My shiney new video card is making me crazy
Hegelian:
Quote from: KellyQ on 2007 August 22, 14:36:39
I do have a few more questions though. I followed Hegelian's directions and poked around in the BIOS last night; what I found was puzzling to me. The graphics card is in an AGP slot but the BIOS was marked PCI instead of AGP/Board...I'm guessing had it been marked AGP/Board, then that's what I would have needed to disable? I guess I am confused as to why since it's an AGP slot would it be marked as PCI?
We're assuming you have on-board video, but you may not. The idea is to be sure to disable it if you have it. It should be labeled something like "on-board graphics" or "integrated graphics". I don't have a motherboard here with integrated graphics so I don't have any documentation handy to use as an example. If you tell us the model number of your PC, perhaps we can look in the user manual.
Without getting technical, suffice it to say that your motherboard will want to know whether your video card goes in a PCI slot on an AGP slot. It sounds like you need to change the setting to AGP if you have an AGP board installed. Selecting a current HP model with integrated graphics, I found this screen capture:
Here you can see the entry where you select the type of graphics controller you have. In this example, we know the machine has on-board video because of the entry for Onboard Video Memory Size. The first thing to try would be to change the Primary Video Adapter type to AGP to see if the memory settings go gray (for disabled). If not, we would then check for sections or tabs with labels such as PCI, PCI Devices, or I/O Devices to see if there is a setting specifically for disabling the on-board video.
In this screen we also see the entry for the AC97 on-board audio. If you do not have a separate, plug-in sound card like a Sound Blaster, then you need to keep this enabled, otherwise you can disable it. The Auto setting causes the motherboard to disable the on-board audio automatically if a sound card is detected, but it doesn't hurt to be extra-safe.
KellyQ:
So I thought that using the userstartup.cheat file with useshaders set to false had solved my problem but, no. So I looked around in the BIOS again and set the video settings to AGP/Board instead of PCI.
Game seemed to be running fine for the last few days, only problems being that when a walkby/NPC/carpool showed up, there was a momentary freeze. Fairly annoying because even my old FX5200 didn't do that but I could live with it since the game doesn't slow up at all when it rains or snows (very much unlike my old card).
Then last night when saving from a lot to the neighborhood screen, the monitor went blank and announced it was going to sleep. I rebooted the computer, started the game, went back to the lot and found I had lost all the gameplay I had for that lot.
This is my computer: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/product?lc=en&cc=us&docname=bph05529&dlc=en&product=447041&rule=1949&
I've looked through the manuals and FAQ but I'm not finding anything that is useful for me.
Any other ideas or do you think I should return the card and get some kind of ATI card instead?
jrd:
That BIOS setting (AGP vs PCI) just controls which slot is checked first for a videocard, it doesn't do anything else.
Stitches:
This may sound silly, but did you make sure you had a sufficiently rated power supply for the card you're using? And cooling?
Hegelian:
Quote from: KellyQ on 2007 August 27, 15:04:23
This is my computer: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/product?lc=en&cc=us&docname=bph05529&dlc=en&product=447041&rule=1949&
According to the motherboard specifications for this model (ASUS A7V8X-LA), your PC has on-board video. Make sure this is disabled. If one of the choices in the Primary Video Adapter setting is "onboard," then choosing AGP will disable the on-board video. If that is not one of the choices, you will need to look elsewhere. You should be able to download the user manual for this motherboard from the ASUS Web site (you may need to use the main Taiwan site rather than the US site); this will have a complete description of all the BIOS settings and where to find them. Note that manufacturers like HP often use custom BIOSes, so your Setup screens may not be exactly the same as those shown in the ASUS manual.
Then open Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel and uninstall any references you see to VIA UniChrome graphics or something similar.
EDIT: But do not uninstall the VIA chipset drivers!
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