Doom 3 nightmare

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Hello – can someone advise me please before I cut my throat…

I took up the offer of building a PC (intended as a Christmas present for
the daughter who was hell-bent on playing Doom 3 ) as suggested by Al Bickham
of PC Gamer. I went ahead and ordered all the parts as suggested by him from
aria.co.uk web site.

Of course Doom 3 would not even load, never mind play. I finally took it to
a PC repair shop and they rebuilt it and also added a better power supply.
The problem is this – I bought (as suggested by All Bickham) a 1 GB PC3200
DDR SDRAM memory stick at a cost of £90. The experts at the PC shop told me
that it was the greatest rubbish memory I could have bought to play Doom 3
with. Does this mean I have to buy expensive memory to get Doom 3 to play?
I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as bad quality memory!

Doom 3 now loads but is very unstable - the game can be played for a short
while then stops and goes back to the desk top. I downloaded direct X
version C from the Windows update site and also downloaded some graphic
drivers from ATI (graphics card web site) all to no avail.

If anyone could advise me on how to get Doom 3 to run on the PC I would be
most grateful – the PC’s specifications are:

Windows XP Home Edition (service pack 2 installed)
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB DDR AGP graphic card
80 GB Maxtor DiamondMax+9 133/7200 hard disk
1GB PC3200 DDR SDRAM (1 memory stick)
ABIT KV7 motherboard
AMD AthlonXP 3200 (2.20GHZ 400)OEM processor

Thank you – Karen Holz
 
Please visit the Gaming experts in the Games newsgroup:
news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.windowsxp.games

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User

Be Smart! Protect Your PC!
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/protect/default.aspx

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

:

| Hello – can someone advise me please before I cut my throat…
|
| I took up the offer of building a PC (intended as a Christmas present for
| the daughter who was hell-bent on playing Doom 3 ) as suggested by Al Bickham
| of PC Gamer. I went ahead and ordered all the parts as suggested by him from
| aria.co.uk web site.
|
| Of course Doom 3 would not even load, never mind play. I finally took it to
| a PC repair shop and they rebuilt it and also added a better power supply.
| The problem is this – I bought (as suggested by All Bickham) a 1 GB PC3200
| DDR SDRAM memory stick at a cost of £90. The experts at the PC shop told me
| that it was the greatest rubbish memory I could have bought to play Doom 3
| with. Does this mean I have to buy expensive memory to get Doom 3 to play?
| I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as bad quality memory!
|
| Doom 3 now loads but is very unstable - the game can be played for a short
| while then stops and goes back to the desk top. I downloaded direct X
| version C from the Windows update site and also downloaded some graphic
| drivers from ATI (graphics card web site) all to no avail.
|
| If anyone could advise me on how to get Doom 3 to run on the PC I would be
| most grateful – the PC’s specifications are:
|
| Windows XP Home Edition (service pack 2 installed)
| ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB DDR AGP graphic card
| 80 GB Maxtor DiamondMax+9 133/7200 hard disk
| 1GB PC3200 DDR SDRAM (1 memory stick)
| ABIT KV7 motherboard
| AMD AthlonXP 3200 (2.20GHZ 400)OEM processor
|
| Thank you – Karen Holz
 
One man's rubbish memory is another man's gold, so take both recommendations
with a grain of salt.

Download a memory tester and run it several passes...if it passes without
errors, don't worry about it.

http://www.memtest.org/

Crashes to the desktop are often related to old/outdated drivers--mostly
video, but you would be surprised how often audio drivers and chipset
drivers can cause you grief.

All can be found here:
http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/drivers.php?categories=1&model=125

Also, consider a bios update
(see link on above page)

While we're on the subject of BIOS, check within BIOS and see what you're
AGP aperature setting is--Doom3 likes AGP Aperature to be set to 64mb

I see you already did the videocard using stock ati drivers and usally
they're pretty good. Consider the ati omega drivers, which are more stable
for some people.
http://www.omegadrivers.net/

Heat is another reason....open the case and blow a fan at low speed across
to see if that clears up the problem---if it doesn't you atleast rule this
out.

Here's one that is specific to just you--the ATI 9800 pro is a great card,
but for some reason I have found that some games don't like the secondary
monitor. Disable it. I have no idea why this works, but I have had it yield
positive results in several games.

Set your desktop to a resolution of 800x600, 32 bit True Color before the
game starts

Close all running programs
 
Thank you for your help - much appreciate - I will try all the various
options - you never know, I might get it working by next Christmas :0)
 
Karen,

If this is Dual Channel DDR RAM you need another stick of memory. Dual
Channel RAM requires two chips to work properly. You do not have to buy
expensive memory to get Doom 3 to play. Any of the major memory dealers can
sell you perfectly good RAM for a reasonable rate. You paid about $125.00
for a stick of 1.0 GB RAM. That's a good deal! Just make sure it is from a
company like Crucial or Kingston. Your system should be able to handle Doom
3 with no problems at all.
 
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