Game screen fragments after 5 minutes

[scooter]

Game screen starts to fragment after 5 minutes of game play and gets worse. After restarting the game and starting over there are small pixelated white dots that flicker, then eventually the screen fragments.

Steps I've done to diagnose this problem.
-set all video settings to bare minimum
-set resolution to 1024x768
-fully deleted old display drivers and installed upto date drivers before installing the game
-tried installing Catalyst 6.5 drivers without success.



http://img155.imageshack.us/my.php?image=arretium061007192251nh3.jpg

[imhotep3147]

Looking at your dxdiag, nothing immediately jumps out....in fact, given your specs you shouldn't be having problems from what I can tell. I'm sure someone will chime in that your audio drivers are old and need updating but that really has nothing to do with your problem. Why didn't the 6.5 driver install properly? Did you get an error when trying to install?

[scooter]

Looking at your dxdiag, nothing immediately jumps out....in fact, given your specs you shouldn't be having problems from what I can tell. I'm sure someone will chime in that your audio drivers are old and need updating but that really has nothing to do with your problem. Why didn't the 6.5 driver install properly? Did you get an error when trying to install?

Same fragmentation occured.

[imhotep3147]

Ah...well....then...hmm. What's your minitor's display settings? Perhaps monitor and ingame settings aren't agreeing? Hopefully one of the waaayyy more technically minded will pop in any moment now? :D

EDIT: @PHIL....I think he's saying is that he installed the 6.5 but he still had the same graphical problem. In which case, I can't think of much else that could be causing the problem.:(

[Keith]

Scooter, you and I are running nearly identical setups. We both have the same CPU 3Ghz, same RAM, same video card with the same amount of video RAM, and the very same monitor.

What happens when you try to install 6.5?

I am running 6.5 here without problems on my setup. The fact that the install of 6.5 on your system seems odd. You may want to contact ATI on how to remove the current driver fully and for help on getting 6.5 installed.

You may even be able to use that copy of Driver Cleaner Manni mentions all the time to clean out your old drivers before you attempt to reinstall 6.5

I think your problem lies with the fact that you are running 6.9. There have been problems reported by ATI users that have it and reverting a 6.5 or other earlier drivers have seemed to fix many problems.

That picture reminds me of a problem I used to have with Nascar Racing with my old ATI card before I updated the drivers.

[imhotep3147]

In this thread : http://www.tiltedmill.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10644

Jacqou Le (I think that's how he spells it...) mentions using the Catalyst 6.2 with his 9800pro as the newer ones wouldn't work properly. Have you tried these scooter? Might be worth a shot.

[mouse]

Ok you need to roll the drivers back and it may take a bit of tinkering to find the one that works for your system. A couple of other possible causes come to mind: 1. that the fan on the video card is dirty causing it to overheat, 2. the power supply is getting weak and not providing enough power 3. the card is sharing it's power plug with another piece of hardware thus not getting enough power 4. the video card is failing. Since you had the same problem with two different versions of drivers those are the things that would cause a hardware problem. C-IV does put a heavy load on video cards so any physical weakness will show up.

[Keith]

Scooter, ATI has instructions on how to manually remove your old drivers from your system follow those before you try anything else. These are found in any of the driver INSTALLATION INSTRUCTION links in the text above the download section for the driver files.

[Manni]

You have the Catalyst 6.9 installed, which does not work with a 9800 series card. Those drivers are too new for that particular card.


Sorry to disagree Phil

I am also running an ATI RADEON 9800XT WITH the installed Cat-version 6.9 (installed on 21st of Sept) and Caesar IV runs perfect.

[scooter]

edit: from the first original post, when i said I uninstalled the old drivers,
-i searched the both drives for "ati*" files and deleted them,
-then did the same in the registry
-ran "driver cleaner pro"

-repeated the above steps in safe mode so that all traces of the driver were removed from the system.

and in the last hour I have taken all my other drives out, inserted a seperate new clean HD i bought yesterday, installed just the operating system, then installed the game.

still having problems.

Yes I have installed the patch as well, and tried the game without the patch to see if that was a problem too.

[Keith]

But what driver did you use. While 6.9 does support the 9800 series cards, it's probably not the best choice given all the problems it seems to have with ATIs and Caesar IV.

Like I said you are running a nearly identical system to mine and 6.5 works like a champ for my Radeon 9800 Pro.

[Manni]

You are one of FEW who has been able to get the 6.9 to work on a 9800 and I've seen quite a few who haven't, so that WAS my premise. You know how to "tweak" your cards and systems where the normal "every day Joe" does not, so for those it is easier and better to stick with the 6.5 is my point.


Very true Phil! mouse is also recommending the 6.5 and it did have some better effort for some....there is no doubt about that. :)

I definitvly DO NOT tweak my card!

All is set on default in Control-Center (most knobs I wouldn`t dare touch! :eek:)

Pushing just gamma and lightness down a bit (and saving it) is no tweaking in my opinion.........:) :) :)

[scooter]

I used a 6.2 driver, a 6.5 driver, then back to 6.9 and have given up.

I'm heading out to go pick up a new system.

-ASUS P5WDG2-WS Pro ATX
-Sapphire Radeon X1950
-Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Dual Core Processor LGA775 Conroe 2.40GHZ
-2 x OCZ Special Ops PC2-5400 2GB 2X1GB
-OCZ GameXStream 600W ATX12V PSU
-2 x Samsung SyncMaster 225BW 22IN Widescreen LCD

crap like this gives me an excuse to shop for a new computer and expense it back to the company. :)


if this doesn't work, then DAMN>

[scooter]

I just installed a watercooler into my system, same specs and everything works now.

It was purely a vidcard overheating issue.