ATI CARDS crashing, freezing, stuttering (SOLVED?)

[susanabb]

I know it is an issue relates ATi GPUs, Driver and Catalyst... because i already tried an 8800GT on this same pc which has a hd3300 onboard, and it worked fine with the 8800GT and when going back to the 3300 it didnt work again.

[Snowine]

Here is some feedback...

I downloaded the game for the first time Sept 9th, 2009, so I'm very new here. My OS (well I have 3 but the one I'm playing DDO with) is Win 7 - 64bit. After a couple of days I was able to play 98% without problems by setting the graphics engine to DX9. DX10 gave me black screens, freezing, and textures going haywire.

[Render]
GraphicsCore=D3D9 (instead of D3D10 installed by default)

DX10 has given me problems in several games in the past few months. Could not play them unless forcing those games to use DX9 in either Vista 64bit or Win 7 64bit. DX10 looks great and hopefully in few months some updates from M$ or AMD will be released that will allow me to use it again.

Radeon 4850 (all 9 - 9.7 drivers)
Intel i7 920
9GB RAM
RealTek Audio (have to RMA my Creative external sound box, one of these centuries)

I still get the black screen but that happens rarely, guesstimate once every 24 hours of play time. Switching to windowed mode and back usually fixes. Even rarer I have to kill DDO and restart the game.

[Legotyler]

afaik, the normal catalyst 9.7 drivers are compatible with all 2000 and 3000 series cards, as long as they are not agp (which requires the agp hotfix version) or mobility versions (for which you need to mod the drivers yourself)

As far as modding the drivers, you mean having him install the drivers through the device manager (old school). Or are you referring to some advanced coding mod? Thanks for all the help on here man, I don't think enough of us have said that.

[pod]

I mean this:

http://www.driverheaven.net/modtool.php

step by step guide below in the same page

[bathtube]

this looks like some cideo card/monitor problem.
check if the video card is properly connected to the motherboard.
also some low quality monitor might "not like" your video card output, causing random problems like loosing signal.
it could even be a power supply problem, wich under load, can't provide enough power causing your card to fail.
does it happen in ddo only?

i seem to use nearly the same config (Win XP, SP3; ATI altough AGP bought my ASUS monitor this summer without receiving any troubles till tuesday, when i started playing D&DO. screen turns black and the monitor finds no signal at all. had to do the starting quest twice and will start the first village quest for the second time now too. If i stay with this game.

I tried this game instantly after learning about its existance as i grew up with AD&D pen&paper, startet with the first games (pool of radiance, champions of krynn,... on a 386 processor...

[Autolycus]

i seem to use nearly the same config (Win XP, SP3; ATI altough AGP bought my ASUS monitor this summer without receiving any troubles till tuesday, when i started playing D&DO. screen turns black and the monitor finds no signal at all.

FYI, This is exactly what happens to me. My config is Win XP SP3 ATI HD3650 AGP with a Samsung LCD.

[Snowine]

This is such a long thread so not sure if it's been posted already. Here is the link to the latest DirectX build, might to do this & test before you dive into messing with the GPU drivers. In the past you never got the latest dx build by simply using Windows Update, had to go out and grab it yourself:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

[toxicgus]

I had the freezing issue on a retail Windows 7 home 64bit install with a 2900. I tried the 9.7 drivers, turning off DirectX10 and I actually never installed the HDMI audio driver.

The thing that fixed it in the end was running the DirectX updater as Snowine suggested. It grabbed about 70mb of updates from March 2006 to August 2009 (Thanks MS for not putting those on the DVD) and installed some files and now DDO seems to be entirely happy. (I think the longest run I had without a lockup before that was 6-7 minutes, and it's running obviously smoother).

So anyone who has just done a clean install of any version of Vista or Windows 7 and hasn't installed any other recent games should expect this to be a problem (if not always the only one), and anyone else should probably give it a go anyway.

Also I got the no signal issue when I first started up DDO as well, I fixed it by using a digital cable and then setting the resolution and refresh rate manually to ones I knew worked. (On my Samsung LCD-TV analog actually looks alot better because it won't take it's native res via HDMI, but if you don't have that problem just use a digital cable and forget the rest)

[thejynxed]

If you've already installed the Aug09 Redist, then you will rather want to use this instead:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...a-9b6652cd92a3

This applies the Sept and Oct DX patches (if any are available), and also will update the DX XNA stuff, and the DX SDK stuff at the same time.

[Snowine]

I'm surprised there isn't a sticky or a link in the FAQ at the top of these forums for getting the latest DirextX build. It needs to be added in since it's such a common problem. Most games sticky the link!

[rfachini]

Nothing has solved my problem, including both of those Direct X update links.

Can Turbine contact ATI directly and ask for help?

[rfachini]

I have sent an e-mail to ATI asking for technical support.

I suggest others do the same. The link is:
http://emailcustomercare.amd.com/

[Hunternixx]

Hi All,
if this helps even 1 person then it is worth it.This may be a bit long so apologies in advance.

