HalfLife 2 Issues

[dbeard]

I am just looking for some insight to my current HL2 lockups.

I was an owner of a 9700NP using the latest cats on W2000. This card played all games mentioned in this post without fail or stability problems. After about 2.5 yrs of service, the 9700NP began to display screen corruption (even during POST) so I replaced the card. After some consideration, I replaced it with an 800XL from Gigabyte. I used the drivers off the disc and away I went.

Almost immediately I ran into multiple stability problems with games (UT2004, DOW, Guild Wars, HL2) dropping to the desktop after a few minutes of play. The OS seemed fine and would successfully restart any of these games after a failure. Having had some problem getting the 9700NP to work on a KT333 ASUS board, I had discovered that reducing the AGP speed to 4x cleared up those problems. I turned down the AGP speed to 4x with no change on the 800XL.

I then updated the driver to the latest (the drivers on the disc were older) and all but one of the issues have gone away.
HL2 still drops to the desktop and it does not appear to be random.

By paying attention to the failures, I have noticed that if I turn down the visual options and the audio options so that disc access is reduced, the chances of a failure is reduced. Also, I believe that all failures are occurring during disc accesses. I have updated to the latest VIA drivers for the KT333 and have checked to see that DMA is working. I have 512mb of physical ram.

I was able to return to AGP 8x with no change in HL2 issues. I guess my question is what could be the cause? The only difference between before and now is the video card made by the same manufacturer using the same driver software.

I have thought of power supply problems as the 800XL needs more. I only run a 2600+AXP and a single HD. I have a 480W power supply highly recommended in reviews.

Any Ideas?

 

[duffers20]

When you say that hl2 drops to teh desktop, does it completely exit the program instantly and return to teh desktop? Also do you get any error messages. What case are you using, because it could be heat related, with your card getting alittle too hot, although, it would probably restart the pc if it does get too hot. The fact that it doesn't crash teh whole system is kinda strange. Have you tried reinstalling hl2? It seems to be one of those problems that could be alot of things, hope I was of some help.

 

[Asus]

Did you uninstall your drivers first then reinstall? Driver or heat are the two biggest issues with gfx cards.

Also do you have AGP fast write enabled? Disable it.

 

[dbeard]

When the game begins to fail, there are sometimes a couple brief pauses in the video while the audio begins to loop. When the game actually fails, the video hangs while the audio loops. The audio continues to loop while slowly but surely the game screen is replaced line by line with the desktop. Once the desktop is fully visible control is returned to the cursor. The audio loop continues for a short period and then abruptly stops. At this point, you can merrily reload HL2 and play for another period.

BTW, I also play CSS with no issues.

I suppose that heat could be an issue. I have invested in several items to reduce the noise of the PC to the lowest level I could. I have a single case fan running at low speed. The power supply was purchased because it was quiet. It has a 120mm fan but is thermally controlled so that it doesn't put out that much air. The case fan hole was cut so that the case fan has no obstructions and flows a good deal of air. It has three speeds and was set on medium. I have turned it up to max.

I have also left open a drive panel on the front of the computer in line with the CPU. This may have the tendency to bypass the video card.

I am using rounded ATA cables and the video card is the only card in the system. There is lots of clearance around the card.