Halo 1 & 2 for PC
This topic has moved here: Subject: I need help using an incompatible graphics card
  • Subject: I need help using an incompatible graphics card
Subject: I need help using an incompatible graphics card
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For some reason, the Nvidia 6600GT video card doesn't work well with Halo at all. In fact, the support website says no Nvidia cards without turing anti-aliasing off in full screen mode. Well, I did that and it didn't help. When I first open the program, the floating ring thingy slowly starts to render more and more inccorect with weird neon colors. Finally when every polygon on the screen is blinking or flashing green or red or whatever, it all stops for at least an hour. Btw the same thing happens if I enter gameplay too. What really sucks is RCT3 and C&C Generals also have this problem! I triple checked to make sure I have the latest driver for my video card installed and I do. I also turned the hardware accelleration down 1 notch and turned write combining off and it's STILL not fixed. I think what's happening is my computer is too fast and is rending them wrong because of that since if I run a ton of programs at once, it at least slows down the onset of the flashy problem (or in Generals I play with 7 computer players and it never happens)
I can put up with weird flashing for a minute every hour or so but more importantly, about every 45 minutes the game freezes, the sounds skip a couple times then go silent, then my computer instantly shuts off and restarts! Anyone know what's causing that? (Yes it's patched up to 1.07 or whatever)

  • 01.03.2006 4:14 PM PDT
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ok, it seems that you actually have a legitimate problem my friend. First off, make sure that if you have overclocked the card that you try to turn it down a little, as this may fix the problem. Also, there may be an issue with the kind of motherboard you are using, the drivers for that motherboard, power supply issues, agp issues (assuming that you are using agp), make sure the card is put in all the way to its port, and finally, email whatever company made your card (3dfx, BFG, ASUS, etc.).

Note: It is also possible that you do not have the current version of DirecX, which is not up to 9.0c.

PS. I can help you more if you email me a jsmay90@gmail.com

  • 01.03.2006 6:37 PM PDT
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yaaaaaaaay another geek :P lol, no I didn't overclock it cuz it was like $250 and I'd hate to overheat it. How is Nvidia about replying to e-mails? Cuz I think I'll have to talk to them since it happens in more than one game by more than one software maker. I have DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904) which I think is the most up to date version. Oh and it's PCI Express.

  • 01.03.2006 6:52 PM PDT
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what are the full stats of your computer? I am speaking of CPU, RAM, motherboard, etc.

  • 01.03.2006 6:53 PM PDT
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Motherboard:
CPU Type AMD Athlon 64, 2000 MHz (10 x 200) 3200+
Motherboard Name Asus A8N-E (3 PCI, 2 PCI-E x1, 1 PCI-E x4, 1 PCI-E x16, 4 DDR DIMM, Audio, Gigabit LAN)
Motherboard Chipset nVIDIA nForce4 Ultra, AMD Hammer
System Memory 1024 MB (DDR SDRAM)
BIOS Type Award (05/20/05)
Communication Port Communications Port (COM1)
Communication Port Printer Port (LPT1)

Display:
Video Adapter NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT (128 MB)
3D Accelerator nVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT PCI-E
Monitor Acer AL1703 [17" LCD] (ETL3409004)
Monitor Default Monitor (ETL3409004)

Multimedia:
Audio Adapter nVIDIA MCP04 - Audio Codec Interface

Storage:
IDE Controller NVIDIA nForce4 ADMA Controller
IDE Controller NVIDIA nForce4 ADMA Controller
IDE Controller NVIDIA nForce4 Parallel ATA Controller
SCSI/RAID Controller A347SCSI SCSI Controller
Disk Drive HDS722516VLSA80 (160 GB, 7200 RPM, SATA)
Disk Drive ST3120827AS (120 GB, 7200 RPM, SATA)
Optical Drive AOPEN DUW1616/ARR
Optical Drive AOPEN DVD1648/AAP PRO (16x/48x DVD-ROM)
Optical Drive AXV CD/DVD-ROM SCSI CdRom Device (Virtual DVD-ROM)
SMART Hard Disks Status OK

Partitions:
C: (NTFS) 114470 MB (60023 MB free)
G: (NTFS) 157064 MB (122911 MB free)
Total Size 265.2 GB (178.6 GB free)

Input:
Keyboard Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural PS/2 Keyboard
Mouse PS/2 Compatible Mouse

Network:
Network Adapter NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller - Packet Scheduler Miniport (192.168.1.101)

Peripherals:
Printer \\PC\HP DeskJet 930C/932C/935C
USB1 Controller nVIDIA MCP04 - OHCI USB Controller
USB2 Controller nVIDIA MCP04 - EHCI USB 2.0 Controller

  • 01.03.2006 7:58 PM PDT
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lol, where did u copy and paste that from? Anyways, it is strange that you are having problems. I suppose that you should try to contact your graphic card's manufacturer and wait for a response. By the way, are you sure that you have disabled your onboard graphics that came with your computer?

  • 01.04.2006 4:16 AM PDT
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well, I didn't think this one had on board graphics but I never did anything to it if it does. I assume since the company that custom built it put in the graphics card at the time that they did it. Also, I really only have 2 hard drives and 2 optical drives. The third one is a fake one created by Alcohol 120% so I can mount CD images on it and play with no CD. Also, I think my power supply is either a 500 or 550 and I turned the neon bar lights inside the case off a long time ago :P lol. Oh and I pasted that from a generated report in Everest from Lavalys.

