Strange graphical problems with HL2 ep 1

[atraeus]

Hi, first off my specs:

ABIT AN8 SLI mobo .. nforce 4 chipset
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+
Dual Geforce 7800GT OC cards in SLI config

I've been having issues while trying to play HL2: episode 1. Things happen in this order:

1. After about 2 minutes of actual gameplay, sound and graphics begin to skip randomly

2. After 5 minutes, graphics begin to flicker different colors and shortly after, the game locks and the sound is stuck on a continuous loop. A manual reboot is required to unlock my system.

Here is the catch, My system worked fantastic with the original HL2. Is there some feature that ep1 uses that hl2 doesn't? Some things i've tried:

1. Updated drivers (Video and mobo)
2. Turned off SLI
3. Set the affinity that ep1 ran on to one core

None of which worked. Interesting enough, I had the same exact problem with the F.E.A.R extraction point demo, and to make things kinkier the Dark Messiah demo works fine.

 

[DEATH eVADER]

You haven't mentioned how long you've had Ep1, or for that matter, the problem.

Have you Verified the integrity of game cache? If you have, then you might need to make your field of testing wider, ensuring other games don't have this problem, and thus rule out graphical or sound problems leading to your own computer hardware.

Also it would be interesting to know if you downloaded both Ep1 and F: EP, because the problem might be that you had a problem with your connection when you were downloading the content onto your comp.

 

[atraeus]

Hrm,

I've only had ep1 for a day.

I downloaded both HL2 and EP1, but apparantly steam can run games that are not 100% downloaded. I will wait until 100%, and report back.

Other games:

WC3 - No problems
Heroes of Might and Magic 3 - No problems


PS. What do you mean by verifying the game cache integrety? Does that mean if the game is downloaded completly?

 

[MorganFreeman911]

First, wait till it's 100% done, that might fix it

 

[bigburpco]

I played CS: CZ (and Deleted Scenes) when it wasn't 100%, and then the damn thing is missing textures and ruddy blah. Reinstall doesn't really work. In other words, try verifying the intergrity of the game cache. Right-click on HL2: Ep1 in your Steam My Games folder, go to local files and you'll see it.

It should work.