ATI Radeon videocard problems (probably)

[Kristian2]

hello all,

not so long ago I bought SHIII, but I have had trouble with it since. When I run the game it hangs shortly after loading, I tried several drivers for my videocard, an Ati Radeon 9600XT (my hardware fulfills the recommended specs), didn't resolve it or made it worse. In the best case the game works for about 10-15 minutes (or longer depending on the mission) with the Ati drivers that come with XP (SP1).
I haven't found an answer so far on another forum and the Ubisoft helpcenter hasn't provided an answer either. My best guess is that my videocard simply doesn't work with this game. Everything else, including a non-Ubisoft game, does work without problems (except MS Train Simulator which also stalls, and is a Ubisoft game as well).
I am thinking of buying a Radeon 9800Pro, or better perhaps an nvidia card (AGP 8x).
My question is does anyone know that this videocard (Radeon 9600) is giving trouble.

And anticipating on the 'Grey Wolves' mod, after I get this game running, is a videocard with 256MB a bit overkill compared to a mere 128 MB?

Thanks,
Kristian

[danlisa]

Before I got my X800Pro I was using a 128mb 9600 (bog standard) with GW. I did initially have problems like you described but I downloaded the ATI removal tool from ATI's website. Having completely removed the ATI installation I swapped to using Omega Drivers. These are less of a system hog.

The 9600 will struggle a little in ports & around convoys but it is playable even with a little AA/AF.

The 9600's also had a issue with using the correct AGP bios setting. IIRC I turned mine down from 128 to 64, with no further problems.

FYI, I picked up my X800pro from e-bay for £80 (GB) and run with full AA/AF with no slowdowns at all.

How much system RAM do you have? Also, these crashes can be caused by on board sound hardware acceleration. Open your sound properties and turn it right down.

Please post your complete rig.

SHIII ran on my late (motherboard broken) rig quite fine: AMD 3000+ @ 2.17 GHz, 1536 MB RAM, 9800Pro, DX 9.0c

[jasonsagert]

As GMUNO said, posting the specs of your rig will help with trouble shooting. The ATI 9000 family are suppose to be supported (as my game box says anyway).

Also, larger video ram doesn't = better performance. It depends on the "guts" of the card. There are some cards with 128 mb mem. that will out perform cards with 256 or even 512 mem. Do some research on the web before you buy. I hear that you can get some old agp 9800 cards for pretty cheap. And they'll run SH3 great.

Cheer,

J

[HunterICX]

:hmm:

ATI cards in my opinion are crappy, lots of problems, they fail to much for what I have been reading in the communities I have been before,

for example in BF2, after a certain patch of that game, one of the series of ATI stopped running the game or gave mayor graphic glitches (weird colors and stuff)
cant specify wich it was, but it was a card that was supported by the game (somewhere in the middle of the list). now the comunity was full of ''HELP ME'' threads about the same problem. they installed the latest drivers but it just didnt run the game. now the funny part is I have a m8 who has a Geforce FX5500 256 MB, now that Card is not on the list of supported vid card by BF2 because it misses something, but thanks to a small fix (a certain files that changes something in the BF2 graphic configuration) the game just run very good on Low/Med graphic setup.

so my story is, buy a good Geforce card, and no , a 256 MB card isnt overkill. the 256 mb cards are now very good and stable. the 512 in ohter hand is still in baby shoes and need more research. but thats the beauty of computer hardware, it never stops. I advice a good Geforce Serie 6 or 7 , those are very recomandable.

HunterICX

[Kristian2]

Thanks for all your answers.
My specs are b.t.w. P4 3GHz, Radeon 9600XT (128MB), 1G Ram.
The drivers I use that give the problems I described are the Omega drivers. The Ati Catalyst drivers don't work with this game at all and only the certified MS/Ati drivers work for around 15 minutes when I am lucky. I can't find anything wrong in my bios settings, and the videocard settings are standard. There seems to be no logic behind all this.

My last resort is buying a new videocard if I want to run those two games. I prefer to buy a used Radeon 9800 pro, but I can't take the risk with Ati this time and since nvidia also better supports Linux, I may go for the last one.
The card I may consider is a Geforce XFX VGA 7600GS 256Mb (around 120 euro). I am not sure if there is better value for money. This videocard will probably not be able to perform to the fullest with my CPU.

[HunterICX]

Originally Posted by Kristian2

Thanks for all your answers.
My specs are b.t.w. P4 3GHz, Radeon 9600XT (128MB), 1G Ram.
The drivers I use that give the problems I described are the Omega drivers. The Ati Catalyst drivers don't work with this game at all and only the certified MS/Ati drivers work for around 15 minutes when I am lucky. I can't find anything wrong in my bios settings, and the videocard settings are standard. There seems to be no logic behind all this.

My last resort is buying a new videocard if I want to run those two games. I prefer to buy a used Radeon 9800 pro, but I can't take the risk with Ati this time and since nvidia also better supports Linux, I may go for the last one.
The card I may consider is a Geforce XFX VGA 7600GS 256Mb (around 120 euro). I am not sure if there is better value for money. This videocard will probably not be able to perform to the fullest with my CPU.

Well, to get ultimate performance out of the system you should ask someone that knows about it (a good friend, or someone you can trust he knows it) maybe he suggests a different Nvidia card that would run good with the other hardware you have. because its better to have a good balanced computer then a computer that has a good graphic card performance but cant go on its maximum because the CPU cannot comply with it.

[Redwine]

Originally Posted by HunterICX

:hmm:

ATI cards in my opinion are crappy, lots of problems, they fail to much for what I have been reading in the communities I have been before, HunterICX

Agree with you initially i bought an ATI X800 PRO, i was enforced to return it back to store, it was curved as a banano, and make non good contact... they give me another one, an X800 XT PE, it was having troubles from the first day with SH3 and Lock-On, it make lot of big texture triangles and aberrations.

I changed lot of driver versions, from ATI and Omega and no way....

To solve it i was enforced to "Under-Clock" it, and uncheck "controlled by aplication" AA and AF boxes...

It is my last ATI card.... never again.

[crazypete]

Maybe we need to look at this another way. You said it runs for 10-15 minutes then bombs. That sounds like an overheating video card to me.

I am running a 9800 SE and playing SH3, I ran across a huge convoy in a storm and suddenly all the ship graphics went away. I could still see wakes but no ships. Then it bluescreened.

I rebooted and tried again. After 5 minutes, same thing.

I smelled something, opened my computer to find my video card basically smoking.

DANG

Switched the fan and added a casefan blowing across the top of the ATI and now it hums along just fine.

So try and open your case and put a desktop fan blasting right at the video card and see if it helps.

oh no...I cant make attachments! I have a lovely graphic of a burnt out video card!

[3Jane]

I run SHIII with GW mods through a Saphire Radeon 9800+ Pro with Omega drivers using the auto-overclocking and 1.50 Gb DDR. Apart from some drop in FPS around ports the game generaly runs fine. Others have sugested that oveheating may be a cause, my thoughts also. Depending on your budget of course I would definitely sugest trying Zalman AGP and CPU coolers. Also chipset coolers on the AGP card memory chips. http://www.zalman.co.kr/
My other specs: Asrock KV7VT4A Pro MB, Seagate Barracuda SATA HDD and AMD Sempron 3000+ cpu.