9600xt lockups - Possible problem with Farcry?

[JetSetWilly]

Please forgive me, but I am a relative newbie to PC gaming although I
have been playing games for over 20 year now!

I have searched many groups and found numerous problems related to the
superb Farcry, and the ATI 9600xt. I have such a problem, where I get
continual lockups seemingly at any resolution with any choice of video
settings.

I have a Celeron 2.7Ghz (Yes, I know...), 768MB Ram, 9600xt 256MB, XP
SP2, DirectX 9.0b, Catalyst 4.9 drivers, and Farcry build 1256 (Patch
1.1).

I had a 9200SE, which was about as much use as an ashtray on a
motorbike, so I upgraded to the 9600xt about 6 weeks ago, which means
I have no old NVIDIA drivers on my machine. Doom3 runs perfectly well
at 1024 x 768 High, and Painkiller runs at 1600 x 1200 with everything
turned on. I have turned off the VPU recover, the AGP is set to 4x,
and the FastWrite is turned off. I am completely virus / spyware /
adware free, and have recently done a scandisk / defragmentation.

I think that is the lot! What else can I possibly try? Why do all of
my other games run like a dream and Farcry runs like a three-legged
dog?? There must be issues with Farcry, hence the 1.2 patch that
fleetingly appeared.

If I am barking up the wrong tree, please advise!!

 

[Dr Richard Cranium]

turn the shadows down.

install 9.0c

i think you should be able to maintain the agp 8x, fast writes - set these in and turn
shadows down
(shadows - in game config menu) - everything else should be able to go max, ultra.

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cheers,
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: Please forgive me, but I am a relative newbie to PC gaming although I
: have been playing games for over 20 year now!
:
: I have searched many groups and found numerous problems related to the
: superb Farcry, and the ATI 9600xt. I have such a problem, where I get
: continual lockups seemingly at any resolution with any choice of video
: settings.
:
: I have a Celeron 2.7Ghz (Yes, I know...), 768MB Ram, 9600xt 256MB, XP
: SP2, DirectX 9.0b, Catalyst 4.9 drivers, and Farcry build 1256 (Patch
: 1.1).
:
: I had a 9200SE, which was about as much use as an ashtray on a
: motorbike, so I upgraded to the 9600xt about 6 weeks ago, which means
: I have no old NVIDIA drivers on my machine. Doom3 runs perfectly well
: at 1024 x 768 High, and Painkiller runs at 1600 x 1200 with everything
: turned on. I have turned off the VPU recover, the AGP is set to 4x,
: and the FastWrite is turned off. I am completely virus / spyware /
: adware free, and have recently done a scandisk / defragmentation.
:
: I think that is the lot! What else can I possibly try? Why do all of
: my other games run like a dream and Farcry runs like a three-legged
: dog?? There must be issues with Farcry, hence the 1.2 patch that
: fleetingly appeared.
:
: If I am barking up the wrong tree, please advise!!




.................................................................
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[rms]

Try the 1.2 patch. Search for FarCryPatch12.exe

rms

 

[Wblane]

Doom3, "perfectly fine" at 1024x768 on a 9600Xt, I've got a 9800 Pro and it
sure as hell doesn't run "perfectly fine" at 1024x768, high detail, 2xAA, 8xAF.

Far Cry at 1024x768 can't be done on your video card, it's far too slow.

so I upgraded to the 9600xt about 6 weeks ago, which means
I have no old NVIDIA drivers on my machine. Doom3 runs perfectly well
at 1024 x 768 High, and Painkiller runs at 1600 x 1200 with everything
turned on. I have turned off the VPU recover, the AGP is set to 4x,
and the FastWrite is turned off. I am completely virus / spyware /
adware free, and have recently done a scandisk / defragmentation.

-Bill (remove "botizer" to reply via email)

 

[Blahguy]

I was thinking same thing about Doom3 ;-)
He could just mean it doesn't crash or lock up
His card is an XT though, so I don't see why he shouldn't be able to play
Far Cry at a reasonable resolution.
I was able to play at 1024*768 with everything turned up (AF not on full
though.) With AF off I did play through at 1280*1024, and it slowed
occasionally.
9800 pro AMD 2500.

 

[JetSetWilly]

Doom3, "perfectly fine" at 1024x768 on a 9600Xt, I've got a 9800 Pro and it
sure as hell doesn't run "perfectly fine" at 1024x768, high detail, 2xAA, 8xAF.

Far Cry at 1024x768 can't be done on your video card, it's far too slow.

Sorry?! I would imagine that my expectations of "perfectly fine" may
be lower than yours, seeing as though I am new to this PC gaming lark.
It was just a matter of opinion. Maybe my 256mb card allows more than
your 128mb 9800Pro? Sorry, but I wouldn't know the answer to that. All
I can say is that I have been playing at that resolution and I have
got to a bit where I have a choice of extending a bridge or going
another way. Maybe it gets more heated later on, and my card won't
cope?

I am only asking for help from you guys. Comments like that don't help
anybody, my friend.

Anyway, I thank the other 2 posts for their quick response and help,
and I will try them asap. I have a date with two barrels of real ale
this afternoon, and I don't want to be late...

 

[Blahguy]

(e-mail address removed) (Wblane) wrote in message



Sorry?! I would imagine that my expectations of "perfectly fine" may
be lower than yours, seeing as though I am new to this PC gaming lark.
It was just a matter of opinion. Maybe my 256mb card allows more than
your 128mb 9800Pro? Sorry, but I wouldn't know the answer to that. All
I can say is that I have been playing at that resolution and I have
got to a bit where I have a choice of extending a bridge or going
another way. Maybe it gets more heated later on, and my card won't
cope?

