Curse

aeroclown · Sep 03, 2005, 05:25 AM // 05:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by LivingDeadGrrl

but since Guild Wars uses up nearly 100% of system rresources, I'd think that was more the reason for the temperature increase I'd seen while having problems. I haven't checked yet on the temp with the borrowed card, I'm just glad it works! *lol*

Just a side note I suppose.

A 100% system load is of no consequence. All systems and hardware are designed to perform at 100% load level. This is normal For ALL applications and hardware.

A 100% system load will not cause a hardware failure unless the device is defective or already failing due to other contributing factors.

Shinryuu · Sep 04, 2005, 01:10 AM // 01:10

A lot of factors could contribute to the game crashing. Besides just cooling.

It could or couldn't be the card overheating unless you are overclocking your video card. From what I heard that if the HS/Fan on the video needs some thermal paste/silver, taking it out will void your warranty. I could be wrong about the thermal paste thing.

Overclocking the CPU can also cause instability problems to everything else on the motherboard.

Anyway, here's what I think that is causing your problem and that it shouldn't be a hardware problem since you have a lot of your computer parts replaced. Make sure that you are running enough voltage to the card and CPU. Ever since I did a reformat on my other computer that runs an ATI 9700 Pro, Athlon XP 3200+ CPU, I had to make sure that my voltage was at the correct settings. I didn't know how important it was, because I really thought that the constant crashings I've been getting came from installing the drivers wrong. I made sure that I did a complete install and that windows wouldn't automatically install the drivers since it can't find the ones that were deleted in the system. I tried catalyst drivers 5.4, the latest one, 4.12, and 4.11. All of them were still crashing my computer when I ran guild wars for about 5 minutes. Couple months ago, I remembered that the last drivers that ran very stable was the 4.11 plus the performance was much better than the latest drivers.

Eventually I did some research and a lot of people first said that it has inadequate cooling, replace hs/fan, etc. But I finally read one post about not enough voltage going through since I remembered changing my voltage back then. Those ATi cards must be running at 1.6v at least, 1.5v is not enough since those cards require a power source to the power supply. My voltage to my CPU is low as well, since it's running at 2.2ghz it needed to be ran at 1.7v. Maybe it could go lower but so far that setting hasn't been causing any problems.

I have also disabled fast write, I tried it one time and I had lockups and weird error messages. It is also running at 8x agp.

So to make a long story short.
ATi cards need to be running at 1.6v at least. I heard that 1.8v can fry that card. And 1.5v is too low, even though nvidia cards can run at 1.5v.
Overclocking is bad, especially if you don't know what you are doing.
Check to see if running the latest drivers would help, if not an older version is fine too. ATi tells us that only update the drivers if there is instability problem. Older versions give more performance. I read that 4.12 is probably the best.
Do a really great clean install of the video drivers.
Cooling, make sure that the inside of the computer is getting proper airflow at least. If you think it's the video card, buy a temperature sensor and see if it is running really hot. Those slot coolers also help and they are cheap to buy online.

LivingDeadGrrl · Sep 25, 2005, 09:18 PM // 21:18

Just wanted to let everyone know... yet again (posted this in several threads LOL), I fixed my ATI 9800 problems by turning off VPU Recovery in the ATI Catalyst control panel. I have since adjusted everything in CMOS back to its original settings, and I haven't had a game crash or freeze since.

thejynxed · Sep 26, 2005, 12:11 PM // 12:11

I use a Sapphire Radeon 9200 SE and have never had any problems, not bad for only paying $50 (at the time) with shipping. I know it's not the best card, but I use the Omega drivers and overclock it and it runs just fine. I also found that disabling VPU recovery in the control panel seems to make the card more stable. Also: Fast Writes are meant to be used for the 9600 series of Radeon cards, not the newer ones. Most forums will tell you if you don't have the 9600, to turn off fast writes as one of the first things you should do.