Frustrated to tears with CTDs

[floundericiousWA]

Thanks for all the replies, everyone...let me address each:

Hmmm
IIRC doesnt the 7300 only have 128mb onboard and takes the rest from the RAM ?

Still should be enough GPU power to run the game though
If it ran ok before and not now then something has happened in between
Windows updates ?

I'm not sure about the NVIDIA card... I DID notice that, while running, when I tabbed out and checked the task manager, the sh3.exe was consuming around 500MB of memory and that physical mem was at around 8xxMB/1024MB

I've had this problem too, on my previous PC.
It can be either faulty RAM, HD, or GPU.
I would check the RAM first...take it out, and re-insert it...and make sure you're grounded, before touching the RAM-stick(-s).

Holy crap-charges, batman, I hope not... I'll certainly bump the RAM, when I do I'll take a look and see if there are any problems with the contacts and mountings.

Hum I hate to suggest this, but it almost sounds like the Vcard is packing its bags for a trip south. Any other graphic-intensive game give you any problems?

Not really...the "modern" games I've given a whirl on this include Battle for Middle Earth I and II, Empire at War, SW: KOTOR and KOTOR II

None of those have given me graphics crashes except BFMEII, which was obviously a "your computer is to damn slow to run this with as many graphical options selected" issue..

I've also recently had a problem with TES3: Morrowind freezing while running...

high there flounder'

have you done any 'saving game' under water - this knackeres things up, i can speak from personal experience !!

definatlley step up to 2gigs for your memory - about 25 - 35 quid, when you can afford it.

it could be that the dual core is struggling. if it is 1.8 per core it will probably only be using the one - not both at 3.6 ( ?? )

is it vista or xp - i've heard of people struggling with sh3 and vista. posts and threads are here at this forum.

other things that could help: disable anti virus and internet connection, you can turn them on again after. turn down the special effects - particle density ??

if there is a send error report note down what it says: not the whole thing just the sh3.exe stuff at the begining. some of the crew here will be able to help you with that.

as far as throwing the '....ing thing away' back-off for a while. gather your momentum ( ?? ) again and come back to it. for once you have it running smoothly with GWX and it's got its hooks in to you, it will be being depth charged, rammed, lost, missed torpedos, faulty sabotagued machinery that will drive you insane, whilling away the hours roming the empty sea for days and days will drive you nuts.

back atcha! My U-4 is feared throughout the north sea! muwhahahaha

well...at least until I've shot all 5 torpedoes, then seagulls dive bomb me with impunity :rotfl:

Mem - check, it's next on the list

I do deactivate (including the background monitoring stuff) the Trend Micro Anti-Spyware software and internet, just in case... I also kill the Ipodservice.exe and ituneshelper.exe tasks...

I've had the problem with particles turned way down, and high qual textures turned off... so I'm almost thinking the problem is with the computer hardware...maybe running out of memory so the program runs off a cliff, so to speak...

I'll try it again and post the "error report output" (for just the sh3.exe portion) when I get it...