ATI CARDS crashing, freezing, stuttering (SOLVED?)

[JudasPriest]

Yep i use the Radeon HD 4850X2 and it runs the game like a charm other than.... you guessed it, total game freeze occasionally ( about 3 times in 5 hours or so everyday) and my sound still plays but i cannot do anything other than task out of the game.

My OS is Vista ultimate 64bit SP2

[thejynxed]

Yep i use the Radeon HD 4850X2 and it runs the game like a charm other than.... you guessed it, total game freeze occasionally ( about 3 times in 5 hours or so everyday) and my sound still plays but i cannot do anything other than task out of the game.

My OS is Vista ultimate 64bit SP2

Try disabling the built-in sound device on that card. It's not necessary unless you are using the HDMI output to use your television as both monitor + speakers.

Also, nothing works particularly well on Vista, let alone 64-Bit Vista.

Future hint: What tech support said about manually swapping to 'Vista Basic' interface is hogwash. Aero automatically does this when you start programs in fullscreen mode. No manual adjustment necessary.

[ogboot]

Yep i use the Radeon HD 4850X2 and it runs the game like a charm other than.... you guessed it, total game freeze occasionally ( about 3 times in 5 hours or so everyday) and my sound still plays but i cannot do anything other than task out of the game.

My OS is Vista ultimate 64bit SP2

This sounds similar to what I'm experiencing.
win7 pro x64
2gb ram
MSI HD4870

I do get the black screen on startup occasionally, but the ingame lockups are what really get me. Sound still plays, still hear Voice chat but graphics are locked up. I've tried every fix on the forums such as disabling stencil shadow so far without help. My card doesn't have HDMI so it doesn't have the additional audio device to disable. Every other game or app i run has no issues.

[intouchwithnature]

my problem manifested itself today after 2 weeks of playing DDO without any problems.
the game freezes for about 10 seconds every 2 -5 minutes. not talking about black screen, just plain old freeze, mouse not moving, can tab out tho. i have trieda variety of solutions found on the fourm but still to no avail.
running ati mobility radeon HD 3470. dont tell me its the driver. i didnt update or downgrade before this freeze issue stared. what else could i do apart from handing in the waranty slip and getting a new laptop?

[Rumple66]

I've the same problem, using an ATI 2600 (32-bit Vista, latest drivers). Screen freezes but you can use the mouse and hear sound effects in the background. Frustratingly, this occurs right after defeating a red-named opponent (i.e., boss). I hope this is solved soon.

[pod]

problem fixed.
ATI High Definition Audio Device -> DISABLED from device manager - this got rid of the stuttering -
Installed Catalyst 9.7 ATI drivers (as a turbine tech support guy suggested in another thread) - this got rid of freezing -

I hope this could be of any help for other people experiencing my same problem.

please, try this and let me know it it fixes your problems.

@ogboot: your card HAS the HDMI output, ubt it works in a sort of emulation mode using an adapter. checkhing in device manager you'll find a device named High Definition Audio Device listed under the "audio" tab. disable it

[ogboot]

please, try this and let me know it it fixes your problems.

@ogboot: your card HAS the HDMI output, ubt it works in a sort of emulation mode using an adapter. checkhing in device manager you'll find a device named High Definition Audio Device listed under the "audio" tab. disable it

I'm going to try these fixes one at a time, starting with disabling the HDA device. I'm running catalyst 9.9 now.

[pod]

I was running the 9.9 too, and once disabledthe hda the game worked better in the sense of no more stuttering, but the "freezings" became worts.
With worst i mean: audio stopping or looping and no cursor movement. I was still able to alt+tab thou.
installing catalyst 9.7 fixed this last problem.

I hope this could fix the problem of the many people struggling to make this game work.

[whywasiborn]

Hi, I'm experiencing freezing while playing DDO about 1 time every hour. I play in windowed mode, the image freezes, I do NOT hear sound anymore, the game goes to not responding, and I can close the program returning to windows.


Processor: AMD Athlon X2 Processor 2.7 GHz, 3.0 MB Cache
Motherboard: Biostar TF560 A2+
Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 4890 Sapphire Vapor-x 2GB GDDR5
PSU: Xion SuperNova 800 watt
Memory: 4gb
OS: Vista 64-bit

I was having another game crash too but I had to reboot my computer to get out of it. I updated my BIOS and I thought it was fixed. The other game has not crashed again. DDO worked for 2 days but last night it froze 3 times in 3 hours, and more today, except now I can return to windows so I think this is a separate problem than the first one. I would really like to solve this because DDO is awesome, but freezing really sux.

I am using Catalyst 9.9 drivers atm, but I will try 9.7 as Pod has suggested. I will post updates.

[ogboot]

I was running the 9.9 too, and once disabledthe hda the game worked better in the sense of no more stuttering, but the "freezings" became worts.
With worst i mean: audio stopping or looping and no cursor movement. I was still able to alt+tab thou.
installing catalyst 9.7 fixed this last problem.

