StickyMicky

Had a few crashes recently, and i am still not able to play feckin half life 2 from the steam sale deal i posted up

so i have been digging around the old workhorse to see what i can work out.

i tried underclocking the CPU (old xp2500+ chip) i took it right the way down to stock speeds, it made no difference, so i clocked it back up (back to xp3200+ speeds)

i cleaned the cpu fan (crazy vantec tornado ) and downloaded "prime 95" to see if i could break it, it was fine for an hour and then i got bored.

i then started to look at the memory, this pc only has 1gig ram, 2x 512mb sticks in dual channel, i was not so sure how to test these so used "memtest"

they passed the tests without an issue.

i updated my graphics card drivers, and then updated direct x

i then looked at the GFX card, the fan was clean and spinning freely, i can play half life 2 episode 2 without issue for some reason, but can not play episode 1, nor the original half life 2 game

at this point i figured i had nothing to lose so looked into overclocking the 9700pro

upon running the ati clock tool, and noticed that even an overclock of 1mhz was showing artifacts on the screen (card was at stock speed settings)

i underclocked the gfx card a few mhz and while i have not had a system crash since (coincidence?), i still can not play half life 2

the system is more then enough to play HL2, infact it even plays the "lost coast" tech demo without an issue and that one is more demanding on the system

any thoughts? (apart from binning it lol)

i know its an old machine and well past its prime, but the thing has done me proud since i built it (when xp2500 cpus were considered "baddass" )
i might have one last throw of the dice and buy another AGP card, just to extend its life a little bit

HankScorpio

I had a very similar system with a 9500Pro and the gfx was prone to overheating.
Maybe the gfx routines in the later game are more refined requiring less strain on the GPU? Are you running the same settings in game?

I ended up getting an x1650 agp for peanuts and that did another year.

StickyMicky

Same settings in each game, i can only assume that the card is about to die, just found an x1950 pro on fleabay for £43 delivered, its probably overkill for the cpu but it should be more then enough for the old dog, and it`s cheap as chips

StickyMicky

i have discovered a cunning plan of upgrades to help me into the year 2009


i will use the x1950 agp in my current system for the time being, i have discovered that asrock make a motherboard with AGP, but allowed you to use Quadcore CPU`s

my old dog 9700pro can be left in its under clocked state, added back to the xp2500/3200+ cpu/motherboard and used here at work as the new cctv system

it will give me a chance to retire the old thunderbird 1.2ghz cpu thats been running 24/7 for the past 5 years at work

StickyMicky

X1950 PRO AGP has done the trick

Been playing half life 2 (finally!) tonight, and as a bonus, my brother installed gears of war onto the machine as a stress test, and it seams to be playing that fine as well, on max detail @ 1024x768 screen res (i use 2 x small lcd monitors for dual view and they don't go any higher with the screen res stuff)

the only problem is that i have had to disconnect both cd and dvd drives to power the new card as its a juice crazy beast (needs 2 molex power plugs from different rails )

so i will no doubt have to upgrade the system with a new psu soon, will sort that, then look at these agp mobos that take quadcore cpus

quite impressed that the xp2500+ over clocked was running gears of war mind!

plugging in a wired 360 controller and it was almost identical, except the graphics seamed a bit "cleaner" over the 360/hdtv