I will now insert the typical nVidia fanboy taunt...... eh, maybe not. I don't wish this kind of problem on anybody, even if they don't have my favorite video card manufacturer's equipment. Keep at it. You've already found people with comparable equipment running SH4 well. Don't give up.

try getting your drives from the manufacturer and doing an update....that's the only thing

I think Catalyst is still a little wonky for the 4800 series, I got a 4850 with the 1 GB and the darn control center won't anti alias half the time, even when I restart and click the button that tells CCC to handle it...(otherwise I can't use AA with SH4!! :damn:)

it's ironic now that my dual core can't shove commands fast enough to the new card, so my frames aren't that much better, but I can now run AA without much problem...hooray! and when I turn on "mat_queue" mode in TF2 (tells my CPU to use both cores) I get 35 FPS to about 45-50+ now with settings maxed....

If the system was overheating wouldn't it shut down instead of just crash to desktop?
If thats not the case, why don't you put a thermometer in your Case and see if temperatures spike during playing.

refresh rate
 

I too had computer crashing problems, as I had a decent computer with a good video gaming card. Someone suggested I reduce the refresh rate on the windows display. That did the trick!! Other than that suggestion, I am a computer illiterate but I wish you luck. I gave SH4 to my young nephew and it crashed his machine, so you are not alone.

Don't forget to allow DirectX 9 install when you install SH4. Sounds dumb but its needs it.

my 2cents

btw anybody ever had problems with Catalyst not Anti aliasing etc. and fixed it??

it seems to work sometimes and others not for no really good reason...is it a setting of windows or??

It does? Well I haven't tried that yet. Didnt even know it was possible to have DX9 and DX10 installed. I will give that a try, tho the XP64 installation has DX9, dunno what version tho. Maybe it works if I allow SH4 to install it's DX.:)I've always had Nvidia cards up until now.I won't... I'm gonna be really sick if I can't get this to work considering the upcoming GWX4. I use coretemp or something, displays my core's temperatures in my tray. The CPU remains very cool even under heavy loads. I really wonder how far that Asus Triton is gonna take me once I start overclocking :pI think I have that installed in the XP64 install. I'll check it out.Me neither.
But:
I've got about 475 fps now when rendering 'just waves and sky' (or: when no ships are in view)
425 - single ship
about 375 in the interior, according to SH3's build-in fps function.

This is in SH3 / Full AA / Full Anisotropic / Full Everything / High Quality everything @ 1024x768 in SH3/GWX3. Looks nice. Very smooth indeed.

Anyway, thank you all. Perhaps the DX9 suggestion does the trick.

Yes, load DX9! 64 bit Vista will run your DX9. Your vid card will run DX9. Both DX9 and 10 will work on systems set up for DX10.

The problems you're having sound really weird, but also quite similar to what I was experiencing with my two Radeon x1950 Pros on Windows XP 32 bit. They were running really hot, and after a few hours I'd get rainbow colors and all kinds of weird anomalies. I'm not exactly sure what was the final cure, but here's what I did:

1)Added an extra fan to the case and removed all dust from the components and fans. This had a huge effect on the GPUs' temperatures.
2)Got a new PSU. The old one failed completely, and made a nice POOOF! sound with smoke effects in the process.
3)Installed new Catalyst drivers as they kept coming. I've also been using Ati Tray tools instead of CCC all along.
4)Followed the advice in this thread: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=217673

At this point I was able to run SH4 pretty well without practically any crashes or glitches, but it would still sometimes stutter and be strangely slow. One final thing which really made a difference was Windows 7 beta 64 bit. With it SH4 is extremely smooth and stable, much much better than before.

Here's a good PSU calculator, which might help you to rule out that PSU as the origin of problems: http://extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine

This is a long shot but.......I got a new monitor a couple weeks back and after hooking it up, setting resolutions and fiddling with some of the settings until I was finally happy with the desktop view. Now I was ready to try this new puppy out on SH4. Well, when the game finished loading, the screen looked as you described, kinda like two screens with a very fast studder, fast studder like a strobe light. I thought "what the hell?"....I tried different settings, rebooting and nothing worked until.....When loading the game and the studder started, I simply turned the monitor off and then on again and viola, all was well! I still don't know what the deal was and it still does this occasionally and not just with SH4, it does it with some other games as well. It seems like you have tried the obvious solutions without success, so give this a shot and see what happens.

SH4 use to studder and do funny graphical things after I played it for about 10-15 mins or so.

I happened to notice the GPU was getting ouchey hot. I cut a big whole in the case and installed a couple 120mm fans and the studdering stopped and the GPU is no longer feverish.

Fincuan wrote...
I have a Diamond Radeon HD 3850/512MB GPU which I am mostly happy with but I would be interested in what settings you tweaked and how that impacted the game? I am using the CCC although I did download the ATI Tray tools but I haven't used them as of yet. I had the impression(mistakenly?) that they were mostly for overclockers and so far I haven't felt the need to try OCing my machine.
My system: DFI lANPARTY P35 T2RS MB with an Intel Xeon E3110 CPU@3GHz ( FSB 1333MHz), 2 gigs Corsair XMS2 DDR2SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400), DIAMOND Viper Radeon HD 3850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 (Built-in HDMI with Multi-channel 5.1 surround audio) , 2 WD sata HDs 10,000rpm & 7200rpm, a Corsair 650W PSU and a used Lian Li case. I built this system myself almost a year ago for $7-800.

Urge

Ati Tray Tools is not only for overclockers, but a tool with plenty of features. I use it as a replacement for Catayst Control Center, with different profiles for different games. The main differences are that ATT uses less memory and has lots of more options than CCC, but you can certainly do just fine with only ATT or CCC. You should not run both at the same time, although you can have both installed.

What comes to that tweak thread, I did precisely what they recommend you to do. It might have resulted in a slight frame-rate improvement and a more stable system, but I'm not sure. What I did was to adjust a setting, start up Armed Assault and see if it made a difference. I did this for each of the tweaks, and concluded that at least none of them lowered my rig's gaming performance. Everything runs pretty well without any stability problems whatsoever. Here's the same information in an easier to read form: http://www.tweakguides.com/ATICAT_10.html

is direct x 10 an edvantidge in this game ?

No idea, but as I wrote above it runs absolutely great on a 64bit Win 7 beta, which has DirectX 11 installed by default :up: