Crashing With ATi Radeon 9800 Series

I have recently purchased Guild Wars and I wish to play it, but sadly, everytime I play it, the computer crashes to a black screen, after some lines appearing. The computer stays on, but, the graphics are non existant, and therefore I cannot operate the computer, leaving me no option but to turn it off.

My computer's specifications are:

Processor - Pentium 4 3.0GHz Processors
RAM - 1024Mb RAM
Hard Drive - 200Gb Hard Drive
Primary Screen - 19" Monitor (TFT)
Operating System - Windows XP Home Edition SP2
Graphics Card - 256MB ATi Radeon 9800 Pro Graphics
DVD Drive - NEC DVD RW ND 3500AG (DVD Rewriter)
DVD Drive - IDE DVD-ROM 16x (DVD-ROM Drive)

Can anyone help me?

Thanks in advance

Angus Higgins

That really shouldn't be happening. A 9800 can definitely run Guild Wars. I think your problem might be overheating. I can't think of one of the top of my head, but google a program that will tell you your computer temperatures, and post what temperature your processor and vid card are at under load, and idle.

majorgeeks.com has a lot of programs.

http://www.hmonitor.com/ that site has one


lol i'm at
Mainboard= 56.0c
cpu1= 42
cpu2=25
power=2163 rpm
cpu=845 rpm
fan3=0rpm
HDD1=44.oc

The 9800 has no probs with GW. That's what I have in the downstairs PC.

i have a 9200 and it has no problems with gw either, lol it might be somthing with his monitor or maybe somthing stupid, i don't know personally, (i play on high graphics with antil ailiasing on 4x)

get latest drivers, if that doesnt help iether dl a program that tells you ur temperature like they said above, if u dont want to download anything try and take one side of ur computers case off, and put a fan blowing into it, if it still happens with the case open im stumped

The crashing could definitely be heat-related. Last summer I had problems with frequent crashes and spontaneous reboots while playing Guild Wars. My computer was fine in all other games and in general Windows use.

After quite a bit of troubleshooting and reading on forums, I decided to clean the inside of my computer case... I took a can of compressed air and blew all the dust out of my case (while the computer was off), and cleaned off my CPU and video card fans. Guild Wars has been running fine ever since.

I have a ATI Radeon 9800 non-pro, and aside from a visual texturing glitch caused by the 6.x series of Catalyst drivers, the card works fine in Guild Wars. I'm using the 5.12 drivers until ATI relases a fix for that problem.

Some versions of the 9800 need an additional power supply connection, so it may be a power supply issue.

I think its a heat related problem, just clean stuff around maybe try opening the side of your case. I am currently encountering this problem with my 7800gt, because XFX improperly placed the transistor, and overheats when playing 3D games, I plan to RMA right after Spring Break

Try rolling back to 5.11 Cat drivers and see if it goes away my X800 Pro was crashing lately becuase of GW update with DX9 support been added. TRy adding -dx8 in your GW short cut and that may help also, both things work for fine for me now.

I had a similar problem with my 9600xt. It all seemed to get better when I turned off the vpu recover and lowered the apg to x4. Although I would try the heat issue first. Make sure your GPU fan is dust free.
Good Luck.

you could try enabling the ati vpu recover. when the graphics card stops responding it resets it.

This program is so woefully wrong, it gave me temps on 2 cpu's, when this pc has only 1, and it only gave temp of 1 HD when there is 2. compared to asus probe the only thing it got right was the motherboard temp, and the voltage's.

I would seriously steer clear of this utility.

http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/rthdribl/

I should recommend this more often. It stresses your video card about as far as anything will. If you have a hardware issue, or you're testing overclocks for artifacts, this is the tool to use. Plus it looks pretty damn cool too. You can resize the window; making it larger will raise temps on your video card as well as test more of its memory (and slow it to a crawl). Anyone who has crash symptoms in any 3D game should run this to see if it's hardware related.

It will only work for DX9 cards.

It's also perfect for unlocking shaders and pipes on cards, because a bad unlocked quad will usually give a weird effect like a checkerboard pattern.