need plain and simple expert help...

[strider7]

alrighty. i have yet to purchase half-life 2 b/c i'm having difficulties w/ playing other games. but i 'm dying b/c half-life, well rules. Everytime I try to play Jedi Knight Outcast or Half-Life 1, the game freezes and then goes back to my desktop w/ a "send error report" stating something or other about my VPU Recover failing. So I think it's graphics card related. Here are my specs:
AMD 64 3200+ 2.2 GHz 512 MB of Ram Radeon 9600 XT 256 MB. PS of 350 watts.

My friend first said it was b/c my comp. was overheating, so i put three fans in it and it didn't help too much. Now he's saying it's the power supply. He recommends i get a 500 watt. He said the grapgics card alone can take up to 300 watts. Now i'm seeing from other sites that it could be my memory or driver for the graphics card. i have the recent driver from ati (catalyst 4.11) and it didn't help. what the hell should i do?! help greatly apprecited!!!

 

[Gonney]

You need a 400 psu + to run your R9600Xt. I had a hanging issue where my comp would free because I was using a 350 psu.

Hopefully that fixes your problem.

Other than that I’d suggest a clean format. And what Os are you running?

 

[cleckmoon]

I find it hillarious that all these people with tricked-out compies are having such problems, but I'm cruising along just fine on a PC that just meets the minimum.

 

[HiSpeedWobble]

Well you have plenty of computer to run any game to date with no worries. I would definitely get a 500Watt Ps, even though your 9600 isnt pulling the juice that a 9700 or 9800 does. Both those cards take their own power supply connector seperate from the MOBO source. Disable VPU recovery REPORTING to ATI, not the actual VPU recovery. But if this was a power issue you should be having bigger problems than just crashing to desktop, more like complete shutdown crashes. If its your card overheating you can check that by running ATI TOOL and let it overclock itself. When it does it preheats the card and then bumps up your frequency every 90 sec while scanning for artifacts. But keep in mind the 9600 will not clock that high before producing errors. My 9700 Pro can run at 375 Mhz core, 325 Mhz memory (base speeds are 325 Mhz core, 310 Mhz memory) with no problems. Now your base core and memory speeds are higher than that (500 core, 600 memory or something along that line), so you cant compare it to mine. Have fun.

 

[Trp Werewolf]

Strider7, new ATI Catalyst 4.12beta driver...

...see my thread in this forum...

...download and install...

...happy gaming! :cheers:

 

[appoooh]

My friend first said it was b/c my comp. was overheating, so i put three fans in it and it didn't help too much. Now he's saying it's the power supply. He recommends i get a 500 watt. He said the grapgics card alone can take up to 300 watts.

Your friend has no idea what he's talking about, your 9600 XT doesn't even draw a 5th of that.

For the record, I run a Radeon 9800 Pro @438.75/351 with a high quality 300 watt power supply (Zalman) and have no problems whatsoever.

 

[squabbish]

I've been fighting this demon myself ever since I got my 9800 pro. Tried the drivers that came with my card along with different catalyst and omega drivers, but it still happenes. Put in an extra case fan and I even bought a 34Amp 520W PSU!!!

After the new PSU and catalyst 4.11 it doesn't occur as often, but it's still not fixed. Waiting with great anticipation for the official release of 4.12

 

[Yetskii]

Turn off VPU recover, it is useless for gaming. You will not have the crashes anymore.

Further more you friend is an idiot. The most a AGP slot can supply is 75 watts. If you need more than that, they put connectors on the card to draw juice directly from the power supply.