----------------------------------- person Thu Mar 23, 2006 9:12 pm corrupted graphics?? ----------------------------------- When I play WC3 or Rise of Nations for aroung 20min or so, lines appear on my screen, and the colours also get messed up. When this happens, the only way I can solve the problem is to restart my computer. I haven't noticed this problem with Halo, or Civ3. I don't know if it matters or not, but the graphics card I'm using is ATI Mobility/Radeon 9200 Saphire 128M ----------------------------------- Neo Thu Mar 23, 2006 9:51 pm ----------------------------------- Your card might be overheating or your drivers are corrupt. Try reinstalling the drivers. ----------------------------------- person Thu Mar 23, 2006 11:04 pm ----------------------------------- I already tried resinstalling my driver. I don't think that it's overheating because after the screen gets all messed up, it gets fixed with a restart. I dont think 10 seconds is really enough time for it to cool down. ----------------------------------- Andy Thu Mar 23, 2006 11:20 pm ----------------------------------- oh you'd be surprised.... the materials asics are made from are excellent conductors ----------------------------------- person Thu Mar 23, 2006 11:23 pm ----------------------------------- So you think one of those $10 dollar fans would be enough to solve my problem? ----------------------------------- Andy Thu Mar 23, 2006 11:25 pm ----------------------------------- I've actually seen what you're talking about happen to my laptop. It only happened three or four times, and i think my vpu was OCed, now that i'm at stock settings it hasnt occured for a while. But then again, i havent played games in a while either. What video card are you running? ----------------------------------- person Thu Mar 23, 2006 11:28 pm ----------------------------------- Sapphire Radeon 9200 SE 128MB ----------------------------------- Andy Thu Mar 23, 2006 11:44 pm ----------------------------------- Could it be that your videocard is dying? it's an RV280.. and it's an SE too... spare a hundred bux and get a decent card. ----------------------------------- [Gandalf] Thu Mar 23, 2006 11:48 pm ----------------------------------- He already had his video card in the first post... I don't think the case is the same for you, since it only happens for certain games, but I experienced a similar problem only because of my monitor. For you, I would assume it's somehow the drivers fault. Have you tried different drivers? ----------------------------------- person Fri Mar 24, 2006 12:02 am ----------------------------------- Well, I've tried the one ATI provides...and....do I have other options? ----------------------------------- codemage Fri Mar 24, 2006 9:04 am ----------------------------------- 9000x series SEs run pretty hot. Some games will work the video card more than others; halo & civ are fairly easy on the card compared to more immersive games. If it's not your card overheating, you might also not be getting enough power from the supply when your card is maxxed out. That'll cause your card to skip sequences & mangle bits when it isn't getting the power it needs. My bet is on overheating, though. Try running with the cover off and with a house fan blowing across the system if you want to check (before investing in a unit fan). There are also free utilities to monitor the heat in your case / on your card. ----------------------------------- Andy Fri Mar 24, 2006 9:43 am ----------------------------------- there was a tool that will monitor the temperature of all acpi devices, and will log it at given intervals. I would run that and crash your computer again and check the temprature of your videocard right before the crash ----------------------------------- [Gandalf] Fri Mar 24, 2006 3:45 pm ----------------------------------- Well, I've tried the one ATI provides...and....do I have other options? I've noticed that hacked drivers often work better than the official releases, also, you might try upgrading or downgrading your current official drivers. ----------------------------------- Blade Fri Mar 24, 2006 10:31 pm ----------------------------------- "]Well, I've tried the one ATI provides...and....do I have other options? I've noticed that hacked drivers often work better than the official releases, also, you might try upgrading or downgrading your current official drivers. well for nvidia i've heard that Omega drivers are the best. i use them for my geforce 6800 and they seem to work much better. as for ati, i've heard that [url=http://www.dna-drivers.com/]DNA drivers are the best. however both DNA and [url=http://www.omegadrivers.net/]Omega release drivers for both manufacturers. but, both are alternatives to what you're using now. ----------------------------------- person Sat Mar 25, 2006 6:25 pm ----------------------------------- I've tried the drivers, it still happens. And in Rome total war, it becomes something like when u go into photoshop and draw random colours in the center of the screen and then use radial blur a few extra times. ----------------------------------- Neo Sat Mar 25, 2006 9:09 pm ----------------------------------- "]Well, I've tried the one ATI provides...and....do I have other options? I've noticed that hacked drivers often work better than the official releases, also, you might try upgrading or downgrading your current official drivers. well for nvidia i've heard that Omega drivers are the best. i use them for my geforce 6800 and they seem to work much better. as for ati, i've heard that The omega drivers for nvidia cards are from 2005... ----------------------------------- Andy Sun Mar 26, 2006 2:53 pm ----------------------------------- these third party drivers may seem to "work better" but if you put it through a stress test you'll see that they alot worse than the ATI official ones, oh and while we're on this topic, NVidia drivers suck, they score on average 17% lower than ATI ones at stress tests ----------------------------------- Blade Mon Mar 27, 2006 12:50 am ----------------------------------- ohhh we all know you're opinion will change once you get a job at nvidia :wink: the geforce 6 was released in 2004, the geforce 7 was released in 2005, so if the omega drivers were for 2005 nvidia gpu's, then that covers all the current gpus... http://www.nvidia.com/page/corporate_timeline.html ----------------------------------- codemage Mon Mar 27, 2006 9:12 am ----------------------------------- Those are all things that will cause a lot of heat and/or draw a lot of power. Use one of the tools to check power consumption and heat. How many watts is your supply rated at, btw? ----------------------------------- Neo Mon Mar 27, 2006 10:07 pm ----------------------------------- ohhh we all know you're opinion will change once you get a job at nvidia :wink: the geforce 6 was released in 2004, the geforce 7 was released in 2005, so if the omega drivers were for 2005 nvidia gpu's, then that covers all the current gpus... But are they more stable than the recent ones? ----------------------------------- codemage Tue Mar 28, 2006 9:41 am ----------------------------------- Sometimes. Some applications like them, some don't. I've never noticed an increased framerate using non-official drivers, but I've had a few games that wouldn't run without them. ----------------------------------- Blade Wed Mar 29, 2006 1:52 am ----------------------------------- i know for a fact that omega drivers are the actual drivers released by nvidia, just tweaked for performance or quality, depending on which profile you choose to use. ----------------------------------- codemage Wed Mar 29, 2006 11:03 am ----------------------------------- That's what pretty much all non-standard drivers are. A lot of the settings are just that; but some of the tweaks are more intensive - which is why they aren't officially supported by the corps. A lot of the tweakers have worked at or in cooperation with the card companies, so they know what they're doing, for the most part. ----------------------------------- Andy Wed Mar 29, 2006 12:00 pm ----------------------------------- codemage is right. the ATI Driver is about 5-6 million lines of code.. no "third party" is going to rewrite all of that, and even if they wanted to, internal specificaiton and designs arent readily avaliable over the internet