I have an ATI Raedon 9550. I was running catalyst and ccc from version 8.4 no problem. However, when I tried to run Spellforce (the platinum of the original game) I would get "Conflict: A hook process was found. Please deactivate all antivirus and anti trojan programmes and debuggers." After hours of troubleshooting (turning off firewalls, spam filters, anti virus, and other stuff) it turned out the be the ATI drivers. So I upgraded.... Spellforce was good to go but now DDO would not run - I was getting the NEW BSOD! - Black screen of death. The new ATI drivers failed on dxdiag when checking for direct3d for v8 and v9. I reinstalled Directx 9c and nada. I downgraded from 9.8 to 9.3 but no luck (and to be honest I question if the uninstall even really worked 100%). So then I uninstalled 9.3, rebooted into safe mode, ran Driver Sweeper (drivercleaner may have spyware, etc associated - I am not sure. Google it and see for yourself.). Once drive sweeper gave me the thumbs up (TONS of atidrivers still existed), I rebooted. Once in the OS I reinstalled just the drivers version of 8.4 (which still installed some of CCC). I didn't even need to reboot. Spellforce immediately would no longer run, the process hook error was back. however.... DDO would run!!! I am not sure if it will run as well as before but the game started, I could see my character and swing my swords. I was happy. I may try and spend a few hours this weekend to see if I can get to a higher driver rev and fix both DDO and Spellforce but I've already lost several hours of my life already and think I may just want to game for a bit with those precious few hours I get. I did not run dxdiag to ensure that the 8.4 version ran the direct3d properly for v8 and v9 but I imagine that it will. if it does not, I will post here again but if not, assume that they ran properly.

** EDIT **
The direct3d tests ran fine for 7,8 and 9 whereas before they were failing on 8 and 9.

Has anyone with a 9550 card tested a different version of the ATI drivers aside from 8.4? I'd rather not go thru trial and error - too time consuming. Thanks!

Best to all of you and good luck. This problem suxxorz, no doubt.

[Zanzibar]

My system:

Athlon XP 3200+
2 GB RAM
Running Samsung 20" LCD, 1400x1050; has DVI plugs, but I haven't replaced my analog cable yet.

AGP Sapphire ATI Radeon 3650 512MB DDR2

Downgraded drivers from 9.9 to 9.3.

got the usual annoying issues last month. My workaround, based on a previous poster in this thread:

Set everything in Advanced Graphics to off/minimal, except Model Detail and Texture Detail to High. (Material Detail High is also ok)

When in Korthos/Stormreach (loads of people) I run Object Draw Distance: Low. This drastically lengthens the amount of time I can play without blackscreen, 3 hours+.

When I enter an instance, I set Object Draw Distance: Very High so i can make use of my longbow :-)

Before I leave an instance, or right after, if I forget, I set the ODD back to Low.

Virtually all of my crashes come from rotating the camera and/or just viewing a non-instance scene of a dozen or more players.

I might have crashed once or twice in an instance, but never like the black-screen crash that causes VPU recover when outdoors.

Cerulean Hills are ok on a fresh boot, but not after playing a few hours. (example of an outdoors instance.)

It's like every player model I see adds to an invisible counter, vs. the instant freezes/stutters if any advanced graphics options are on and I view a group of players.

The new 9.10 drivers mention fixing a black screen streaming problem in Windows XP.

Can anyone download the Hotfix version of 9.10 and test? It would be great if that fixes the issue.

Sapphire also has an 8.9 driver that I haven't tried yet.

I've only done full catalyst installs. Anyone know if installing driver-only is more stable?

Thanks!

[Taitiana]

Gonna try it out now-I have an ATI 4850-Runs great most of the time combined with a i7 quad core. Then the screen just blacks out...The game is still going though.

Be right back with the results of this supposed fix.

Back. God, the game works with the download....Thank you! The game is great, got to stormreach, and glad I'm getting the chance to play this game. It hasn't crashed since.

[ogboot]

Update for me.
I moved to Win7 x64 RTM and have had ZERO issues. Max everything, no trickery with the install of the OS, drivers, or the game. Just loaded everything up and away I went. Running all the directx 10 settings, etc etc.
Ati 4870
i5 cpu
2gb OCZ

[Hardur]

I still have this issue (in DDO only, not other games).

The game freezes now and then, and there don't seem to be any kind of pattern as I have seen at least.

I can sometimes play 20 minutes, sometimes it happens at character generation/selection.

Spec:
- Windows 7 Ultimate x64
- i7 920
- 6 GB RAM
- XFX ATI Radeon 4890 1 GB

I have tried removing gfx drivers, downgrading, upgrading (9.7-9.10), no luck.

This started not long ago, I belive 1 - 1 1/2week or so.

[Preylor]

I just got an ATI 5870 and inside some buildings like the bank and some npc houses, the game will pause every few seconds, and eventually freeze up. I noticed it happening last week when I was still using ATI 3870s in crossfire with the same drivers. Never had this problem before since rejoining when Free-to-Play launched.

Windows 7 64 bit
ATI 5870
Catalyst Driver 9.10

[rfachini]

Mod 9 did not fix this, and it actually seems more frequent for me now. I froze four time in a couple hours, once near the Inspiration area of the harbor, once near Jeets, once in the Jeets quest, and once near the brothers in the marketplace while taking screenshots. Turbine has not given me any support. I was told Mirthgar would help me, and I received an e-mail from my tech ticket, but I have not been contacted or given any help. ATI sent me an e-mail saying they lost some tech tickets, so I'll have to resubmit. I'd like to see Turbine support their paying customers.

[MAP1974]

just throwing my name down as another person experiencing problems with the game at the moment.

mine range from game errors appeairng when i open say internet explorer, to the now more recent screen stuttering i get just running around in-game, which makes the game unplayable.

my game errors never used to occur prior to Mod 9, and the stuttering seems to have have now started following the recent Update. I have reloaded game, download manager, DirectX and turned on and off other programs etc in an attempt to fix things, to no avail.

i will give my tech ticket a little longer to run, and cross my fingers the fix in a few days rectifies the situation.