Video Card Woes - Considering Options

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Allright, as some of you well know, I’ve been having trouble with blue-screen and other crashes in City of Heroes.

The tech support for the game has been unable, thus far, to help me resolve my problem, and I have my doubts that they will succeed - because last year, my computer suffered a power surge that severely impacted its functioning - I replaced the motherboard and CPU, and all was well - until City of Heroes.

I have the suspicion that the video or sound cards took a little damage from the surge, and as a result are sometimes overheating and causing errors. Supporting this theory is the greater frequency of crashes when the temperature in my place is higher than normal.

So, since I don’t have substitute sound or video cards to swap in that are CoH compatible, for testing, I am thinking I might order a new, relatively cheap Video Card, and see what impact, if any, it has on my performance. Good idea? Bad idea? Anyone have any other thoughts? More details will be forthcoming once I get home.

I’m thinking of ordering :

GeForce FX 5200 Ultra / 128MB / AGP 8X / VGA / DVI / TV Out / Video Card

I can get it for $90, I think.

I believe my current card is a GeForce 4600. All the fans (CPU, Video card, power supply) in the case appear operational. Sometimes the crashes occur outside of CoH, I noticed - I’ll come home and my WinXP box will be sitting at a login prompt, which is consistent with it getting the blue-screen, going through its memory-dump, and then rebooting itself.

90% of the time the bluescreen blames the nv4_disp display driver.

2

I have this card, and I am very happy with it. The 128 MB of DDR is nice indeed.

3

Thanks. I hope the place still has it in stock for that price… I don’t want to pay a lot for a new video card, when it could theoretically be almost any component of my computer apart from the CPU or mobo causing this.

4

Your 4600 is quite a bit faster than the 5200 Ultra, especially if it’s a 4600 Ti. The 4600’s are still a very nice card and it would be a shame to use a piece of crap (sorry catsix) like the 5200 as a replacement.

I would check your power supply and make sure that you’re getting proper voltages, and then reformat your XP to make sure your Nvidia Detonators (or Forceware or whatever they call their drivers now) are installed properly. If you don’t want to reformat, try manually uninstalling the drivers. Check here for more instructions, but I would suggest a format and reinstall before throwing away a decent card.

5

Y’know what? It’s a video card that does everything I’ve ever asked it to do, and it didn’t cost me more than the entire rest of the computer.

What makes it a piece of crap? That it’s not attached to a $500 price tag?

6

Really, now? Hmm… Interesting. I’ll be sure to post my exact card once I get back. The power supply was the first thing I replaced last year in an attempt to fix the problems I was having - so it’s fairly new. As it turns out, the change had no impact on the problem, so I still have the old one (which is probably okay) around. What’s an acceptable variance on the voltage?

When you say “Reformat your XP” - you don’t mean a hard-drive format. You can’t possibly. What do you mean?

As for the drivers, they are fully updated to the latest standard for both the Sound Card (last time I checked, anyway) and the Video card (as of two weeks ago) - and before installing the drivers this time, I used Driver Cleaner, at the CoH Techsupport Team’s recommendation.

7

Hey, if it does what you want, great! I’m happy for you. Myself, I’m a gamer and require more than what that card, or any card in that price range, can deliver.

As for a piece of crap comment, I retract it and apologize again. The 5200 does suit the needs of a certain type of userbase, so I can’t complain about it in that regard. However, I would never recommend one in a gaming system as in the case of the OP. There’s plenty of cards out there that cost just a few bucks more and better suited for gaming.

8

Maybe I’m not considered as serious a gamer as you are, but it seems to have no problem with World of Warcraft, UT2K4, or any of the games I play.

shrug

9

My apologies, it’s not a 4600, it’s a 4400 -

NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4400 (128 MB) - to be precise.

How does it compare, knowing that?

Still looking for answers to the other questions from my last post…

10

Sorry, I was a little distracted when I replied. I meant “reinstall XP”, and if you can do that without formatting your hard drive then do so. Before blaming hardware I usually like to make sure that software is not to blame, but your troubleshooting methods may vary.

I prefer +,-5% voltage tolerance for power supplies, although some people use +,- 10%. Here’s a nice page on power supply troubleshooting, as well as neat voltage chart. link .

11

I agree with Anonymous. Driver problems are definitely a possible culprit of the symptoms you describe, and a clean install of Windows XP followed by an install of the latest drivers is the best way to test (and fix) the problem.

Of course, it certainly wouldn’t hurt to first try the latest drivers on your current installation, after first uninstalling your current drivers (using both Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel) and display devices (using the Hardware Manager in My Computer/Properties) and rebooting.

12

Here’s a number of benchmarks for both of the cards in question.

One thing that the 5200 has going for it is that it can take advantage of DirectX 9 instructions, while the 4x00 series can not. I don’t know if CoH uses any DX9 graphics or not.

13

Well, one of their troubleshooting steps is always to verify I have the “latest” DirectX - but that may be from a script. Thanks for the benchmarks - looks like the 5200 Ultra would give me modest gains on the clock speeds.

When you folks say “clean install of Windows XP” - I hear “You have to reinstall every single program you have on there afterwards because it’s going to blank the registry.” Am I wrong about that?

Giraffe, I did clean off the Drivers to the best of my ability, in accordance with the tech support guys’ instructions, using the Driver Cleaner tool to get lingering traces, before installing the latest. No change.

