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VIDEO CARD

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by scherko

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I am running XP SP1 Home Upgrade. I bought an ATI 64MB DDR Video card (9000). I downloaded ATI's most current drivers. In high end game play the video card will freeze up anywhere from hours of play or even five minutes of play. It works fine during desk top or low end games. Now the monitor seems to lose a signal and the PC continues to work, but I still must do a reboot to regain visual use of this machine. Anyone know where the incompatablilities are? Appreciate some help.

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by jschein

Probably because the highend games are requiring use of dirext9, or some other video feature that card does not provide. Usually it will leave the system in a permanent hang until you power off or hit the reset button. Check the stats of your video card against what the high-def game you are playing REQUIRES.

NEWEGG.com has 128 & 256mb video cards for 100 USD and less....

by thechas

How much system RAM do you have?

For XP with a 64MB card, I would want a minimum of 256MB of RAM.

Then, enter BIOS setup, and look for an AGP aperture setting.
If there is one, you want a minimum of 128MB and no more than 1/2 of system RAM.

Check with the motherboard manufacture for a newer AGP mini-port driver for the chip-set.
Sometimes, they even have BIOS updates that correct problems with specific video cards.
I advise against a BIOS update unless the update specifically address a problem that you are having.

Another thing, make sure that there is enough air flow over the video card to keep the GPU cool.
If there is a fan, make sure it has enough space to draw cool air.
If the video card does not have a fan, install a slot cooler. These are small fans that fit in the space of a PCI slot.

Finally, from the run box on the start menu, run dxdiag
This will test and check your video and audio performance under 3D acceleration. If you get any errors from the test, you have a direction of what needs to be fixed / looked into.

Chas

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