feb 18, 2006 at 07:49 PM // 19:49..
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