It's about fucking time...

[D3adlode]

..that my pc was fixed and it is now thanks to work!

I bought my current system about 4 years ago for about £700 (top of the range back then of course) and I was always having problems with it but seeing as I was on Windows 98 I just accepted that as the problem and eventually learned to live with the crashes and error messages. A few years later I'd moved onto XP and I still had the problems but I'd changed some hardware so I figured it must be something to do with drivers, so I spent a lot of time trying to change that to no avail. The problems were always there but I had other things to worry about so I just left it how it was, occasionally playing games dealing with blue screens or 'desktop-kicks' in between parts.

Recently I was actually beginning to come to the end of my teather with the thing so I asked around to see if anyone could help out (I'd asked before on various message boards but no one seemed to know what the problem was).

Anyway work said that they'd take a look at it, so I took it on wednesday for the experts to mess about with it. We tried changing drivers again, moving the graphics card over to another machine to prove that the card wasn't the problem, disabled the sound card and graphics vice versa. Eventually one of my collegues pointed out that the RAM may be faulty so I tested each 256 stick to see what would happen and then for the first time in since forever, I was able to drive around the streets of GTA III for a good hour with no problems, thus concluding that the RAM worked but there was something up with the connections.

Finally they suggested that it may be a dual layer DIM setup which meant that rather than having the sticks in slots 1 and 2 they needed to be in either 1 and 3 or 2 and 4. So we tried that, stuck them in 1 and 3.. and voila.. problem solved!! You see you'll think I'm an idiot, but until recently I was never much for delving into the inside of a pc, I didn't want to touch the components in case something happened (daft I know..). I'd never of guessed in a million years that it was the RAM at fault, it really is amazing how big a problem such a small thing can cause.

On the downside, my social life is really going to go down the pan now, but on the plus side... the VERY BIG plus side, I can run just about anything with no problems at all (even Doom III). I've got about 15 odd games I haven't been able to play until now so I'm pretty spoilt for choice and then of course there's the stuff I HAVEN'T got. So yeah, I'm pretty damn happy at the moment, there aint really anything that can spoil this as well...I still sit playing for hours thinking that there's gonna be a blue-screen, but it doesn't happen anymore. I've also ordered a new motherboard and 3.2ghz CPU, more RAM and a 160gb HDD so soon I will be catching up with you bastards! So now I'll be able to actually get HL2 running, possibly medium detail or something, I wont fuss, Hell.. Doom III looks great on the lowest setting IMHO..

Ok, I'm done- you can laugh now.

[Mazy]

short summary, im not gonna read all that

[D3adlode]

short summary, im not gonna read all that

PC had problems for about 4 years, thought it was graphics card, but it turned out that the RAM sticks were in the wrong slots because it's a duel layer setup :roll:

Been playing GTA III a lot recently, runs so smooooooth (Yeah I know every man and his dog have finished it by now... shaddaup!)

[Mazy]

lol gta3, genius

even a 386 can run that ;G

[Spellbinder]

wtf let him be!

the guy had problems.

how you could put in ram in wrong slot is beyound me though.

congrats deadlode!

i know the feeling of having a comp that sucks.

i haven't played gta3 yet.

i was lucky to get a good comp when HL2 was realesd at least

Spellbinder.

[D3adlode]

wtf let him be!

the guy had problems.

how you could put in ram in wrong slot is beyound me though.

congrats deadlode!

i know the feeling of having a comp that sucks.

i haven't played gta3 yet.

i was lucky to get a good comp when HL2 was realesd at least

Spellbinder.

I asked on this forum if anyone knew what the problem was as well, but no one suggested the RAM being at fault.. you guys suck!

I would've looked at the motherboard manual but it wouldn't of made any sense back in the day..

Oh and the RAM was actually in slots 1 and 2 when I got it, I didn't touch the inside at all!

Yeah yeah Mazzle, I'll move onto VC eventually.. and SA is out soon.. gonna kick total ass!

[D3adlode]

Current specs:

AMD Athlon 1600XP 1.4ghz

512MB DDR RAM

GF 4 TI 4200 128MB

16x CD-ROM

DVD-ROM

Sound Blaster Live!

I'm running Doom 3 on medium settings at 800x600.. not sure how but there really isn't much of a performance difference between that and 640x480 on low.. which is weird seeing as the textures are compressed in that mode and they aren't in medium. A little slowdown when there's too much on screen but nothing to worry about really...

I think I'll be able to run HL2 to near enough the highest settings in which case.

This is now going to be 'the games D3 recently completed' thread whereby you'll come across titles you probably played somewhere along the line 4 years ago but I haven't been able to.. so nyeh.

Of course there will be the definative HL2 Vs D3 section, but I think we both know who's going to win that one... or maybe not.

Ok, back to the UAC base, I hear something nasty lurking in the darkness ahead...

[Backslider]

:roll:

Hardware noobs, pfft.

[Thrik]

I think I'll be able to run HL2 to near enough the highest settings in which case.

Sadly, not while you have that ti4200 in there.

[InsaneSingingBlender]

you are mistaken thrik! the ti4200 runs hl2 fine at the highest detail, it just doesnt have the fancy dx9 shaders

[Thrik]

Exactly. ¬¬ What's HL2 without the fancy shaders??

Although when I tried it on a ti4200 with similar processor/RAM specs to D3, it certainly didn't run smoothly on full detail.

[D3adlode]

Exactly. ¬¬ What's HL2 without the fancy shaders??

Although when I tried it on a ti4200 with similar processor/RAM specs to D3, it certainly didn't run smoothly on full detail.

There's a fix to add the fancy shaders for DX7/8 cards so you get the cool water effects and everything too, it's on one of the older PCG DVDs and is probably found on Steam as well no doubt.

[ReNo]

You can run HL2 on highest DX8 settings on a ti4200 (I have done), but the performance hit is too significant to be worth the visual increase for the most part. For single player I think I used medium model detail, max texture detail, 2xAA, 2xAF, high shadow detail, high shader detail, simple water reflections. Things look pretty funky and ran at acceptable levels. For DM I drop these settings by a bit (low shader detail, low shadow detail, medium texture detail) to get smoother FPS, but things still look nice enough. This was with a better CPU (2800XP@2.1ghz) and more RAM (1Gb) however, so you might not fare quite as well.

[D3adlode]

I'll still be changing bits of the machine eventually so it doesn't matter too much really, just so long as it's playable and doesn't look like shite!