x1800xt craps out during games, get "No Signal"

TecHNooB

Diamond Member
Sep 10, 2005
7,460
1
76
This happens during Tomb Raider Anniversary and Bioshock 2. I think what fixed the problem in TRA was disabling depth of field but I'm not entirely positive.

I can play games like BF2, MW2, Source Engine games just fine.

What could the problem be?
 

TecHNooB

Diamond Member
Sep 10, 2005
7,460
1
76
what exactly does it do, can you elaborate? maybe post some screenshots?

can't post em cuz the screen blacks out :p

Basically during a game, after a few minutes, I get "No Signal" on my LCD and the sound eventually dies too :(
 

CurseTheSky

Diamond Member
Oct 21, 2006
5,401
2
0
Any overclocking on the card or the rest of the system? That would be the first place to start - stock settings for everything.

Other than that, it could be hardware (overheating or power issue) or software (bad driver / corrupt OS files, etc.) I'd guess it's a software bug, since other games run fine.

Try the following:
- If you have a second monitor hooked up, disconnect it to see if that plays a roll.
- Run dxdiag and determine if you have the latest DirectX version.
- Run the computer with the side panel off and see if it crashes.
- Download GPU-Z and check the box to log the information to a file. Fire up the game, and after the crash, read the file to see if you can determine where the problem is. If the GPU (or another) temp is sky rocketing, you have a cooling issue.
- Uninstall your graphics card drive, restart in Safe Mode, run Driver Sweeper, and restart again. Download and install the latest driver and try again.
- Reinstall one of the affected games.
- Run Memtest86.
- If you have a multimeter and feel comfortable doing it, take a spare molex (4 pin) connector and with the multimeter set to volts DC, stick the black ground / common plug into a pin with a black wire, and the red lead into a pin with a yellow wire. Do this first while the computer is idle and note the voltage (should be somewhere around 12v; 11.7-12.3ish is acceptable IIRC). Then, fire up the game and note the voltage reading just before it crashes. If you notice the voltage going way too low or too high (close to 11 or 13v, for example) you have a bad PSU.
- Reformat / reinstall OS.
- Make a sacrifice to the graphics processing gods?
 

tvdang7

Platinum Member
Jun 4, 2005
2,242
5
81
i bet its becuase you have so much dust in your fans. This happened to me with my 4850. Take the fan apart and i bet you will find a bit blob of dust.