Freelancer crashing - VGA issues

Sun Oct 23, 2005 10:01 pm by KingNic

Evening all.

My Freelancer is crashing randomly, and has been ever since I installed it. It's now getting unbearable though - I can't even complete a mission without it crashing. It doesn't crash in the same spots - sometimes I can complete a mission and be flying back to base before it crashes, sometimes I will barely get out of the hanger before it crashes. The computer locks up and the screen goes black. After a while the ATI VPU recovery kicks in and the screen comes back on but there's no hardware processing and I need to restart.

I have the following specs:
Biostar 210P case + motherboard (NForce3)
AMD64 3400+
2GB DDR RAM
HiS 256mb Radeon x800XL w/Extra cooler
250GB SATA Hard Disk
Generic DVD drive
Windows XP professional w/Service Pack 2 & all updates.

Everything has up to date drivers.

I swear I had this problem the last time I had freelancer installed, but that was with my old machine - 2500+, 9800 pro, 512 DDR. I think it was something to do with the AGP slot speed or AGP Fast writing. I've set the AGP speed to 4x and turned of Fast writing but it's made little difference. I *think* it may be crashing less, but that's probably just wishful thinking.

The issue is NOT cooling. My computer does NOT crash during MUCH more graphically intensive games. My CPU is always under 45 degrees after the crash and my graphics card has a HUGE heatsink + fan that's factory fitted. There is no way that it's overheating.

I've tried the stickied suggestions for fixes for crashing but they have made no difference. It's clear that the issue is with the graphics card rather than sound because it's the VPU that's crashing.

I'm 99% sure that the issue isn't hardware related because the crash just does NOT happen in other games.

Tue Oct 25, 2005 1:44 am by zazie

Are you running on a clean install ? Or do you play mods ?

Tue Oct 25, 2005 4:12 pm by KingNic

Clean install.

I've started running Freelancer under compatibility mode for Windows 98 which has helped the problem, but not 100% corrected it. It still crashes after about an hour of gameplay, rather than a few minutes.

Tue Oct 25, 2005 5:21 pm by Hahukum Konn

Buddy of mine had an issue like this. It turned out that the heatsink compound under the heatsink for his ATI card was very poorly spread out, so the cooling was not very efficient. Once he put fresh heatsink compound on, the problem went away.

Wed Oct 26, 2005 12:06 am by Chips

What is your powersupply? I had this issue back when i used a 300w power supply. I upgraded to a 550watt, and all the problems disappeared.

The simple fact was that not enough power was being supplied on the 12v rail to my card... so when it didn't get enough power (as other items may drain it's power too, like HDD, CD's, DVD's, and whatever is connected to the 12v power connectors...) it froze and died.
Oh,and mine occured during RTW, but not HL2, CS:S, X2 or others. And in RTW I never played field combat either... which is where the drain comes in during that game... so it isn't necessarily an indicator if other games don't crash.

Seeing as you have the next step up in graphics cards, I would suggest that it maybe the problem if you didn't get a decent PSU with your comp.

Edited by - Chips on 10/26/2005 1:07:39 AM

Sat Oct 29, 2005 11:16 am by Amedeus

Chips is probably right ATI cards are notorious for a higher power draw from the PCI-E/AGP rail,so I stick to Nvidia cards, Minimum recommended PS for a 9800 is a 450W peak load Power Supply, but I would recommend at least a 500Watt

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