Windows Doom 3 crashing problems on a 9800pro? help

I just got a Radeon 9800 pro 256mb running on a 2mhz, 768mb Dell. Doom3 looks great but in certain spots it seems, or every 10 minutes (not sure which one it is), the game freezes and the screen turns garbled with weird colored horizontal lines. What should i do, is it a card configuration problem, or do i need a driver update? Thanks for any help!

-Ben

 

Sounds like your Radeons memory is over heating...

 

Do you have it hooked to it's own, private supply from the PSU. I know Radeons are a bit edgy in that regard... used to get all sorts of artifacts in CoD and UT2004 on my Rad9700Pro until I gave it it's own supply, with no fans or optical drives on the same string of molexes...

 

yeah it doesn't have it's own power supply could overheating be the reason? what can i do to help that?

 

If it's the PSU, get a big-ass, quality one like an Antec.

If it's overheating (more likely), well, use your modding imagination: extra fans in the case, bigger heatsink, more airflow generally. Or go WC. I'd probably run the game with the side of the case off and a big fan on it. See if it indeed makes a difference.

And finally, you can fix the problem by reducing the load on your poor GPU, by making the shader routines more efficient. Get Humus' fix at Beyond3D to increase Doom3 performance on your ATi card without losing graphics quality, by using a simple but effective hack of one of the game files. Game on!

 

i had the same problem with my 9700 till i installed the new 4.9 beta drivers from here http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4547.html since then the game has run fine.