Interesting Video card malfunction (i think)

[XPTB]

I was playing a game called X2, which is kinda graphics intensive. For a little background, X2 is a space sim where you can run the economy and have dogfights and stuff. I left it running while my factories earned money while I was at school the other day. When I came home it was lagging horribly. No problem, i just exited and restarted the computer, everything ran smooth again... except the game. Got back in and still lag city. Moved to another sector in the game, that had fewer ships roaming, it was fine.

Here's the deal, I then moved back to the heavy traffic sector and it started lagging horribly again. Since this never happened before I was worried that something happened to the game. I checked everything but I appears the graphics card isn't rendering the graphics right, which is causing serious lag. The clouds and stuff in the sectors look horrible and the stations look like polygons until you get really close. I did a fresh reinstall of the game and still no go. I'm wondering if I damaged my video card lol.

Edit: The graphics card is a Geforce FX 5700 Ultra overclocked... but not maxxed out. And yes I have the newest drivers.

[KryoNexus]

is your video card overclocked/overvolted?

[XPTB]

I edited my previous post, but yeah its overlocked, but not maxxed out. And the voltages are stock. My computer is also overclocked a touch, only 100 mhz. it appears that adjusting the graphics didn't help the game, i turned the resolution down, but it still won't draw the structures and render the clouds correctly

[T-shirt]

Is the problem only in this game? or everything?
Have you tried removing and reloading the graphics card?
It is possible you cooked something by leaving it running all day

[silenze]

Have you ran it with nothing overclocked? (And tried different display drivers..)

Tried clocking your card to default, uninstalling the nvidia display driver, rebooting, and reinstalling it?

[KryoNexus]

decent possibility you cooked it though.

[silenze]

Isn't he running a zalman cooler though? The core slowdown threshold is 140° C (shown in my drivers atleast)... or 284° F... I bet it would lockup long before that temperature (he would've come home to a frozen screen) then maybe continue to heat up.. and melt his machine... lol

Maybe.. a solder joint went sizzle or something.... *shrug* I'd try what I suggested when you have time. ^

[XPTB]

This is kinda interesting. I adjusted the graphics to absolutely nothing in the game.... 640x480 with all the special deals turned off.... still lagged in the heavy traffic sectors. Recently i tried a different save game and it hasn't been quite as bad. What im thinking is the ship i was flying in the problem save game has some texture loading problems that was slowing down the video card (?). Now that I have another ship, in this new save game, the lag isn't as bad, but still there. BTW, the difference in ships was a huge carrier that had the bridge on the back of the ship, so i had a view of the entire front of this thing, to a transport ship that has a nice front view, nothing in the way. Maybe its a ship thing.

I dunno when I'll have time to try that method you said silenze. Maybe some day.

Edit: Ok now it's lagging just as bad in the different save game. On the game forum, no one complains about this problem. Guess it's just me and my POS Nvidia. bastard has never seemed to want to work right.

[undergroundtech]

Replace it with an ATi graphics card :D

[Roadracer_4ever]

I've seen similar problems, but mine have usually been related to cpu heat, and not really the vid card itself. What are your system specs? Post temps as well, if possible.

[undergroundtech]

I'm running a 9800 Pro w/ OCZ aluminum ram sinks. I currently have the core speed at stock, due to the factory heat sink on the GPU feels a bit warm to the touch (I hope to water cool it soon).
I have the memory set at 380, though I've had it up to 400 with only an occasional pixel not getting rendered correctly.

[playafly187]

are there any patches for the game?

[silenze]

I'm running a 9800 Pro w/ OCZ aluminum ram sinks. I currently have the core speed at stock, due to the factory heat sink on the GPU feels a bit warm to the touch (I hope to water cool it soon).
I have the memory set at 380, though I've had it up to 400 with only an occasional pixel not getting rendered correctly.

blah... I'm running my NVIDIA core 110Mhz over default 24/7, and my ram 200Mhz effective over default 24/7 gaming with no ram sinks... goes as high as 975Mhz through benchmarks.... (700Mhz --> 900Mhz)...


If someone was having trouble with an ATI card and a videogame, I wouldn't immediately harp on them to move over to Nvidia.

[XPTB]

Stock cooler baby.... my AMD runs hot, so that could be the problem, around 50-55 in game. When I have time to switch it back to a better heat sink (yay heat sink reviews) i'll try this again.

[XPTB]

I guess it's just the game, even though no one else on the tech forum has this problem. I just ran the game benchmark and pulled an average 95 FPS.... ran aquamark and got a 34,000 with no overclock.

Oh well, another fun game put out to pasture.

[silenze]

34k in aquamark3? I'd say it's definitely the game then... http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20031229/vga-charts-12.html

5700 U on p4 3.2Ghz: 29,444

[XPTB]

After more testing of this game on another system, I realize that,yes, it is my system that sucks balls.

Ran a test on a computer with 2600 barton, 1 gig of ram, FX5200 video card all stock. Smooth as silk. I took over the save game of mine that lagged really bad and it ran without a glitch on his. Maybe the game is ram intensive, so I proceeded to install my g/f's ram into my computer to see what would happen. She has two sticks of 256mb in there but only 1 of them would work in my 64 bit system. With 768mb there still was no difference.

That leads me to believe that my system, with top of the line parts, just sucks nuts. Lets hear it for not knowing what the hell your doing.

[playafly187]

did you try removing all of your ram and just trying hers?

i never did hear back from you last night about this...

[XPTB]

yeah, but one stick wouldn't work.... said "DIMM timings mismatch - not supported" and then it said Fatal Error. so i guess the Samsung ram wouldn't work on the AMD 64 system. With only 256mb of ram i don't think i could tell anything different

[playafly187]

eh, in theory, it might not be enough.... but might as well try, eh?

[XPTB]

I dunno, the game requires 256mb minimum. So i doubt it would work. But anything is worth a shot.

[Roadracer_4ever]

Personal notes here. When I installed my XP2600, I'd also recently removed the board, and cleaned the chipset(active cooler on mine) as well as the gpu cooler and chip and re-applied AS5 thermal paste to everything. Prior to the install of the new cpu, I was running an old Palomino chip(=super hot) and dropped over-all temps dramatically. Temps now o/c'd to 2.3 Ghz(have hit 2.51 stable, but backed it off due to stock cooling) are currently at 45 degrees cpu and 27 system with folding@home running 24/7@100%, usually run winamp, or an online radio station as well while surfing. When gaming with fah turned off, I hit max temps of 47 degrees. With same said vid card and ram (1024Mb Infinien ddr333) I was pulling average temps of around 47 degrees idle and 58 degrees load with the old pal chip. It fell to a nice 38 degrees idle and 47 degrees load with nothing more than the AS5 added to the chipset, gpu and cpu.