Game Crashed And My Video Card Died

[Beelzebubbles]

This may be the wrong forum for this, as I don't really think it's a bug report.

 

I've had it happen a few times where Warframe has locked up on me in the middle of a mission.  It wasn't "lag", but rather, the whole screen would lockup, no input would be accepted, no sound would be played.  Eventually--even up to 30 seconds later, the game would recover--a few seconds of stuttering frames and audio, and we'd be back.  I assumed it was just a performance issue with my rig.

 

Well, last night, it froze up like that, and then after 30 seconds or so, I lost my video signal to my monitor. I powered down the machine and when it came back up and started to POST, there were graphical artifacts on the screen.  Artifacts continued to be present through login into Windows (at 640x480).  Device Manager gave me a code 43 for the video card.  I was down for the count!

 

Now, I don't blame Warframe for killing this card.  My setup is from 2007!  The PC's a Core2 Duo of some sort, and the card was an Nvidia 8800 GTS with 512 MB of RAM.  It was OLD, as you can see and I have been surprised at how many games it has lasted through over the years.  I just wanted to point this out though on the off chance that anyone else has had a similar experience.

 

I'll be buying some kind of modern card tomorrow, and my PC will most certainly not utilize it to its maximum capability. It will be interesting to see how the game looks and plays when its performance is CPU bound, but clearly I'll need to upgrade the other components soon! :D

 

[Dreamwalk3r]

At least she died happy, running a good game.

[Beelzebubbles]

I'll pour one out and cheer to that!

[BrokenAtari]

Is that PC an old Dell XPS?

Also, depending on your chipset. You probably won't see any performance gains past a GTX 560 Ti on a PC that old.

[Beelzebubbles]

Yeah I was assuming I was mostly CPU-bound with my rig anyhow.  I was having to run at some 1300x700 resolution or whatever on my computer (which is hooked up to my 52" TV) in order for Warframe not to crash.

 

It's an old PC I put together back in the day when Crysis came out.  It was an "enthusiast-level" machine at the time, nothing hardcore about it at all, didn't even overclock it or anything.

 

At the very least though, I hope the new card will let me run at 1080p (had no problem doing that with Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer).  I just bought a Radeon HD7870 today. Will have to start thinking seriously about a new mobo, cpu, ram and SSD.

[Implodingbanana]

you should get a gaming PC or laptop if you game regularly or love it or you can buy parts and piece them together if you know how the results are amazing but it can be dangers so if you don't know you should contact a professional.

[TehJumpingJawa]

Years ago I had one of a pair of 8800 GTXs do much the same thing while playing GTA IV.

Machine locked up with graphical artifacts on screen -> reboot->permanent screen corruption.

Even though the card was 2 months outside the 12 month warranty, the retailer kindly organised an exchange for a GTX 260.

 

I'm surprised you've managed to keep going with a lowly 8800 GTS for so long!

[Beelzebubbles]

you should get a gaming PC or laptop if you game regularly or love it or you can buy parts and piece them together if you know how the results are amazing but it can be dangers so if you don't know you should contact a professional.

 

I fully agree with you.  I've been building gaming rigs for myself since the early nineties. :)  It's no longer a cost savings to build your own PC as it was back then, but it's still fun and you can wrangle more performance with a DIY setup.  The current rig has received some minor upgrades over the years--I added a 1TB drive once they became affordable, ditched the floppy drive, added 2 GB more RAM, etc, but it's just about time to overhaul the entire thing.  I will be keeping my Antec case though, at least.

 

 

Years ago I had one of a pair of 8800 GTXs do much the same thing while playing GTA IV.

Machine locked up with graphical artifacts on screen -> reboot->permanent screen corruption.

Even though the card was 2 months outside the 12 month warranty, the retailer kindly organised an exchange for a GTX 260.

 

I'm surprised you've managed to keep going with a lowly 8800 GTS for so long!

 

Hah, I'm surprised too.  It helps that I'm just running it all through my TV, so 1920x1080 max resolution.  Mass Effect 3 worked fine, as did XCOM, Magicka, Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, etc, but Skyrim, Deus Ex Human Revolution and Warframe all required me to lower the resolution and turn down the graphical detail considerably.  Skyrim especially--but my understanding is that i was severely CPU-bound in that case.

[[DE]Linkski]

I'll be buying some kind of modern card tomorrow, and my PC will most certainly not utilize it to its maximum capability. It will be interesting to see how the game looks and plays when its performance is CPU bound, but clearly I'll need to upgrade the other components soon! :D

 

Be sure to let us know how the game runs with the new card. Hopefully the crash is gone for good. I have lost count of how many times I've replaced a card just because it didn't quite hold up to newer games. Plus it's always fun to go back and check out 3-5 year old games just to see how they look with a fancy new GPU.

[Beelzebubbles]

Hi Dmitri,

 

I played all weekend at 1920x1080 with the new card in my old PC.  All is right with the world, well other than the fact that the UI seems too small at 1920x1080--it doesn't fill the screen like it did before and from my couch, it's hard to read.

Yeah I need to go try some of my old games, like Fallout New Vegas and Skyrim to see how they perform now.  I'm completely satisfied with how Warframe is running now so it makes me wonder if I need to bother updating my processor at all!  How many lives does this PC have!? :D

[[DE]Linkski]

Hi Dmitri,

 

I played all weekend at 1920x1080 with the new card in my old PC.  All is right with the world, well other than the fact that the UI seems too small at 1920x1080--it doesn't fill the screen like it did before and from my couch, it's hard to read.

Yeah I need to go try some of my old games, like Fallout New Vegas and Skyrim to see how they perform now.  I'm completely satisfied with how Warframe is running now so it makes me wonder if I need to bother updating my processor at all!  How many lives does this PC have!? :D

 

Good to hear! I know we're actively working to improve controller support and I will be sure to look into issues with the UI being small (it may already be being worked on). I hope if you're a Steam user that you're taking advantage of Big Picture Mode -- that thing has saved me a lot of grief.

[Beelzebubbles]

Yeah I've used Big Picture and that's WAY better for couch computing, definitely.  Warframe doesn't currently seem like the UI has been designed for this use case.  When I look at the menus on my friend's 24" monitor, less than three feet from my face, it's not an issue.