rec.autos.simulators

    I posted just yesterday(?) about N4 freezing and/or crashing back to the
desktop.  I had no problems with GPL but then I only did a few odd laps.
Today I start GPL and did most of a INT-SHORT Monza race against the AI.
After a few laps GPL crashed by sending me directly to the desktop.

    After shutting the machine down for a while so I can do other things in
the house, I started it back up and went direcly to N4.  I set everything to
the minimum (graphics, sounds) and ran it.  *149* fps was ever so fluid I
felt as if I really was in the car.  However after about four laps it
crashed by sending me back to the desk top.  The desktop however, somehow
switched to 640x480 (800 x 600 before).  Yesterday I thought it was
something to do with N4 but apparently it's not the case...

    So, all I can think of is the system is somehow bad or not set up right.
It's as if once the ram is full of a replay, (GPL & N4) it crashes.

1.0G Athlon T-Bird (CMOS reports 1109)
256M pc133
Asus A7V
Voodoo 5 AGP
SBlive

I helped a friend out with his new Asus A7V board yesterday.  While it
certainly COULD be a memory problem (the Athlon chipsets are becoming
notoriuos for being finicky about memory), switching memory didn't fix my
friend's problem.  To "fix" it, I went into his BIOS and changed the a
System Performance parameter (I can't remember exactly what it is
unfortunately) from "Optimal" to what ever was below it (normal, default,
etc - I don't know).

From the documentation, it seemed that the major effect of this change was
to disable 4x AGP and limit it to 2x, which to my knowledge shouldn't cause
that huge a performance hits unless you're dealing with lots of 32-bit
textures.  However, I don't pretend to know a lot about AGP.

Of course, the problem could also be heat - but I'd try messing with the
performance value in the BIOS first.

HTH.

To me, it sound like your system is OC'ed, intentionally or not. As far
as I know it should not report that speed with a 1.0G Athlon. Have you
checked your BIOS to see what the bus speed and multiplier are are set
to? Also, look under the hood as has been suggested and check the jumpers.

Cheers,
Jens

fyi
I didnt think there were 32bit images in N4
Am I wrong?

NASCAR 4 has tons of 32bit rendering

My guess is its related to a video card driver.  Have you tried updating the
video card driver, your motherboard's AGP driver and Direct X 8?  If not, I
would try this first before checking the ram.

Also are you overclocking your thunderbird?  That might also cause it.  If
so try lowering the speed and see what happens.