...... before I go shit crazy
 

ok.... as many folk know my pc went shit crazy a bit back. i've had one of those 'when it rains it pours' times.

my os went nuts..... $200 for win xp. ethernet card died.... $20... christmas night one of my 80 gig hds died..... $210. .

now i load up FFXI..... i'm fine unti time to make a character when suddenly the screen goes black and then it is as if the game was never began.

again...... the setups, menus, movies..... everything plays flawlessly. the game itself starts. crash. also I got Battlefield 1942 with the same results.

not one other programs fucks up.

I have a Radeon 7000 card..... if I need a new one i will be broke but i can handle it. i will not handle anymore fuck ups. advice?

..... is there any fuckin way a $200 or less can handle Doom 3?

i don't understand graphics cars....

Get a GeForce FX 5900. It's the best card out right now for under $200. Do not get the FX 5900 SE; it's...well, not good. And don't get the Ultra since they're well over $300. A Radeon 9800 will do good as well, but I couldn't find any for under $200.

There's a small problem in the video card market right now. The "budget" DirectX 9 cards have benchmarked decent in Doom 3, but play most of today's games (BF 1942, FFXI, UT2k3, Max Payne 2, etc.) at an unimpressive rate. On the other hand, the older DirectX 8 cards (GeForce 4 TI series) perform much better than the newer budget DX 9 cards in today's games, but don't do as well in Doom 3.

See my point? You need a card that will perform today's games good as well as future games that rely heavily on DirectX 9. I'd go for a GeForce FX 5900. If you want to spend more money, there's more powerful cards out there.

-Lasereth

ow my head!

:crazy:

oh yeah. i got me a amd anthlon 1.7 xp
1.4ghrz or whatever. 768 megs of ram

um mobo..... unsure of, i can find out if needed but it is pretty decent, or was... it has handled four hard drives flawlessly,

That is more then two dollars a gigabyte... that is insane! You got ripped.

Z, sounds like you had to reinstall everything.

go up to the radeon site and get the latest drivers for your video card. i have a radeon 7000 pci on this pc now and its a pretty decent card.

Yeah, install the drivers! I figured you had them installed. Not having the correct video drivers installed will cause odd events like the crashing to occur!

-Lasereth

uhhhhh guys. they are installed. i got them tonight...

i've thought of doing a complete reinstall... again

sigh.


keep giving me options!!

i've tried pcpitstop and my hd is fine... i justdunno

wouldn't i experience errors or slow down or something if it were graphicscard?

Holy shit that is an expensive copy of xp.....and damn an expensive hard drive...i sure hope that had a kick ass warranty on it......very possible your memory could be pooping out on you...

Check the fan on the vid card. I had the same problems with my GeForce 4 the past few days. Was playing Need for Speed Rice and th video would lock up after about 10-15 mins and I would have to reboot. I also started having lines scrolling horizontally. I took the card out and almost burned my fingerprints off. Fan wasn't working properly and cooling thus overheating the card. I blew out all the dust and spun the fan a few times with my fingers and reinstalled and havnt had anymore problems yet.

Update!

alright. last night i did a new driver install... and it didn't work a bit. today I sent my mom of with a dreaded Credit Card... I am not in debt cuz I avoid them, anyhow...... wal-mart sold out..... and i realized i had forgotten to redo directx....

downloaded directx 9 and it still wouldn't work. then what the hell... i searched again for drivers........ got the Catalyst drivers....... it worked!

i have the setting all the way up and it works flawlessly!:)

-bouncey!-

oh yeh. the 80 gig hd was only $100 about a year ago.

the $209 bit is for a new maxtor 250 gig :)

Just my two bits
 

I know that this thread pretty well solved itself, but I was having some pretty crazy problems with my server computer for the longest time, would only last a day or so without a reboot (it runs Linux, and typically had uptimes of over three months). So I started replacing all sorts of hardware, and it would still crash on me. Even replaced the powersupply. Until I realized, that I hadn't checked the thing that is easy to check and kills systems all of the time, ram.

In order to test your ram in your system, use a program called memtest, it comes as a bootable cd image, so just burn it and keep it around, let it run overnight on any system you are having problems with, and if it doesn't find any memory problems, you are almost guaranteed to be safe. Being a totally free program also helps to use it first before replacing a lot of stuff: http://www.memtest86.com

that is retail for XP Home, or XP pro upgrade.

Re: Just my two bits
 

i test my memory from simmtester.com. after i said that my ram failed some of those tests, crucial readily sent me a replacement.