  • 01.04.2006 9:33 AM PDT
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You should have said that it was custom built. You need to get in contact with the company that built it and demand support. If it has always had problems with games then it must be a build error. They could have used crappy parts, not have soldered cable correctly, not have checked all the connections, or, god forbid, they could have used "refurbished" parts. Talk to them. By the way, have you talked to your graphics card manufacturer yet?

  • 01.04.2006 12:52 PM PDT
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I'm having trouble with that since they claim:
"NVIDIA does NOT build graphics cards or motherboards. Since each of our manufacturing partners may implement NVIDIA technology differently, it is not possible for NVIDIA to directly support our partner’s products."

So who knows what the do if they don't make graphics cards. I did find a similar problem though. Someone submitted to Nvidia's support thingy the question: Artifacts are appearing in DX games with the GeForce 6600 GT AGP. WHat can I do about this?

And apparently a third dictionary definition of artifact is a structure or feature not normally present but visible as a result of an external agent or action. Sounds like my problem to me. They have a fix for it, but this whole thing was a problem with the 6600GT AGP and mine's PCI-E. So I don't really want to install the wrong fixed driver for it. I'll keep looking though.

  • 01.05.2006 1:54 PM PDT

Posted by: Nessy

The bungie.net community is the halo PC community that is renowned for being unbelieveably sucky.

You need to go to the website of your video card manufacture and request an RMA, in the meantime, try another video card. It sound like your 6600 is basically broken.

  • 01.05.2006 2:01 PM PDT
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I'd rather not wait like 4 weeks for a new video card grrrrrrr. And since SO many ppl have had problems with the 6600GT AGP card, especially with Gigabyte motherboard (which I have) I think I'm gonna have a talk with the store that built it and see if they can give me a full refund for the card + an upgrade to a 6800 or something, and only pay the difference.

  • 01.05.2006 2:12 PM PDT
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talk to the people that built your computer. they might know better what to do... if not... or rather most likely WHEN they dont know... *sigh...* then find out who made the video card and talk to them. i would also go to your motherboard manufacturer's website, look up your motherboard, and make sure your GART driver is up to date... wait a second... im not even sure pci-x uses GART... erg.. ignore that... unless someone else can come in and confirm that for me

  • 01.05.2006 3:22 PM PDT
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lol, ATI. Trust me, stick with Nvidia. The first. The best. And plus you get more pixel pipelines. I mean, ATI makes good cards, but in my experience Nvidia is better.

  • 01.05.2006 6:14 PM PDT
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Nvidia made almost every part in my computer apparently, lol. If I put in an ATI card, it'll start shooting CD's at me or something. I talked to the ppl that built it and they said it's almost definitely a driver problem, which makes sense cuz it only happens in some games. I'm going to try to find a ton of different drivers, mostly beta ones from Nzone and see if they work. First up is the driver fix for this exact problem with the AGP version of my card.

  • 01.05.2006 6:59 PM PDT
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Its definatly either your card, or the drivers. I have almost the EXACT same setup, only I have an x800xl instead of a 6600.

  • 01.05.2006 10:51 PM PDT
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i am running halo on an old system with nvidia geforce 4 mx 440 card with only 64 meg of its own memory and to be honest, i think this runs the game perfectly, as good as if not better than the xbox version. i have had no problems with the graphics seeing as its such low memory for a power hungry game, so, i therefor think nvidia cards are perfectly ample for halo.

compaq dekpro pentium 3, 1ghz
384 mb sdram
geforce 4 graphics card 64mb
creative audigy 5.1 card
emprex 16x dvd rw
80gig seagate hd



BLUE TEAM HAS THE FLAG
BLUE TEAM SCORE

  • 01.06.2006 4:28 AM PDT
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Posted by: original_jsmay90
lol, ATI. Trust me, stick with Nvidia. The first. The best. And plus you get more pixel pipelines. I mean, ATI makes good cards, but in my experience Nvidia is better.


You're right - nVidia has more pixel pipelines. However, ATi has more pixel shader operations per clock cycle. Even a 16 pipeline X1800XT can whollop the 24 pipeline 7800GT in half of the benchmarks you see on the net. That alone speaks to the fact that pipelines are a general performance guideline. Going by pipelines alone and not by actual performance is not always that accurate. I'd also state that nVidia's Forceware drivers cause me headaches with CS:S and that their anisotropic filtering is not that great!

Back to the topic->>>

Did you install the drivers that came on the CD [from the non-nVidia manufacturer]? Don't! Lol, I installed eVGA's versions and they made half of the objects in my games purple and black checkerboard. Install nVidia's Forceware.

Have you checked how hot this card runs? Is there any way you can give us a general idea of its idle/load temperatures? Be sure it's being well ventilated wherever it is, and that all cables are neatly tucked in to maximize airflow. 6600GT's are pretty hot running and can overheat fast.

  • 01.06.2006 6:48 AM PDT
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thanks to sld i dont have to rant about ati>nv either...

whew im actually relieved.... imo if someone can only name one spec about a video card to call it better they need to shut up and research

  • 01.06.2006 12:55 PM PDT