Most Common Gaming Issues/Solutions
I.Freezing / Lock-Ups
a.Install the latest drivers(including motherboard, vga card)
b.Check for any overheating. You can use a thermometer and check your GPU/CPU tempature. Or, you can use a GPU/CPU monitor(If you have a nVidia card, you can right-click, properties, advanced, nvidia tab and go to the monitor section. If you have an ATi card, you can use OMEGA drivers for GPU Monitoring. You can also go into BIOS to view CPU temp.). If you think your video card is overheating, try removing your case side panel and see if that solves your problem. You can also check if your GPU fan is spinning, if is not, I suggest that you replace it.
c.If you are overclocking your GPU, reduce the clock speeds and see if that helps. If you are not overclocking your GPU, its possible that your GPU is defective.
d.Take a Memory Test and check to make sure that your RAM is not causing the problem. You can search google and type in "memt31" to download the tools. Or you can remove your RAM and put it into another slot.
e.If you are overclocking your CPU, reduce the FSB and try raising your voltage(Vcore, DDR).
f.If your GPU is sharing an IRQ with other PCI devices, try removing them and putting them into another PCI slot.
II.Artifacting / White Dots
a.If you are overclocking your GPU, reduce the clock speeds and see if that helps. If you are not overclocking your GPU, its possible that your GPU is defective.
b.Check for any overheating. You can use a thermometer and check your GPU/CPU tempature. Or, you can use a GPU/CPU monitor(If you have a nVidia card, you can right-click, properties, advanced, nvidia tab and go to the monitor section. If you have an ATi card, you can use OMEGA drivers for GPU Monitoring. You can also go into BIOS to view CPU temp.). If you think your video card is overheating, try removing your case side panel and see if that solves your problem. You can also check if your GPU fan is spinning, if is not, I suggest that you replace it.
c.Some games may have bugs/issues with certain video cards(Unreal Tournament 2004 Demo, Battlefield 1942 : Vietnam). You can try using different video card drivers and see if that helps.
III.Sound Problems
a.Always install the latest drivers for your sound card. If you have onboard sound, the drivers should be in your motherboard drivers cd.
b.If your GPU is sharing an IRQ with other PCI devices, try removing them and putting them into another PCI slot.
IV.Performance
a.If you have Anti-Aliasing / Anisotropic Filtering on, disable them by going to right-click, properties, advanced, nvidia/ati tab, and the Performance / Quality Section.
b.You can set the Image Quality from *Best Quality* to *Highest Performance*.
c.You can overclock your video card for improved performance.
*Fill rate is the speed at which a graphics card can render pixels. Raw pixel fill rate is calculated by multiplying the number of pixel pipelines in the GPU by its clock speed. The R3x0 core used on the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro has eight pixel pipelines, with a single texture unit per pipe, and is clocked at a default speed of 380mhz. Using the formula above, we find that the 9800 Pro's peak pixel fill rate is 3.04 gigapixels per second (8 pipelines x 380mhz = 3040 megapixels per second). If the clock speed of the core is raised to 400mhz, the peak fill rate becomes 3.2 gigapixels per second, an increase of 160 megapixels per second. Because the GPU can draw more pixels on the screen when its overclocked, its thus capable of producing higher frame rates. The avalible memory bandwith between the GPU and onboard RAM also goes up with higher clock speeds. To derive the total memory bandwith for a given product, multiply the memory bus width in bytes by the speed of the memory. Looking at the specifications of the ATi Radeon 9800 Pro, we see that it utilizes a 256-bit wide memory interface with memory clocked by default at an effective speed of about 680MHz DDR(340mhz actual). To get the bus width in bytes, we must first divide 256 bits by 8 (8 bits equals 1 byte), which give us 32 bytes. Now that we have all of the neccesary values, we plug them into the formula to find that a stock Radeon 9800 Pro has a peak of 21.76gbps of memory bandwith. Should the memory's clock speed be increased to 720mhz DDR(360mhz actual), the total amount of memory bandwith then jumps to 23.04gbps. Overclocking the GPU core will also allow it to process complex shader instructions more quickly, which will improve performance in the increasing number of games and applications that use them.*
-Pc Modders Magazine
d.Overheating can sometimes cause stutters in some games. Replacing your GPU cooler with a better one can reduce temp. dramatically, and thus improve your overclocking results.
e.Some games may have bugs/issues with certain video cards(Unreal Tournament 2004 Demo, Battlefield 1942 : Vietnam). You can try using different video card drivers and see if that helps.
V.How to remove GPU coolers
a.Ground yourself to prevent killing the card
b.Remove the fan by unscrewing them. There should be pins holding the GPU heatsink. If there is, you can remove them by pushing them out from the other side using needlenose pliars.
c.Slowly take the heatsink off using a credit card or sharp razor blade.
d.Clean the core by rubbing all the thermal paste off using Dry Cloth. You can also rub the Dry Cloth with Rubbing Alcolhol for better results.
e.After that, read the instructions for your GPU cooler and install it on the core.
VI.No Display
a.Re-seat all of the connectors and make sure that your video card is fully seated into AGP Slot/PCI Slot.
b.Update your BIOS and reset your CMOS Data.
c.Try removing the RAM and inserting it into another slot.
d.Make sure that the jumpers are in the correct place.
e.Check if the PSU fan is working. PSU may be dead.
f.Install your video card into another CPU and see if it works. Card may be damaged.
Please post if you have any questions or comments, as well as suggestions and recommendations. And oh yeah, please try to prevent flaming =) I made this guide because a lot of people seem to have a lot of problems/issues with their video card these days, hope this info. helps.
Asus P4S800
Pentium 4 2.6ghz @ 3.03ghz
eVGA GeForce FX 5900 SE
SoundBlaster Audigy LS
Kingston 512mb DDR400The Way Its Meant To Be Played..
