5 replies to this topic

[xPsYcHoTiKx]

Hey guys, I'm thinking I'm going to upgrade some hardware to fix an ongoing problem that I've had. For those curious, the problem is that I continuously get the error message, "display driver has stopped working but has recovered" whenever I'm playing a game. I've not encountered it up to 4 days ago playing World of Tanks, however now every time I play it shows up and either makes the game unplayable or my computer locks up until reboot.

Here's some of my current specs.

Asus P5K-E Mobo
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16813131196

Nvidia 8800 GT graphics card
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814150252

Intel Core 2 Quad CPU ~2.4 GHz

Power Supply is 600 watts, don't remember what brand.

Everything except the power supply is about 4-5 years old. Should I do a complete rebuild from scratch or just update the graphics card? I'm leaning towards Radeon for my next card, as there's been shit all for support from Nvidia for this ongoing display drivers issue with many of their different cards.

I don't need anything super high end, as most of my gaming is not high end, but I do like the games I do play to run smoothly and well. I'm comfortable spending about $200-300 for a graphics card, or about $1,000 if I end up doing a complete rebuild.

Thanks in advance guys!

[Paradoxex]

I'll spend some more time on this later, but if you are sure the error is not caused by a video driver (that can be fixed by changing the driver), I'd look into an nvidia 560 or an ati 6870 as a good mid card.

Something like this: http://www.newegg.co..._-pla-_-NA-_-NA

or this:

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814125357

Although you're going to need to let us know what else you play. Also, at some level the CPU could limit the performance that you get from the video card. This is all dependent on the details, however.

Like I said, these are initial thoughts.

[xPsYcHoTiKx]

I've had this problem with this specific setup for years and through multiple driver updates. It's never gone completely away, and has persisted through multiple games I've played, (World of Warcraft, Eve, Starcraft II and in the last 3-4 days World of Tanks). It's odd because it's never acted up while playing World of Tanks, tho they did just patch it and are continuing to tweak the graphics, so I'm guessing something in the last patch hit whatever nerve it takes to get the display driver to act up.

I'm inclined to suspect the hardware, after spending some time googling the issue, the best I could come up with was some jury rigged tweaks that worked for some, (didn't fix mine) and that most think it's a hardware issue with some cards. Although to be fair, there were numerous cases of people who've never had the problem, went to updated drivers, developed the problem and then switched back to old drivers and the issue never showed up again. For me, the lack of Nvidia directly addressing the issue or fixing it, after several years has turned me off to them as a company and I'm inclined to try out a Ati card instead.

I know that I don't ever plan on overclocking any of my hardware, I'm a recreational gamer and I honestly don't know a ton about the hardware. I want a system that runs well, and preferably with as few problems as possible while still playing games with the graphics level higher than low.

[RollinDutch]

I'd agree with the 6870 as a great card for you. I'd probably get one of these though:

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814150561
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814121418

IMO that's about the best spot on the price/performance curve at the moment. You could go higher but I don't know that you'd really be getting your money's worth if the rest of the system is 4 years old. Just make sure you carefully remove all of the old drivers with something like DriverSweeper or you may run into problems.

[xPsYcHoTiKx]

I'll be doing a complete reformat of my hard drive. I'm still currently running Vista, (kept hoping it would die, but it never did. Good news is student discounted Win 7 is nice) and want to clear out all the junk/crap I have on my current desktop.

Would you recommend still using the DriverSweeper to clear out the old drives, or would a re-format take care of that for me?

[RollinDutch]

I'll be doing a complete reformat of my hard drive. I'm still currently running Vista, (kept hoping it would die, but it never did. Good news is student discounted Win 7 is nice) and want to clear out all the junk/crap I have on my current desktop.

Would you recommend still using the DriverSweeper to clear out the old drives, or would a re-format take care of that for me?

A fresh install will take care of it. You don't need to worry about it unless you're swapping video cards and trying to change installed drivers; shit gets left behind and causes problems. A clean install is always better anyway.