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Graphics Card Headache
captaink
TexasRegistered User regular
TexasRegistered User regular
This is a weird one. I have an nvidia 7800 GT. I just got Gametap and noticed they had Far Cry. Having always wanted to try it, I download it, etc. I get going, and now it's doing a weird semi-lockup thing. I'll be going fine, then the game will freeze for about 5 seconds. The sound continues to play normally. Then it goes hyper and the sound stutters really fast, playing about 0.1s of sound over and over, so it buzzes. Then after a few seconds of that, everything is fine again. It is incredibly irritating. I remember this happening in other games, but never this often (about once a minute). I need to finally figure this out and fix it.
I updated to the latest nvidia drivers yesterday, those did not help,turns out they were the same drivers I've had all year long.
I updated to the latest nvidia drivers yesterday, those did not help,turns out they were the same drivers I've had all year long.
captaink on
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Can't patch Far Cry, it's on Gametap. I don't think it's Far Cry's problem, because I've had this happen on other games.
Basic: The 8800GTX will beat two 7950GT's in SLI, but not by huge amounts. Also, the 8800 supports DX10, and the 7950's do not. It's worth the extra money to go with the 8800 in my opinion; you could also consider the 8800GTS 640mb.
Do you have a dual core processor?
Dual core processors can cause stuttering in video and sound if the game was not optimized for it.
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Nope. Single core AMD 3500.
Get the 8800. You'll be glad you have the extra texture memory before long.
What kind of sound card and motherboard do you have?
What your describing isn't necessarily graphics card related. The last computer I had before this one would ALWAYS crash in Half Life 2, much in the way you are describing (frame freeze followed by constant quick sound loop). And I went through three video cards on that motherboard.
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This
MSI K8N Neo4-F Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard
I had a very similar model except it was socket 754. (The full service tag was k8N NEO-FSR) purchased about one and a half to two years ago, and I was using the onboard sound.
I was never able to fix it even after updating the sound drivers and motherboard drivers.
I would get this crash in basically any game with a lot of ambient sound, and it seemed to also affect my video (especially in Battlefield 2).
One person told me that turning down Sound Acceleration in the DirectX control panel would alleviate the crashes, but it just spaced em out for me. Your mileage may vary.
Possibly try just outright disabling the onboard sound in the BIOS and see if you keep crashing in that manner, that will give you a good clue as to the culprit. :P
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Far Cry does have a lot of jungle noises and shit, so that could definitely be the culprit.
It's weird because it was fine in Karazhan last night, but it was freezing like crazy today in the Arcatraz. I don't get it.
I'm using the 81.98 video driver -- maybe that'll help.
Setting hardware sound acceleration to low and none
Defragging
Scandisk
Canned air to clean dust out of the graphics card
Together, these seemed to decrease the frequency, but not eliminate it.
I got a graphics card temperature monitor that can log. It definitely changes a lot as I play, topping out above 70C. Is that too hot?
I have not tried Spono's drivers, but I have updated to the april 07 ones I found.
One other weird thing. Whenever the game jumps back to normal, the graphics "Catch up." It's obvious on wow because I have scrolling combat text. Whenever it snaps out of it, a bunch of damage numbers will be filling the screen, as if I had done/taken a bunch of damage at once.
I think so. I do now know the advances in microchip technology with regards to heat resistance, but 160 Fahrenheit was the maximum operating temp for some older processors I've had. 70C is 158F... probably a bit toasty..
Try running at minimum or very low resolution and see if that at least spaces stuff out, and that should give you an answer. Putting your resolution down is probably the easiest way to reduce load on the graphics card.
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