On the Power Supply - I don’t own a multimeter. Haven’t used one since I switched from CpE to CS back in school. Is it possible for a device in a PC to be defective in such a way that it usually works, but sometimes puts extra demand on a power supply?

14

Don’t just look at the clock speeds when looking at video cards. Take a look at the benchmarks as they’re a better indicator in how the card will work in real life.

A clean install of XP means you will need to reinstall everything. In fact, consider it practice in case your hard drive borks some day and you need to reinstall anyways. If you take the time now to document what you have installed, make sure you have the installation CDs and CD-Keys, and have your data backed up, you’ll be much better off in the event of an emergency reinstallation.

Depending on your motherboard, you can check your power supply voltages in the BIOS when your PC first starts up. Depending on your power supply, voltage can vary depending on how much power your PC is using at the moment but the should give you a pretty good idea if your power supply is sick or not.

Good luck.

15

Yeah, the benchmarks do seem to tell a different story.

My voltages, the last time I checked, seemed okay. The CoH folks had me download, install, and run Everest Home Edition, which does a complete computer report. Including Voltages. Mine weren’t off by much.

I have an ASUS Mobo, can’t remember the make at the moment… AV7600, or AVS700, or some such. There’s an ‘AV’, and a couple of 0’s, and I think there’s a 7.

Oh, well. Looks like a reinstall is the way to go - as long as it doesn’t blank the hard drive, I guess I can deal with it… I guess I know what I’m doing Saturday.

16

I had serious crash/bluescreen issues with CoH a while back. I fought with all sorts of things, but it turned out to be my video card, which was overheating because the fan had broken.

If you’ve eliminated most other potential options for problems (and it sounds like you have), and if the crashes occur in video-intensive operations (like playing CoH, but not browsing web pages), then it most likely is the card and not the drivers. Drivers may be at fault, but your problem sounds like overheating – which is not a driver issue.

Swapping video cards is fairly easy (easier than reformatting your HD and reinstalling, at any rate), and if it doesn’t fix your problem, you can always return the new card.

So, I recommend a new card over more dinking with software. That said, which new card? That depends on what resolution you want to run your games at, your processor speed, and how much you want to pay.

Can you give a bit more info about what considerations you’re taking into account here? Is better framerate worth $20, for instance?

17

I was having thermal gremlins a while back, too. I could not determine whether it was the sound card, the motherboard, the PSU, or the graphics card, and the problems increased with heat. They were intermittent, unpredictable, and largely impossible to reproduce. I went to my BIOS and lowered my front-side bus speed from 150MHz to 133MHz and the problem went away – it turns out I had been unintentionally overclocking my system (the wrong combination of FSB x multiplier = 1.8GHz). I am still running at the same clock speed but my system is much more stable.

Because the OP noted a correlation to heat, I suggest dialling back the FSB to see if he notices a stability gain. Other troubleshooting steps that don’t require the purchase of new hardware include

  • open the case and ensure all fans are free of dust bunnies
  • remove, clean, and re-seat the RAM and graphics card
  • check your PSU’s label and ensure that it’s able to deliver ~15A current on the +12V rail

And before buying any new hardware I’d look into adding some large-diameter quiet fans to the case. I have a feeling some combination of these relatively cheap steps will solve your problem.

18

Thanks for the additional input. I’ve done some additional research on the problem - lots of folks have similar problems, caused by bad hard drive sectors in some cases, out of date Mobo drivers conflicted with nVidia’s memory use in others, BIOS settings in others.

When I get home, I’m going to check the hard disk for errors, and check my BIOS to see if fast-writes are disabled. I may try dialing down the AGP by a notch as well, and I’ll look into this front-side bus thing while I’m at it.
Failing all that, I’m going to try updating my mobo drivers again - I swear I did it once, but it looks like it didn’t take - and then reinstalling the sound and video card drivers.

And then it’s either the Win reinstall, or the substitute video card.

As far as Video cards go, I’m pretty happy with the 4400’s performance, when it works. I could readily spend $150 on a new card - if I were relatively certain that that would fix the problem.

19

Oh, and the fans are clean, the video card has been cleaned and reseated in an effort to treat this - didn’t try that with the RAM though.

20

If you do decide a videocard is the route you want to go, I would look at an ATI Radeon 9600 over the nVidia 5200. It’s about $80, but be sure you get a 128 bit version, not the 64 bit. An ATI Radeon 9600 Pro runs about $106.50 at NewEgg. The 5200 is a good, general purpose/light gaming card, but it is not for moderate/intense hi-res gaming. The ATI Radeon 9xxx series was generally superior to the nVidia GeForce 5xxx series in the same price range. The current generation cards (ATI Radeon Xx00 and nVidia GeForce 6x00) seem to have regained a status quo between the two. At a $100 price point, the ATI Radeon 9600 Pro is the best AGP card right now.

I’m using a nVidia Ti4200 128mb card, and it works beautifully. The Ti4400 was the next step up, and is a fine card (if it is working properly).

On the hardware side, you might try running your PC with the cover off, and visually inspecting all your fans, especially on the vidcard and CPU. Make sure the fan/heatsink on your videocard is still securely seated to the card. Does the Ti4x00 series need a separate power lead for the fan? I can’t remember off the top of my head, but if it doesn make sure it is plugged in. Did you use thermal paste between the heatsink and CPU when you reinstalled (don’t laugh - it’s been forgotten)? One other check would be to see if you have similar problems with other games.

Good luck