rec.autos.simulators

Been running this game (or trying to) for about a week.  Frequent
computer crashes and nothing but frustration.  Running the came on a
AMD K6-2/3D 266 with 64 meg and a Permedia 2 3D Accelleratior (8meg).

You never know when the computer will crash....sometimes it actually
works but in every case, at the end of the race, the system crashes.
I honestly blame the software and a severe lack of quality from
Electronic Arts.

Fix your buggy software!  

Sounds more like a hardware problem to me - Ive been running it for more
than a week now; havent experienced any problems at all.

BTW; have you disabled any screensaver you might have running? NFS 1 used to
hang until I disabled it.

Regards
-Michael

I could be either.  Your processor should be fine, but does your graphics
card fully support DirectX5.0?  Check your DirectX and make sure that
everything is "certified".  If DirectX is not happy with your card, you
got a hardware problem.  If everything is fine with DirectX, then it's
EA's fault (since they wrote on the box that anything supporting by
DirectX will run the game).  But if you got some money, you should buy a
3Dfx card.  I don't know much about your hardware, but no matter how good
the hardware is, if you don't have games that support it, it's good as
junk to a gamer.  3Dfx will run just about anything out there.  I have a
P233 with 64megs and a Pure3D Vodoo1 card (6megs), and the game runs
fine, with good frame rates, and I get the dashboards, too.

Certified means nothing other than microsoft has not tested that driver.

Most new drivers won't be certified by microsoft.

microsoft even has a knowledge base article telling you that a
'uncertified' driver might work.

It is not necessarily uncertified drivers.

Haveing said that - you do have to make sure you are up-to-date on your
drivers.

All my NFS3 crashes were reproducible (almost):
  Turn on 3D audio - get hang at end of track loading screen (sometimes
it would work for the first race, then crash for the second). Change to
stereo - perfect running.

Turn on menu music - get sndpath crashes.

So I had to turn off all music and set to stereo audio.

However if you are getting *random* crashses then as other people have
said you may have a real hardware problem.

The EA response is always get the latest drivers. It can't be their
problem -- hrrrrrmph. I personally believe there is something flaky in
NFS3. Considering EVERY other game works perfectly (from Longbow2 to
quake2 to unreal etc etc). I spend hours and hours playing other games
perfectly. Even the 3D audio ones -- except for nfs3.

baaahh humbug EA.

--
Bill Ryder       Silicon Graphics New Zealand   SGI V-Mail: 234 1456
Systems Engineer                                 Ph: (+64 4) 494 6326

DISCLAIMER: Unless explicitly stated all opinions are mine not SGI's