ATI Radeon HD 5970 and HD4870X2 problem SOLVED!

WildPuppy

Hi,

I have played the game for a lot of time on my old ATI 9600 with 128Mb of memory without any problems.
This year I bought a new PC with ATI HD4870x2 and the game no longer works. It randomly freezes my computer and I have to restart it. This happens either on the startup splash, or in the menu, or 5-10 minutes in the game.
Thinking it is a hardware related problem, I have upgraded to HD5970 from HIS (at the time of purchase it was about $1000!) and still have the same problem.

I have uninstalled the game, deleted all references to it and EA from the registry and reinstalled but with no success.

Can someone PRETTY PLEASE help me? Love the game, but can not play it.

My current setup is:
CPU:Intel E8400 core 2 duo@3GHz with SPIRE Verticool II CPU cooler
MB:Gigabyte EP45-DS3
RAM:4Gb RAM (2x2Gb dual channel kits)
GPU:HIS Radeon HD5970
HDD:WesternDigital Caviar BLACK harddrive
PS:1500W SPIRE power suply
OS:Windows7 x64 SP1

Help .

WildPuppy

Garnet_Alexandria

Maybe there's a chance the game might like multi-GPU configurations, at least Crossfire, without some work?

Failing that, it might be running them wild. This game has no v-sync option, so by default, the GPUs run it as fast as they can. This has been known to cause GPUs to overheat, or sometimes fail.

With nVidia hardware/drivers, forcing v-sync in the control panel works. Last I heard, it doesn't with ATI/AMD GPUs, but there's frame limiting software programs out there. I'd look into them and watch temperatures.

WildPuppy

Thank you for your reply.

Very interesting point of view, heat that is...

Still, it would not be possible to overheat this animal of a graphic board mounted in an ANTEC twelve hundred V3 with 6 blowers(3 input, 3 output) in the splash screen. I refuse to believe it.
I just tried to start the game, it crashed 2 seconds in the startup splash screen. Tried to check the air temperature coming out of the board, it was cooler than the ambient temp.
Still, I will get a frame limiter software to try it.

Weird thing is that in the same hardware, using winXP 32bit the game would work like a charm. Unfortunately, I only have Win7x64 license so XP32 is out of the question. I suspect this to be a Win7 OR a 64bit related problem. I have no space on the HDD to try WinXPx64, I wonder if it would work...

Oh, I forgot to mention, no Over Clocking active, either CPU or GPU. All frequencies and voltages are standard.

bob007

Your on the right track but you need to narrow it down - hint it's called the device driver. I had the same problem with Nvidia dual gpu card until a device driver update.

Garnet_Alexandria

WildPuppy wrote:

Very interesting point of view, heat that is...

Still, it would not be possible to overheat this animal of a graphic board mounted in an ANTEC twelve hundred V3 with 6 blowers(3 input, 3 output) in the splash screen. I refuse to believe it.
I just tried to start the game, it crashed 2 seconds in the startup splash screen. Tried to check the air temperature coming out of the board, it was cooler than the ambient temp.
Still, I will get a frame limiter software to try it.

Normally, a video card shouldn't overheat from this, but it has been known to cause it, so I'd rather be safe than sorry. I never had issues, but I forced v-sync on for this game (I hated the screen tearing anyway). The Starcraft II menus did the same thing, if you ever heard of that one, so it's definitely something that's happened. For whatever reason, these 2D menus in some games are just seemingly cooking video cards. Many should be fine, but others haven't been as lucky.

Anyway, if that's it, maybe it's just the dual GPU on the card it's not liking?

Nichaedemus

Hi,

Unfortunately, NVidia SLI and ATI CrossFire setups are not officially supported by The Sims 3 game. If using a dual GPU setup on a single PCB video card, it is advised that you switch off one of the GPUs via the video driver control panel. If using a multi-video card configuration, it is advised that you physically remove the extra video card(s).

WildPuppy

@Garnet_Alexandria: You are right, I remember a friend of mine burning his graphics board with a 2D classic game... Anyway, in my case you were right in your first post, it was a multi-GPU problem.

@Nichaedemus:
BINGO !
I took your advice and disabled the secondary GPU and now the game runs as it should: smooth and beautiful.

Thank you, thank you, thank you !