Instability with running Daoc on a P4 comp / Radeon 9800xt card

[Klonk]

I recently bought a new comp, specs are as follow:
- P4 3.0 ghz processor
- VIA Abit motherboard
- 1024 MB ram
- radeon 9800xt graphic card
- OS = MS XP

One should think this would be a nice setup (at least I thought so ) but I have some initial trouble. I have atm the following AGP controller:
- VIA Hyperion 4in1 version 451

and I am using the lastest ATI driver, Catalyst 4.7 iirc.

PROBLEM: when on Daoc (and especially when on TOA, when alt+tab'ing or when dual account running) I often have the BSOD, or get a "system error msg" or just a crash to desktop. The error messages I have been give suggested that either "game.dll" or "ati2dvag.dll" or "ati3duag.dll" were faulty somehow. I have tried reinstalling Daoc and graphic drivers.

QUESTION: if you have read so far; pls come with suggestions or help, what could be wrong? Am I using any wrong drivers, am I missing something? Thx in advance.

 

[Kalid]

Try turn of AA and AF. Also you could try downloading the 2.1 AA Full Version and install it.

Other than that install 4.5 or 4.6 (quite a few have problems with 4.7, 9800xt/pro and the R360core). If you decide to go this route make sure you use a driver cleaner before you install 4.5/6.

 

[Khale]

I would even go back to the 4.4 to get Dynamic Lighting working again in all games (they somehow seem to forgot to fix it in the next releases). Try turning off AGP Speed and Fast Write off cause they seem to have the biggest impact on instability here. I know they are supposed to be good but somehow they make me crash so much I rather keep em off and still run games fine on high resolutions with FSAA on.

 

[behatch]

i have crash's to desktop and it was a faulty graphics card it was a radeon 9800pro

 

[Klonk]

thx for input, stability has improved with catalyst 4.4 and disabling of Fast Write and AGP accelerator.. however, I am a tech noob when it comes to comps, so I need to ask for some more details:

- What is AA and AF, and where can I find it's settings?
- What is FSAA?

Thx.

 

[Kalid]

AA = Antialiasing:
In computer graphics, antialiasing is a software technique for diminishing jaggies - stairstep-like lines that should be smooth. Jaggies occur because the output device, the monitor or printer, doesn't have a high enough resolution to represent a smooth line. Antialiasing reduces the prominence of jaggies by surrounding the stairsteps with intermediate shades of gray (for gray-scaling devices) or color (for color devices). Although this reduces the jagged appearance of the lines, it also makes them fuzzier.

AF = Anisotropic Filtering:
is used to address a specific kind of texture artifact that occurs when a 3D surface is sloped relative to the view camera. more info @ http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1152380,00.asp

FSAA = Full Scene Antialiasing

All these settings shold be find under display settings/advanced

 

[Tesla Monkor]

Check against after today's patch to 1.69. This patch includes a fix to Daoc on XP, I think.

 

[Klonk]

Display settings/advanced only shows ATI Control Panel stuff, nothing about aliasing etc

 

[Herjulf]

You shouldnt have any problems if you are correctly setup.
I have a
xp3200
1gig ram
Asus A7n8 Deluxe mainboard
9800xt pro card

Make shure you do your driver setuping pref in this order:
Let windows XP handle IRQ adressing
Nforce/via drivers
Ati catalyst drivers
soundcard drivers
Install latest servicepacks from microsoft and all security fixes.
Install latest Direct-x 9 version.
hint make a "gaming" account on your system clean from all bitch crackwhore shit software you feel u may have use for, and make spyware sweeps often.
Finetune/tweak that account and remove visual effects and disable not nescessary services.
After which check that you run your AGP in x8 mode.
And if you used some old ram memories from the old computer os such make a RAMTEST, can take several hours.

These things most often ashure stability, i have null stability issues, never really had any that wasent due to background programs or bad drivers.

 

[dpolwarth]

Me too

I have a similar problem, though i don't get BSOD.

The computer just crashes back to the desktop at random without any kind of error. Ive even reinstalled windows and its made no difference.

Ive contact tech support but they just pissed all over me and laughed.

Id like to hear if anyone has any ideas on solving this. Personally, I think its just a bug in the software somewhere.

 

[Kalid]

Oh and make sure the refresh rate is at the highest value your monitor can handle and not the default 60mhz.

 

[Foopei]

these probs could also be insufficient wattage in the pc's PSU, especially with a 9800 card since they require additional power thru a 4-pin connector.

try disconnecting power to other devices that aren't necessary, like extra hard drives, optical drives, extra fans, etc. and see if that helps.

 

[Klonk]

Have reinstalled windows + daoc, checked RAM + HD, tried Omegadrivers instead of Catalyst, nothing seems to work. Will try the power trick tho.

Got another question: tried to install intel i865/875 chipset drivers, but got msg that "you need to install this on a supported OS/chipset" wtf?

 

[Kalid]

Got another question: tried to install intel i865/875 chipset drivers, but got msg that "you need to install this on a supported OS/chipset" wtf?

Kinda hard to know since you don't have said what mb you have, just a via abit. Try get updates for the via chipset tho

 

[Klonk]

Kinda hard to know since you don't have said what mb you have, just a via abit. Try get updates for the via chipset tho

VIA Abit VT7 - VT8273... tried latest chipset from VIA yesterday, no improvement. Also tried to unplug all unnecessary stuff that could draw power away from card, no improvement either.

 

[Kalid]

Tried disable the on-board sound?

You can also try lowering the AGP speed to 4x or 2x.
Try decrease/increase the AGP texture size too.

 

[Khale]

VIA... the reason why I picked a board with no VIA this time for my pc
Sometimes you had to install it in the right order with VIA drivers to make it all work proper.

