The past couple days, things have been funny. Randomly in games, 3D games, well Warcraft 3 FT and Doom 3, the screen would look like there’s interference, like if you don’t have cable and you go to a cable channel you can’t go to. While I can exit the game, to play again without the problem, I need to restart. This happens randomly as I said , I can play hours with no effect and I kinda wonder what triggers it. So I remember a while back reading about omegadrivers.net and I was thinking of installing em on my laptop maybe if that’s the issue. What do you think is up and what do you think of omega drivers?
Does it look like snow/static? If so, its moreso likely to be your’ heating/cooling. ESPECIALLY if it only happens after a while, and if restarting solves it.
I would vouch for overheating heavily. Heard of it on many occassions, and even happened to me ONCE after leaving my computer running over 3 hot summer days and then trying to run doom 3. Try them, theres nothing to lose, but I don’t see it helping much (but then, maybe theres some overheating failsafe on omega)
You could Try using Hi-power Apps/game after a few with the Laptop off for a few hours to cool and Watching CSI or Law and Order (Orginal or SVU) or any Non laptop stuff Like Make a meal. That might lengthen the Time before the screen goes funny.
Big Nutter
I had an 286 froze completey, I’d guess it was cooling, cos I got more use in the morning or evening in winter than in the summer.
The problem resolves itself also if I switch screens. Like let’s say I’m in Diablo 2 and it happens. I press the windows key and it is fine when I return. Oh well, at least nothing is really “wrong” with my laptop :S
Is the blurriness as acute as the image nutter posted? Overheating is usually not that bad. I never tried doing the switch-screen trick myself when I was overheating, and I dont think I’m going to recreate the overheat again, not during the winter
Then I still think its heat. Try the drivers, no harm can be done really (heck, ive heard good things about them), though I doubt that will solve the issue. Maybe it will, as I said they may have some heating failsafe, though its unlikely software could really make a card run cooler
Omega drivers fucking rule. I checked out a tech support forum and said it could be heating but it could also in part be the drivers. I tried the drivers and they run Doom 3 even better and I can hear the fan running more often so it might have something to do with a little each. Either way, I’m a happy camper and strongly recommend these.
Just a question, even though the issue has been resolved…
If a car is overheating, would it go static like that, or just loose quality? Sometimes if i play high-intensity games for a long time, i notice very sharp drops in quality.
Take Vice City for example. After playing for 4+ hours, i began to notice that the windows and facades of buildings would not load as i drove by them. This is not to say that they did not appear, as is common with a DRE error, but the windows would appear, and look out of focus, and sometimes would only appear as a block of brown.
Sometimes, in other games like Doom3, you can clearly tell that something is wrong. if i start the game on High Quality setting, after a few hours playing, the game drops to medium.
My friend says it is a driver issue, but since the problem only occurs after hours of playing, i think it is overheating. But if overheating causes static, like sin saw, then what am i experiencing?
Overheating would more likely cause the static, not performance loss. At least, a more likely cause of the performance loss you are reporting is that you have little RAM. Sometimes, when a comp unloads stuff, it doesnt completely unload, and takes up much needed ram. Rebooting is the only way to solve the issue in this case (as a temporary fix, that is). I usually reboot prior to playing HL2 or anything else HL2 based. For a permanent fix, well, get more RAM :P.
Disclaimer: It may well be a possibility it is heat, but if you get no other artifacts and anomalies my money is on the ram. How much you have?
Edit: THat ‘block of brown’ windows error sounds like a memory error too, though it would be video memory. Whats your video card, and how much vram does it have?
I’d just like to point out realy quick that the nVidia drivers don’t work on laptops. I was thinking about using them, but after checking their forums I found out that they aren’t supported.
Potentially, then. Try using some omega drivers, though. If you run VC off a fresh boot, I see it taking a little longer than 4 hours to get errors on that machine. THen again, I’m speculating on the game’s requirements, having only played the ps2 version.
