grrrrr video/audio problems

[Chronoglass]

anyone have any ideas why a game would be jumpy.. and just that game?

I'm trying to get rid of this "jumpyness" in neverwinter nights

the game goes normal for a few seconds... then freezes for just long enough to be annoying (few miliseconds) then starts the cycle over again

here's what i'm running

amd 2700
512 ddr 400mhz ram
radeon 9000
80 gig 7200 rpm hd
xp pro sp1

the problem gets worse when I install newer ATI drivers, but no better when I use older ones (down to v3.5 at least)

Michelle is running an amd 2500 512 ddr 233 ram 40gb 7200 hd and a gf3 and not having any problems at all

it's pissing me off mucho.. and it only seems to be happening in NWN and Duke 3d that i've found thus far

I've tried over and underclocking the...
ram
video card memory
video card processor
and the AMD it's self

none of which made any difference what so ever



any ideas?

[Vandalous]

Try dialing down the detail in the game to the most basic and then scale up bit by bit. It's painfully slow but probably the solution. It really sounds like there's too much going on for your vid card to handle or even may be a VSync issue. Try rage3d.com and search their forums as there are tons of ATI users there and someone should have some insight for you. Good luck!

[Donnie_Doritos]

Maybe its some program in the backround? I know that SOFII, Ravenshield they start to chug up on my computer whenever Motherboard Monitor / Dumeter respectively are running

[Chronoglass]

I set everything at the lowest possible in NWN and still had it... set everything to the highest possible... still had it (no change at all)

sof
ravenshield
hell.. even bf1942 runs with only a slight version of the problem (not even noticeable unless I stare at something that's moving in a circle for a while propeller or the like)

nwn did at first, but somewhere it went wonkey

[Anasazi]

Did you try reinstalling NWN?

[Moddy]

What version of Direct X are you running? I was running 8b I think - went to 9 - it SUCKED - so I went back to 8 - and all was good. Not sure if it's due to the order in which I installed (driver, DX9) or if it's just one of those Windows Tendencies, but when I do a fresh install, I am gonna monkey around w/ it a little more.

[Chronoglass]

reformatted total last night... twice

hrm.. come to think of it... 9 might have had something to do with it... i think i'll give THAT a shot

[Vandalous]

I'm running DX9 on a Radeon9700 Pro and XP2400+ and have no stuttering whatsoever.

Gonna go Win3.1 on you and advise that you check your TSR's and clear em out with the msconfig utility. TSR = Terminal Stay Resident programs, which are basically proggys that run in the background. Try turning off all power-saving items and disabling the screen saver.

[Chronoglass]

what version of the video driver are you running?

[Chronoglass]

oh, and this is a fresh install of xp pro sp1

nothing else installed.. it acts exactly the same with the most current ATI drivers, as it did with NO ati drivers

[xwred1]

Hmmm.

NWN doesn't do that for me under Linux. Maybe you should switch out Winxp :P

[Chronoglass]

*shudder*

I am NOT going to try making it work under linux again!

[xwred1]

Well hey, are you patched to the latest version of NWN? They've had alot of patches.

Might also want to crawl over their forums.

[Chronoglass]

yup.. tried patched, and unpatched.. and a few inbetween, heh

but I think i may have finally figured it out

it's the exact same problem i was having with games in linux... the video memory isn't even being noticed.. I think it's just something shorting on my video card that has slowly but surely went dead

grrrr

I'm gonna kill me a man, it's got to be video related

oh well, been planning on upgrading it

here's what I did that helped it (not made it go away, just helped)

lowering the agp port to 1x helped some
then with that lowered putting all of the resoloutions to near nothing got me a bit further.. now it only stutters every 5 seconds instead of every 2

YAY!

where's my fucking clock tower

[xwred1]

That is real funky... if you really had no working video memory, Windows wouldn't even be able to work. Has your card been under any abuse? Maybe this is a good pretense to pick up a 9800.

[atsui]

<david not wanting to arse with GM's cookies>

not sure about goin that far just yet, I mean the 9800.. would be nice but can't afford it just yet.. thinkin a 9500 or so though is definetly in the picture

though for now decided what the hey.. I'm going to try these OMEGA ati drivers and see what happens

[Repairman Jack]

Originally posted by Girl_Monster
<david not wanting to arse with GM's cookies>

Very smart of you. I'll suggest something risky (to your health if it messes up her PC), but it will nail it down to the video card or something else very quickly.