And also try reinstalling DirectX after a new video driver. Sometimes it didn't work proper anymore when you installed a new video driver without redoing directx.

 

[Klonk]

thanks both, nice of you to give a damn

can't wait to get off work...

 

[SoulFly]

I'm pretty sure, that it's the 4.7 catalyst's.

Everyone complains about them :>

 

[Klonk]

I have tried 64mb AGP aperture size, trying 256mb now. Comp went a little better after reinstalling DirectX, but it still crashes. Yesterday I had one reboot and about 3 times where I crashed to desktop, with a notice of: "Camelot has experienced a problem, and needs to close".

Oh, and there was one time where Powerstrip crashed, saying something like "invalid adress 0004t00" and stuff...

Btw, soulfly, I have tried catalyst 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.4, and omegadrivers 4.7..

 

[Kalid]

Yesterday I had one reboot and about 3 times where I crashed to desktop, with a notice of: "Camelot has experienced a problem, and needs to close".

Oh, and there was one time where Powerstrip crashed, saying something like "invalid adress 0004t00" and stuff...

Those error logs might look giberish to you but they provide valuable data when fault seeking

 

[Snarks]

There is also possibilty that there is a problem on the mobo itself that isn't related to the gfx card but will produce the errors mentioned so far.

I had similar problems with my new comp and after much cursing and bashing my head I eventually discovered the mobo was generating a mem error.

I would suggest that you run memcheck, just search this tech forum for the link as i can't remember it at the moment.

Another method I used was to remove one of the mem sticks and see how it performed and swapped them around etc and this is how I discovered that it was my mobo at fault because it only crashed when both mem sticks were in place. You'll need a mobo that will support use of 1 mem stick and not require 2 to use this method though

 

[Klonk]

I disabled a floppy drive it said in bios that I had, while inside my cabinet there ain't one. Then I upped the voltage going out to my graphics card by one pip. Oh, and I swapped my RAM around also

Now it's a lot better, only had one "crash" in 3 days playing.. mb I should check which of the three changes made my comp work again

Oh, and my 4 memory slots on my motherboard (VT7 Abit - VT8237 iirc) 2 of them are dark blue/black, and 2 are light blue. Does anyone know the difference? I have tried the online manual, nothing on it there

 

[Honza]

Got another question: tried to install intel i865/875 chipset drivers, but got msg that "you need to install this on a supported OS/chipset" wtf?

Windows XP have included drivers for i865/875 chipset so drivers are not needed. Although you may want to install Intel Application Accelerator, which optimizes Southbridge-CPU datastream (and makes ur PC running faster)... Don't panic when first Windows start after installing IAA takes incredibly long, it's normal.

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

Considering DAoC+ATI
Best described like Italian marriage (sorry Italians ;-)). When you do exactly what is 110% predicted (= playing game), everything is ok. When you do something unordinary (like switching tasks using alttab), ATI catalyst drivers are very probably the black sheep to blame (card itself prolly not, just the drivers could use some babysitting yet imho).

IMHO, power source should not be a problem. I have P4 HT (very uberclocked high above 3,6 GHz), nVidia FX5900 card, Asus mobo with I875 chipset, TV card etc etc, 300W power source is more than capable of handling it. But if you have any doubt, best way how to check if you have enough power is to install TV to your TV-OUT on graphic card. If the TV screen seems unstable (pulsing with size or unable to zoom over whole TV screen etc.), you are low on power. If it sits perfect, you have power enough.

BTW FSAA= full screen anti aliasing (I am not sure how exactly ATI 9800 does their FSAA, but generally it's process where you take sharp edges looking unnaturaly and smoothen them (like if you took plane and planed it abit). With FSAA you can get picture looking much more natural (stops pixelizing sharp edges) and naturaly all shapes look more rounded.

2 coloured memory slots = means you can run your memories in pair - they work in 'interlaced' mode and are almost 2 times faster than they would be working on solo mode. Although not all mobos are capable of handling all paired RAM modules. Also, not all memory modules are pair-able. To be 100% sure about pair-ability of your RAM, you need special series RAMs manufacturer tested for twin mode... for example Corsair TWINX series (although I work 'normal' 2-2-3-2 timing corsairs in dual mode without any problem). So, check in your BIOS you have dual mode turned off.
(This all presumes you have DDR-RAM memory, not RDRAM; if you had RDRam, computer would not start up if you sticked ram modules in not corresponding slot pair)

 

[Bonn3]

hi! i have sort of the same problem.. i have a ATI radeon 8500 and i can play DAoC for about 10 min to 2h before it freezes.. first it freezes like 3 times and then it starts working again.. but then.. it freezes again and it crashes to the desktop and it says something about the graphics card doesnt obey the commands or something.. im getting really tired of this.. please help me!!

 

[Bonn3]

and i am not really good with updates and so.. so i wonder.. where can I get an older update?

 

[Kalid]

little further down on ATis driver page

http://www.ati.com/support/products/radeonwinxppreviousdrivers.html

 

[Bonn3]

ok thx! =D

 

[Fana]

I also built new comp a few days ago, with an Abit AI7 as base. It kept crashing and rebooting and beeing very unstable in daoc, could barely play 10 min without some error. Tried all sorts of drivers etc but nothing helped, and i got nice scores in 3dmark etc so didnt think any of the hardware was broken. Then it was suggested to me on Abits forum that Abit motherboards are very particular about what brands and quality of ram that they like - i switched to some better quality branded ram (had used cheap original ram) and just like that, all daoc problems gone. At least so far. Have run daoc some 6 hours today and not a single error.
So maybe its your memory that isnt fully compatible with the motherboard/daoc.

 

[Klonk]

Thx for tip - hope you are not correct Cuz 1 gig of high qual RAM is not what my bugdet needs atm