rec.autos.simulators

First off, my system: I have a P3 500, Voodoo3 3000 AGP, Turtle Beach
Montego 2 sound card (I think), 128 MB RAM, Windows98.

I have owned Grand Prix Legends for about two years; I played it for a
few months when I first bought my computer, but when I went off to
college I kind of lost touch with it.

The problem is that GPL freezes after a lap or so (about 1-2 minutes)
into any session; the display is frozen. Sometimes when this happens
the sound becomes frozen and still audible, other times the sound is
silent. In both cases, I have to restart my computer.

This never used to happen. Since my GPL playing days of old, I have
formatted several times, but I don't think drivers are the problem,
since I don't have any problems with textures, or anything like that
(running GPL 1.2, DX 8.0, updated Voodoo3 drivers that I downloaded).

From what I've read, it sounds possible that my Voodoo3 card is
overheating. I don't understand why it would, though, since it never
used to, and I haven't overclocked it or anything. I suppose that when
I played GPL before, it was in an air-conditioned house, and now I
live on the third floor of a house without AC, where the temps can get
up to 85 or 90 (just an estimate). Would that change in external
environment really cause the card to overheat?

I removed the side of the case and positioned a fan (not a computer
fan, just a little 12" x 12" house fan) blowing onto the card. The
freezing up persists.

If I just sit in the pits during a session, the game doesn't freeze (I
haven't tried sitting for a full session, but I did sit for about 7
minutes without the game freezing; when I went to drive, the game
froze before I got to the end of pit lane). Also, althought the game
freezes in 640 x 480, it seems to freeze up faster in higher
resolutions. This all would seem to be consistent with the card
overheating. Is it?

I don't really play any other games; I used to play Quake 3, but that
was in the winter, in a cooler room. The only other game I've been
playing lately is Dirt Track Racing: Sprint Cars, which I would guess
is not as taxing on the graphics card. It runs without any problems.

Anyway, if anyone else experienced this or knows how to cure the
problem (besides waiting for summer to end), please let me know. Will
buying a fan to blow on the card inside the case do the trick? I
brought my Thrustmaster T2 wheel/pedal combo from home in anticipation
of playing; after a week of frozen screens, I'm really disappointed.

Thanks,
Matt

Fortunately, it doesn't get that hot that often in here, so for the moment
I'm riding it out until the guy I got the V3 from grows tired of his
GeForce2 MX. ;-))

Jan.
=---
"Matt Barnes"wrote...
<snip>

No argument here. It came with the computer.

Matt

Yes i think so, check your device manager to see if the irq # is the same or
not.

The best way to tell if it's overheating is to touch the back of the
card while it's runing. If it's too hot to touch, something's wrong!

Vid cards will crash more easily at higher res, due to the greater
work being done. So that'd explain why its a little better in 640x480,
and is alright for a while in the pits.

Suggestions - See if you can UNDERclock the card, powerstrip is the
best program to use. v3 3000 is 166mhz stock, try dropping it to 150
or lower even. If you still have a problem, you know that this is not
the issue.

Definitely keep the fan going, try adding a small fan directly to the
heatsink. I used a couple of wood screws myself :P

Also, try disabling AGP 4x in the bios, can also help.

A similar post involving a geforce found dropping the AGP aperature
from 64 to 16 did the trick as well.

And check the irq sharing as suggested, could also be a problem.

Rafe Mc

On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 22:41:48 +0200, "Jan Verschueren"

Thanks, everyone, for your help. Unfortunately, my video card does not
share an IRQ with the sound card (or anything else, for that matter),
so that isn't the problem. It looks like it's probably overheating;
when it's in use, the back of the card heats up to the point that I
can't touch it for more than a couple seconds. I'll make use of some
of the suggestions you made, Rafe.

Does anyone know why this would happen now, but not a couple years
ago? Like I said earlier, my room is hotter, but today it got down to
about 70 or so and it still crashed.

Thanks,
Matt

Oh, I should mention that the fan on my V3 stopped working once and it was
24 hours before I worked out why it kept locking up :->

Andrew McP

It's hot to the point that I can't touch it for more than 2 or 3
seconds.

I got the program and underclocked the card -- I put it all the way
down to 125. Although I could run longer than before (a lap and a half
or two laps at Monza, compared to a half or three-quarters lap
before), it still freezes up.

The setting was 64 in the bios, but the only other option was 256, so
I assume that 64 would be 1x in my case.

I guess the next step for me is to remove the heat sink, add thermal
paste, and mount a fan on the card -- which seems ridiculous, given
that the card is as it came from Dell when I got my computer. I've not
overclocked it or anything. Seems pretty shoddy that a graphics card
would need such extreme cooling measures under normal operating
conditions.

Anyway, if I somehow***up the card (I've never really done
anything of this scale before; installing drives and cards is about
the most I've done with computer components), or if the problem is
still not solved, I might just replace the damn thing.

I saw a GeForce2 400MX 64MB for $130 at Best Buy. Would this offer
comparable or better performance than my Voodoo3, which in the past
ran GPL very smoothly at 800x600? Is it a prudent purchase? And to my
understanding, I would have to use the D3D patch to get it to work
with GPL, right? (Is Glide a proprietary 3DFX-only thing?)

Matt

Mine gets fairly warm, but that sounds too hot. Check how hot the
heatsink is getting. It won't be as hot as the back of the card, but
should be getting reasonably hot. If it's not very hot at all, then it
can't have very good contact with the V3 chip. In that case you may
have to remove the heatsink and re-attach it solidly.

It's still generating too much heat then, although at a reduced rate.
Takes longer to reach that "crash" temperature.

No, 64 mb is the AGP aperature, should have options of 16, 32, 64,
128, etc. Maybe try something lower. It theoretically should have no
effect, but a lot of people have found that it has a big impact.

AGP 1x, 2x and 4x is something very different. AGP 1x gives the most
compatability and least issues. It'll make almost zero difference in
performance as well. Go through all the different options in bios,
probably under "advanced chipset" or the like.
Sounds very odd too, but you probably just got a bum card. I'd hazard
a guess that the glue they used on the heatsink had a big bubble in
the centre or something similar. You can remove the heatsink with
acetone but it's tricky and needs some forcing. Obviously a last
resort.

Try directing the fan right at the heatsink if possible, or a second
fan as well. Try the same setup in GPL as well as some other games,
especially ones which use d3d and opengl. And try Glide in another
game as well if possible. You should get the same crashes if it's a
hardware overheating issue.

Glide is 3dfx only, and GPL runs best in Glide. But the d3d and opengl
patches work quite well except for the in-car view, where the mirrors
chew up the frame rate.

The gts and pro versions perform almost twice as fast as the mx, but
cost almost twice as much as well. I've got a feeling you'd be able to
get a GF2 mx for a bit less than that, as they go for around $150 here
(Ausralian dollars, or around $75 US).

Good luck

Rafe Mc