9800 PRO Freezes System

[Bigg]

I have a 9800 PRO from ATI with 256MB DDR RAM. When I play Battlefield 2 at the Lowest Settings, AA OFF, 800x600 Resolution, it crashes my system.

I can play America's Army or Ride of Nations with no problems. I don't see any artifcating ineither of those games. Heck, I don't even see artifacting in BF2... it just freezes. My screen will freeze in game, and I will see a bunch of squiggly lines on screen and my system will eventually reboot. It it reboots on it's own, it will reboot to a huge 800x600 resolution which I will need to reset in Windows. If I hit reset it will reboot Windows in my default 1680x1050 resolution.

I have the latest Omega drivers installed and I am running at stock speeds. I went itno my case yesterday and reorganized some compoenents to increase air flow. I also installed a PCI Slot Exhaust Fan under the 9800 PRO. My system temps are 44C for my AMD 64 3500 and 24C on the motherboard. I don't have a temp sensor on the 9800 PRO.

It doesn't lock up while playing America's Army, though I realize BF2 is more GPU intensive. But my score in 3dMark03 is about 6500, which is normal for the 9800 PRO. How can the card be fried then?

My dilemma is that I have tried everything to get this thing to not lock up. I don't believe it's a driver issue or game issue. I have almost given up and decided to purchase a 6600GT for $170. But i'd rather wait for the next gen cards before upgrading.

Any suggestions? I don't know how it can be overheatiing in BF2 only. My temp [s go up a bit while playing, but only by 4-5 degrees at most.

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[Killrose]

Make sure fast-writes is off in your motherboard bios. Also check AGP apurture size. I think the Omega drivers do not allow you to turn fast-write on, but make sure they are not enabled ther too.

And how do you know it is the video card crashing the systems? Could be a sound card or anything else, bad mem, flakey PSU, ect.

 

[Bigg]

The power supply is a brand new Thermaltake 480W. The entire system is brand new. Just built it 2 weeks ago. The only component that was old was the Audigy 1 Gamer. I yanked that out and switched to onboard sound.

I think my problem was partially heat, but I've done plenty to rectify that. What I did now was, as you said, turned Fast Wriite off again (it didn't work before so I turned it back on a few days ago). But I also enabled Refresh Lock for 800x600 @60Mhz in my ATI Tray Tools that came with the Omega drivers. I also set my desktop to 800x600 before playing BF2 and I played about an hour with out crashing. It seems to have helped. I crashed.. but the crashes were different and not as severe.

I'll psot back.

 

[Bigg]

OK. I played Swat 4 with settings on High for an hour yesterday and didn't get a system lock-up. I played America's Army with all settings at Highest for an hour and a half yesterday and didn't lock up.

I'm convinced BF2 has some sort of memory or texture leake or something.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

your playing an EA game remember....anything can happen

they have this magic ability to produce totally random crap, that cant be repeated on other peoples computers....id say theres nothing wrong with your system (though yes you will be better off with Fast Writes turned OFF in the bios) this is just EA being themselves

i would try OFFICIAL Ati drivers though....definately gave them ago, and if u want to overclock, just use ATI tool

i do like the Omega drivers and i think he does a great job, but he doesnt seem to update enough, ive since moved to using official Ati drivers and ATi tool...and have had no problems since

 

[Killrose]

Remember also that this is a nVidia "The way its ment to be played game" game, and the demo was packaged with a beta driver for nVidia cards. It also is a memory hog, and likes to have 1.5gig-2gig system mem if you crank visuals up.

You could try another Ati driver and/or ask around this and other Forums to see what ati users with a system like yours are using.

 

[Munky]

I'd definitely try official ati drivers - but not necessarily the latest ones. I just installed 5.6 cats and now in some games I get pretty bad tearing when vsync is off. The older 5.3 cats never gave me such problems.