I hope this could fix the problem of the many people struggling to make this game work.

Don't want to jump the gun but tonite I did game for about 2 hours with no issues.
uninstalled 9.9 driver
rebooted
installed 9.7
disabled HDA in device manager.

We'll monitor this for a bit and see if it continues. As i'm sure you all know this isn't something that immediately rears it's ugly head.

[shagath]

I had all of the problems mentioned here, then installed ATI Catalyst 9.10 Beta.. Played for 8 hours and no freeze but now I can't see earth elementals. It wasn't too bad problem as my party charged at them and I knew where to threw fireballs at although I would love to see those elementals.

Any fixes on that "wont start with the first run after logging in but only after"?

By the way, disabling integrated hda ain't a working solution for me as I use it's microphone in..

ATI Radeon 4850 512MB
X-Fi Xtreme Gamer
Asrock A790GMH/128
Windows 7 Home Premium

[ogboot]

I had all of the problems mentioned here, then installed ATI Catalyst 9.10 Beta.. Played for 8 hours and no freeze but now I can't see earth elementals. It wasn't too bad problem as my party charged at them and I knew where to threw fireballs at although I would love to see those elementals.

Any fixes on that "wont start with the first run after logging in but only after"?

By the way, disabling integrated hda ain't a working solution for me as I use it's microphone in..

ATI Radeon 4850 512MB
X-Fi Xtreme Gamer
Asrock A790GMH/128
Windows 7 Home Premium

If freezing is your major issue then you can probably just change drivers and leave HDA enabled.

[Rumple66]

ok. now using catalyst 9.7 and disabled hda. Managed to make it through one dungeon without crashing. Now in storehouse (beginner mission) and the character gets stuck on one of the tiles-- is that what you mean by "stuttering"?

Either way, my frustration level's high enough that I'm going to take some time away from this game.

[intouchwithnature]

that settles it. i cant play like this. every 2 minutes DDO freezes. everything i tried only seems to make things worse.

[Aurelian]

Hey guys. I've been off for some days and haven't been able to troubleshoot at all.

@Pod: Your recent experiences look very interesting. I'll be trying it out and will post about the outcome when possible.
I'm wondering about something though. It seems to me that the freezes are linked (at least to a certain level) to specific places. There's many dungeons I can run flawlessly, whereas others have a 100% certain freeze liability. If you've had similar experiences, have you been back to those places since you changed to Cata 9.7 and disabled HDA?

[pod]

(with stuttering I meant experiencing small freezes where the game run normal for 20-30 seconds, then freezing for a couple seconds, again and again)

Some days have been passed since when i posted about the fixes wich made my game stable.
I've played quite a lot since then, and even re-run the same dungeons.
For now, no problems at all and the game is finally running properly.
(btw I'm running on my new HD4870 now, and not on my older HD4850, wich was suffering of the same exact problems)

[ogboot]

it seemed to fix my issues as well, i got on twice last nite and didn't have any lockups. to those that still have major issues:

did you uninstall your current drivers first? I initially tried to just install the 9.7 driver without removing my current one and it didn't help. only after i removed my current ATi software (ALL of it), rebooted, and installed the 9.7 did it help.

If this doesn't help, have you opened a ticket with turbine? They have been helping people pinpoint their problem, but they aren't actively reading this thread for sure. Before you get to the point that you rage quit, open a support ticket with them and see what they can do to help.

[whywasiborn]

First I disabled the HDA Device and added the DDO folder to the exclusion list on Avast and tried playing. I still got stuttering. I made it thru one solo quest, and on the 2nd group quest it froze.
I uninstalled Catalyst 9.9, reboot, installed 9.7, reboot. I downloaded "display driver only", are you using the complete package with the catalyst control center?
With 9.7 installed, my graphics card shows an error in the device manager. In the device status window it says:
------
Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)

Click 'Check for solutions' to send data about this device to Microsoft and to see if there is a solution available.
------

I tried running the game like this and it says no graphics card found.

I'm not sure what to try next, except downloaded 9.7 again in case I somehow got a bad copy.
Is my GPU too new to go back to an older driver? It's an ATI Radeon HD 4890 Sapphire.

[whywasiborn]

[QUOTE=ogboot;2447992]only after i removed my current ATi software (ALL of it), rebooted, and installed the 9.7 did it help.
QUOTE]

Thank you for saying this Ogboot, "ALL OF IT". I had to also uninstall the ATI installer.
Now Catalyst 9.7 is up and running on my system and it's time for me to try out the game.
I will post later to say whether it has froze or not.

[wiggen]

ATI video cards especially the ones from the latest 1-2 year have cooling issues. The original stock cooler on 4850 was so inefficient and laud after 4-5 month, that i thought i have to change it. But after clening the clooler with compressed air it went back to work like a new one.
So i suggest you to try to clean your video cards sometimes.