I am only asking for help from you guys. Comments like that don't help
anybody, my friend.

Anyway, I thank the other 2 posts for their quick response and help,
and I will try them asap. I have a date with two barrels of real ale
this afternoon, and I don't want to be late...

256 Mb only means you can use a higher quality textures, as the card can
hold bigger textures, it will stop "thrashing" (as it's called) where the
game will pause momentarily to load textures from system RAM, or disk cache.
It won't make your card outperform a faster gpu. It's like having a 2Ghz cpu
with 64Mb RAM vs a 2Ghz system with 128Mb RAM, load times will be faster,
but programs will perform the same till the load gets heavy and the hdd swap
file comes into use.
You don't list the rest of your system specs. It could always be a sound
problem.

 

[JetSetWilly]

Sorry that I haven't replied sooner, but I have tried a few things
over the past week or so, but to no avail.

I now find that my PC is freezing randomly - in Farcry, Painkiller,
but more worryingly when I am moving around on my desktop! At least I
now know it is nothing to do with Farcry.

If it helps, here is the original spec of my machine:
http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c00127599.pdf

The only changes to that spec is that I now have a Sapphire 9600xt and
a further 512mb ram.

I keep reading about power supply limitations in these forums. Is it
that my HP box can't take my new card, do you think?

With regards to my sound, I don't seem to be having any problems. My
device manager says that I have "Realtek AC'97 Audio", if that is any
help?

I now have DirectX 9.0c, and all diagnostics seem to run successfully.
I have completely uninstalled and reinstalled the Catalyst drivers,
but still no joy.

Can anyone please tell me of anything else I can try?

Many thanks in anticipation!

 

[Jon Cortelyou]

It could be a host of problems.

Could be bad RAM. (run only one DIMM if possible and see if you a freeze.)
Could be a bad video card. (put in your old card and see if get a freeze.)
Could be a bad motherboard.
Could be a virus or bad spyware.
Could be CPU temp is getting too high. Are your fans all working at proper
RPM?
Did your problems start after installing new drivers or hardware?

Is the box still under warranty? If so, send it in to HP with the old parts
in it.

 

[JetSetWilly]

Jeez, this PC gaming isn't easy, is it?

This may make your blood boil, but you can see why PS2s and XBOXes are
so popular for gamers - no crashing, no hardware compatability issues,
no 70mb SP2 downloads (lol).

Can anyone tell me if there are any utilities that can find possible
hardware problems i.e with my memory / motherboard / graphics card? I
have found that vendor support is very poor, as Ubisoft / Sapphire /
Ati either didn't have a clue or didn't even respond.

Again, I am relatively new to this PC gaming, but I have found that if
you look at other groups/forums that are MS related, MSCEs etc try to
help out. For example, the Excel forums are constantly interacted with
Microsoft personnel.

Why are the the Ati support people not being involved with this forum?
Is it not deemed professional? Do they not know that this is here,
perhaps? Do you think that if vendor support was good enough, these
forums would not be necessary?

 

[JetSetWilly]

OK, I have eliminated overheating and any possible memory problems.

The interesting thing now is that I finally had an error message to
send to Microsoft. The web link said that it couldn't determine
exactly what was wrong, but it brought up KB293078. It suggests that
my device driver is not working correctly. Could this be true?

I have uninstalled and reinstalled the Catalyst drivers for ver 4.8
and 4.9, but still no luck.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what else I can try? Please? Pretty
please?

 

[Pr4e7or]

Sorry that I haven't replied sooner, but I have tried a few things
over the past week or so, but to no avail.

I now find that my PC is freezing randomly - in Farcry, Painkiller,
but more worryingly when I am moving around on my desktop! At least I
now know it is nothing to do with Farcry.
*SNIP*
Can anyone please tell me of anything else I can try?

Many thanks in anticipation!

Hey,

My Asus radeon 9600XT card was freezing randomly also. It happened right
after upgrading from ATI CATALYST 4.5, 05/12/04. Every driver upgrade
since then resulted in my asus 9600xt card crashing in every game I
have. And believe me, I've tried every new driver

my specs:
athlon 64 3000
epox 8hda3+
asus radeon 9600xt
soundblaster audigy platinum
512 pc2700



Just so you know:

wxp-w2k-catalyst-8-01-040421a-015419c (ATI CATALYST 4.5, 05/12/04)

works stable for me. Dunno why yet tho. That's the reason I was taking a
look in this forum.

greetz,
pr4e7or

 

[JetSetWilly]

I finally gave in, and gave my PC to a local retailer to fix...

It turns out that my graphics card is shagged. The retailer run the
3DMark software on my PC and it crashed continually. After they
replaced the card with an identical card, it all worked fine. This is
the kind of testing that I just can't do at home, as I don't have
spare cards lying about the place lol.

All of this mucking about has made me get a new PC built, and I am
selling the old one to a work colleague. I have gone for a new
PCI-Express mobo, with one of the new 6600GT cards. It was very
difficult to source it here in the UK, and most of the vendors that I
asked for help from (Dabs, MicroDirect, and even Gainward direct) were
less than useless. In the end, I am having a Chaintech card in the
machine. I don't know much about Chaintech, but they have come
recommended, so we shall see.

I will post the 3DMark05 score for my new machine if anyone is
interested in these new cards. I am hoping to pick it up sometime this
week, fingers crossed.