Having PC troubles.

id just like to note on what pascal said, up to date drivers are Not always the best solution. Nvidia cards use universal drivers across a family of cards, and often (due to the large amount of games to test), a driver set upgrade can turn a game that was working perfectly into one that wont run.

if it was bad memory or overheating you would see crashes/reboots anytime the system is up, Not just during ffxi play. Yes running a game can put extra heat/strain onto a video chipset, however, simply running windows (esp xp) you would see the same results.

what driver version are you running, and have you tried an older set?

~Syn
 
Synical said:
if it was bad memory or overheating you would see crashes/reboots anytime the system is up, Not just during ffxi play. Yes running a game can put extra heat/strain onto a video chipset, however, simply running windows (esp xp) you would see the same results.

what driver version are you running, and have you tried an older set?

~Syn
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Windows XP only uses about 1mb of your video card memory, if you have a floating bit at Meg 127, XP is going to run normal, but when you load a game that consumes 100% of your video memory your system to become unstable when it accesses the bad memory.

Windows also remains idle 90% of the time during general use, which is why you never see more than a single degree difference between idle temp and general use temp. Running a 100% load like when you are running a game can cause as much as a 20 degree jump on a 2 fan air cooled system. With 0 cooling in a system, the temp will go well above 200 degrees causing the GPU and CPU to crack. Typically an Intel CPU it will becomes unstable around 122-125F. You are not going to see theses kinds of results just running Windows XP.
 
Well, I tried something. I put the monitor cable into the stock on-board Video card thing, it won't let me even play FFXI, but the lil box thing was getting extreamly hot using it like my Gforce2 card. Could this be the monitor? It is really old 17" and its sometimes tricky to get the picture to come up on it when you start it up. :roll: Both Video cards get hot enough to burn your finger if you touch it long enough.
 
I played last night with the GF2 installed without incident. The game ran a tad sluggish at parts but was pretty stable. I did notice that just running windows seemed more crisp.

Oh and when I said the card was hot, I mean HOT! I have a small blister on my finger to prove it. :wink:

Soooo, Im gonna take the card back and exchange it for a different model. Anyone have any suggestions? What cards have you guys been using without incident?
 
Probably the biggest issue would be....

What games do you want to play in the near future, and whats your budget outlook like?

If you have a budget to pretty much buy what you like, that pretty much leaves only what kinda games you want to play in the near future.

If its only FFXI buy the cheapest middle ground card you can buy. Probably in the area of 100 bucks or less. If you do have a game in mind, well buy for that game. I try to not go into the $400 dollar cards since its probably cheaper to buy a newer cheaper card later on anyway.
 
Logxiix said:
I don't know what kind of kindergarten manuals your reading (no pun intended), but with a system such as what alanon has here, I'm pretty positive it won't have any bogus information and/or wrong settings.
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You got a point, I haven't read a manual in a long time. There's a good chance they've improved since then, but remembering that AT7-MAX2 Abit motherboard I had some time ago, the manual was just terrible. Poorly translated english, crap troubleshooting steps, redundant instructions... meh.

In this case however, Al's mobo manual likely wouldn't have details on what his CPU multiplier should be set at... unless they've started adding processor tables in them. I haven't bought a mobo in a couple years so I have no idea.
 
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