JTH182

I have had lots of trouble playing games lately. After doing some research I have heard that my motherboard and Soundblaster Live! don't get along... I don't have another soundcard to swap in, can I test these games without any sound hardware in my computer, or will the games not respond well to that? I don't want to buy a whole new card just yet, because I'm not completely sure that's the problem.

gcribbs

what motherboard?

list all the specs and OS?

I bet someone has the same specs and can give you tips.

I am going to Vegas this mrorning however I will look into this thread on tuesday and see if I can help if you do not get it working before then.

it could just be a problem with some other device and the SB.

you should be able to play most games without a sound card. getting no sound of course

JTH182

I should know better than to post and not say my system specs... anyway, I took out the SoundBlaster, formatted my HD, and reinstalled Windows with no sound card... I tried playing my games and they still froze, so I'm going to say that the sound card is not the problem... Okay, here's my specs, anyone know what could be wrong? I've been trying to play the Demo version of "Driver" and it doesn't play for too long... other 3D games freeze up too, but I have played The Sims for like hours at a time, go figure...

OS: Windows XP Home
Processor: 1 gig AMD Athlon AMD 751 chipset
Motherboard: Via K7MH8 (VT82C686A)
Video Card: 32 MB nVidia GeForce 2 GTS (Asus AGP v7700)
Sound Card: Sound Blaster Live! Value (model: CT4830)
RAM: 512 MB Crucial PC100 (2x256MB)

Is the Video Card a POS? I don't know what else it could be, I'm almost ready to sell this thing I'm so frustrated.

skar

Which video driver are you using? Maybe you could try downloading a newer version.

http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=drivers

JTH182

I've already tried downloading drivers for both sound and video, didn't help.

Mole177

i have the same problem as you do (game freeze). i have suspected it was my vid card/mobo. but i havent had the time to fix it, since i have school. i plan to upgrade both.

JTH182

Yeah, it just really sucks... I don't really have the money to be upgrading right now. That's beside the point anyway, I wish the hardware I originally bought would work like I thought it would... What a complete rip off.

JTH182

I've been spending some time at anandtech, and it seems my motherboard has had a history of problems with both my soundcard and my video card I guess I'll have to resign myself to the fact that I won't be playing games on my computer... not until I can scrape the funds together to build my own

ShoeBoy

Some other stuff to try.

Did you download the latest via 4 in 1 drivers.

http://www.viahardware.com/download/index.shtm#4in1

Also did you trying playing with the BIOS?
I have a Asus P3v4x (Or something like that) motherboard with a P3 933.
For whatever reason I have to turn off AGP Fast Writes for any games to not crash. A really weird problem but it fixed all my gaming problems.

JTH182

Actually I was going to ask about that... I can't do anything with the AGP in my BIOS. I have a Hewlett Packard and it's like they really restrict you from doing anything to the BIOS... unless someone knows if I'm doing something wrong, or if there's another way. I have heard knocking it down to 1x AGP helps, but I can't find that option anywhere.

ShoeBoy

AHHH so you replaced the video card in the HP computer? Or did it come with it?

I had a friend that had an OLD nec comptuer and we disabled the on board video to replace it with a newer video card. And damn it to hell that computer never really worked right :-(

JTH182

no, the GeForce 2 GTS came with the HP, I customized it on HP's site 2 years ago.

ShoeBoy

Most likely then you won't be able to adjust any of the AGP settings in the BIOS then
All those big companies like to dumb down their BIOSes so customers can't change settings, i'm guessing.

JTH182

Well, I formatted again and loaded up everything I know that works for normal computing... I guess I'm going to resign myself to the fact that I can never play games on this thing. Darn, I really want to play GTA3!

Real Boba Fett

It could be different for your computer but my video card and my SB live sound card do not like to share IRQ. These 2 parts need their own IRQ or my computer will freeze when I play to 3D games. When they have their own IRQ I have no problem and my computer never crashes.

When they share IRQs, I had this problem with Win98, WinME and even WinXP (which I read was fine with shared IRQs but it seems my parts still don't like that idea )

JTH182

Yeah, I've heard that too... Everything I have seems to be on IRQ 9. How do I change that?