9700 Pro and certain racing games stopped working

[Heckler]

Hi guys, hope some one can shed some light on a little problem I've
developed. Done some searching around but can't find anything about this
particular problem.

Firstly, the setup
Abit NF7S-V2.0 mobo
XP3200+ CPU
1GB Crucial PC3200
Radeon 9700 Pro
3x160GB Hard drives 1xIDE 2xSATA

Up until a few days ago everything as running smooth as silk. No issues
at all, I then decide to play a couple of games I've not played in a
while. Need For Speed Underground 2 and Toca Race Driver 2. Neither
games are playable anymore. Front ends load fine, but when you get into
a race, FPS have dropped to 0. It's unplayable, the countdown from 3 to
start a race can take 20-30 seconds. This doesn't happen in any other
game, I've checked other racing games (Colin McRae 2004) and that works
fine.

All drivers are up to date, I've unistalled drivers and tried vid
drivers 4.10 thru 5.2, each time clearing out the old ones thoroughly
first. I've updated and checked DX, it's already got 9.0c installed, run
through dxdiag with no problems found.

I've unistalled games, installed to new locations, made sure they're
updated with latest patches. Nothing works.

Every other game I play works flawlessly, I've made no hardware changes
or additions to the base unit in months, apart from adding a 19" LCD
monitor to replace my old 19" CRT one. But that shouldn't cause any
issues. It's a fast response monitor 16ms, and like I say everything
else works flawlessly. No problems with the games I play most, BF1942,
BFV, HL2, Doom 3, The Sims 2.

I just can't find any reason for this happening, I've tried everything I
can think of. Made every possible change in the vid card settings,
turned off all AA and AF.

Has anyone else come across the same problem?

Cheers
H

 

[BRH]

Hi guys, hope some one can shed some light on a little problem I've
developed. Done some searching around but can't find anything about this
particular problem.

Firstly, the setup
Abit NF7S-V2.0 mobo
XP3200+ CPU
1GB Crucial PC3200
Radeon 9700 Pro
3x160GB Hard drives 1xIDE 2xSATA

Up until a few days ago everything as running smooth as silk. No issues
at all, I then decide to play a couple of games I've not played in a
while. Need For Speed Underground 2 and Toca Race Driver 2. Neither
games are playable anymore. Front ends load fine, but when you get into
a race, FPS have dropped to 0. It's unplayable, the countdown from 3 to
start a race can take 20-30 seconds. This doesn't happen in any other
game, I've checked other racing games (Colin McRae 2004) and that works
fine.

All drivers are up to date, I've unistalled drivers and tried vid
drivers 4.10 thru 5.2, each time clearing out the old ones thoroughly
first. I've updated and checked DX, it's already got 9.0c installed, run
through dxdiag with no problems found.

I've unistalled games, installed to new locations, made sure they're
updated with latest patches. Nothing works.

Every other game I play works flawlessly, I've made no hardware changes
or additions to the base unit in months, apart from adding a 19" LCD
monitor to replace my old 19" CRT one. But that shouldn't cause any
issues. It's a fast response monitor 16ms, and like I say everything
else works flawlessly. No problems with the games I play most, BF1942,
BFV, HL2, Doom 3, The Sims 2.

I just can't find any reason for this happening, I've tried everything I
can think of. Made every possible change in the vid card settings,
turned off all AA and AF.

Has anyone else come across the same problem?

Cheers
H

Hmm...I can't come up with a solution for you. All I can do is verify
that TOCA Race Driver 2 does play fine with a 9700Pro. I don't own
NFS-U2. (In other words, there is no software incompatibility).

The only thing that I can think of is that perhaps you're overclocking
either the vidcard or your system and these games don't like it?

Good Luck.

 

[Heckler]

Hmm...I can't come up with a solution for you. All I can do is verify
that TOCA Race Driver 2 does play fine with a 9700Pro. I don't own
NFS-U2. (In other words, there is no software incompatibility).

The only thing that I can think of is that perhaps you're overclocking
either the vidcard or your system and these games don't like it?

Good Luck.

Both these games worked perfectly before Xmas, and apart from adding a
plug and play LCD monitor I've made no changes. Nothing else is affected
including Colin McRae 2004 which I believe uses the same game engine as
Race Driver 2.

It's baffled me, I've made no hardware changes at all, the only thing I
can possibly think it might be is something I've installed... Like MS
updates for XP Pro.

Vid card isn't overclocked, neither is the system I've tried it with and
without overclocking to test. Same results.



H

 

[BRH]

Both these games worked perfectly before Xmas, and apart from adding a
plug and play LCD monitor I've made no changes. Nothing else is affected
including Colin McRae 2004 which I believe uses the same game engine as
Race Driver 2.

It's baffled me, I've made no hardware changes at all, the only thing I
can possibly think it might be is something I've installed... Like MS
updates for XP Pro.

Vid card isn't overclocked, neither is the system I've tried it with and
without overclocking to test. Same results.



H

Sorry, but I'm out of possibilities. Have you tried posting this
question on rec.autos.simulators?

 

[Heckler]

Sorry, but I'm out of possibilities. Have you tried posting this
question on rec.autos.simulators?

Just fixed it for Race Driver 2... I don't know how it happened, but
seems the cause was the save game. I created a new profile and it's
working perfectly.... Gotta start again though, my previous save was
91% complete.

Gonna try the same thing later with NFSU2, but for now, I've got some
Toca'ing to do.


H