Take out your card. Take out Michelle's card (be careful). Put her card in your PC, install the drivers and play NWN. If it works, it's likely the Radeon. Take out Michelle's card and put it back in her PC - pray it works or life will be hell for a while. Put the Radeon back in and re-install the drivers. Play NWN - if the problem returns it's definitely the video card.

If putting her card in your PC doesn't fix the problem, you are looking in the wrong place.

[Chronoglass]

yeah, I figured that was going to be the next step

until I tried messing with the directx diagnostic program

in nwn it's sound and video that "skips"

when testing it's the video

when playing with a few clock settings i did notice a difference

at some point (since payday is a long ways off) i'll prolly try the soundcard swap tho

[Chronoglass]

hrm.. well now I'm just perplexed

different video card - no change
different ram - no change

that basicly leaves two things if it's hardware.. hard-drive or mobo I think

am I missing anything painfully obvious?

[cove]

make sure fast write in turned on (the 1x 2x 4x 8x display properties tab) but I am sure you have already caught this one

I wonder if booting in safe mode, then try launching the game and testing, try that

In case there are TSR's, here is a list of the startup items (cool site) http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_pages/startup_full.htm

[Chronoglass]

with fast write it's turned on in cmos, but the control panel won't turn it on (hrm.. perhaps that has more to do with it than I thoughted)

[Repairman Jack]

Originally posted by ihateyoudavid
hrm.. well now I'm just perplexed

different video card - no change
different ram - no change

that basicly leaves two things if it's hardware.. hard-drive or mobo I think

am I missing anything painfully obvious?

BIOS, HD, Sound Card, CPU or MOBO

Not likely CPU, or you'd have problems with other games.

Same for HD

Possibly same for sound, but not necessarily. What kind of sound card are you using? Do you have a good one? If not, you and Michelle Monster can bring it over this weekend and we try it with my Live card.

That would really leave us with a BIOS and/or MOBO problem. I tend to think BIOS, just because a hard fault on the MOBO would probably affect everything and not just one game.

Sound card is where I'd look next; right after a quick run through of the BIOS settings. ;)

[Repairman Jack]

For the BIOS settings, I suggest you dumb down anything that is aggressive, and bring up anything that's conservative. Keep it middle of the road for now, particularly on the memory timings.

[Aksen]

Did you lower the direct 3d settings in the ATi control panel? Also, try taking a small extra hard drive and installing 98 on it... and see how the game works. That would help narrow things down maybe.

[Chronoglass]

I've lowered the bios settings to nil, and upped em to aggressive.. no change there

sound is onboard nforce 2 nvidia sound (tested seperatly none of the jumpy effects happen)

this stupid fastwrite thing is kinda getting to me though.. I've tried a few ways to change it and it stays at off.. even testing the videocard with ati's software sets it to on, then asks me to reboot... then when I reboot it goes to off

grrr

[Chronoglass]

woops

and I flashed the bios for the original version that came with the board, a middle version and the newest version.. same thing each time

[Repairman Jack]

Hmmm... Don't like that fastwrite issue. I hate to suggest it, but put Michelle's video card back in it and see if you can get fastwrite to work. It may be the Radeon has a problem that disables fastwrite and it stayed off when you tried her card.

[Anasazi]

I would suspect your problem is ATI. Take those cards out and use them for target practice.:sniper:

Have you tried updateing the bios and nforce drivers?

[Chronoglass]

hrm, that's a possability I didn't try with hers in.. hrm

can I dismantle both computers and test in 4 mins?

heh heh

I'll give that a shot tonight

anyone know of a way to override the stupid driver and force fastwrite?

I mean.. if that'll burn the vid card, well, I was planning on getting a new one anyway right?

lol

[Chronoglass]

Originally posted by Anasazi
I would suspect your problem is ATI. Take those cards out and use them for target practice.:sniper:

Have you tried updateing the bios and nforce drivers?

nearing that point

yup

and yup

[Aksen]

I'm tellin ya... try win98. Then you'll be able to tell if it's truly a hardware issue or if it's something with xp.

[Chronoglass]

well I have 1 more line on this, I saw a little feature on the Omega drivers that would let me stop the card from resetting to "default mode"

I can't remember if I tried messing with the fastwrite settings when I was playing with that (I was looking at the clock speeds)

then what the hell.. I may as well give it a shot

prolly be faster than building a clock tower

[Repairman Jack]

Installing Win 98 is a good idea. It can't hurt - much...

[Chronoglass]

still here, and still not working properly
from things I've read (not sure about directx9)
fastwrite is supposed to just speed up performance on high end games and the like...so I don't think it's causing it (even though it's being stupid wonkey)

I'm beginning to wonder if it's not my agp port that has somehow just "snapped"

see, I've stopped testing for it with NWN , because NWN seems to show the same symptoms as any directx test I do so I'm using the stupid white square in a black box test (it's being stuttery the same way)

Ran the gambit of drivers from Omega AND ati (no change)

I've run tests on my ram (passed all of them no issues)
on my video card (passed all of them no problem)
on my CPU (passed)
on my HD (passed all of em)
on my mobo (again, all of em easily)
sound (no problems)
cd drives (just checking.. yup, passed)

Checked for spyware/adware/crapware (clean)
used that list to check for "bloat" (none anymore)
changed every setting in my bios at least once (nada)
over clocked the card/port/ram/cpu
underclocked all of the above as well

Replaced the ram with ram from another system(no change)
replaced the vid card with one from another system(no change)

havn't installed win98 yet because I honestly don't have the inclination to find a disk to boot to dos again (I had a big issue with that a while ago.. heh)

grrr.. what in the hell would cause this stuttering?!

[Aksen]

try underclocking the system bus or something? I don't know much about this, but NForce2 boards are supposed to have problems with an overheated southbridge. It used to give me major problems with sound. However, if your problems are very regular (e.g. it stutters EXACTLY once every 1.5 seconds) then I'd say it's some sort of timing problem. Maybe software. Did you try running your monitor at 60 HZ? Not that that's much fun.. but see what happens. And sorry to mention it again, but I think the next step is to try 98. because then if you have the same problems, you KNOW it's (probably) not the software.

Do get around the boot issue, you can take a second hard drive and put it in your working winxp box, and then partition and format it as fat32 from within the computer (formats faster this way anyway, if I remember correctly). When you format, say "copy system files" or "create MSDOS boot disk". And then that should put dos on that hard drive, so you don't need an extra disk for booting.

[Sitting_Duck]

David, do you have Norton Ghost? If you have the drive space (I'd add a FAT32 partition to a big drive with Partition Magic), you could create a ghost image of the current drive, nuke it, install Win98, test it, and if that fails, then just replace the Win98 install with the image you created.

If you should decide to install Win98, you can get just about any boot disk at Bootdisk.com (http://www.bootdisk.com/).

[Chronoglass]

no nghost.. but I'm running off minimums here anyway after my last wipe and install, except about 90 various diagnostic programs.. ha ha

think I'm going to just have to try 98.. grrr

[Chronoglass]

it's the agp port on my mobo

using a non agp card (with no drivers installed) fixes it

[Chronoglass]

FUCKING FUCK FUCK

i started getting desperate for answers and decided maybe my cards bios needed some flashing.. messed that all up, but managed to fix it... well I have finally fixed the problem

and I have the good ol tablet to thank for my newfound working knowledge of flashing software, bios updates, ram com charges and a whole gambit/array of other niftay things

does the guy trying to reinvent the agp slot try and unplug his fucking USB devices?! ooohhhhh no, couldn'be be anything like THAT!

sitting at my desk I notice this orange light blinking just under one of the shelves... now what is that I say to myself.. I stare at it a moment.. and I realize the pattern that it is blinking in looks very familiar... well that could be because I had been staring at the directx diagnostic tool stuttering jut like it for the last frigging week!

somebody shoot me

usb = teh devil

[Repairman Jack]

That's very odd, but I've seen stranger things. What device was it plugged in to?

[fishmonger]

Originally posted by ihateyoudavid
amd 2700

There's your problem right there.

http://www.kirkendall.us/pics/go_intel.jpg (http://www.intel.com/products/desktop/processors/pentium4/index.htm?iid=ipp_desk+proc_p4ht&)

This post has been brought to you by my stock price any my need to goad Bullfrog! :poke:

[cove]

heh heh

I forgot to ask one of the most basic questions: Is there anything, besides the monitor, kb & mouse, plugged into your system.

:alien:

[Punl<]

Originally posted by cove
heh heh

I forgot to ask one of the most basic questions: Is there anything, besides the monitor, kb & mouse, plugged into your system.

:alien:

I doubt David's going to find that as amusing as you and other might LOL.

[Chronoglass]

yeah I find it amusing as fux0r now... now because it's fixed!

just wondering what version of my videocards bios I finally stopped flashing at... heh heh

it was my drawing tablet... apparently (by the yellow flashing light) it was trying to connect every coupla seconds... ha ha ha