I have just upgraded from a Geforce 4 MX440 64Mb card to an ASUS A9550GE (ATI Raedon 9550) 256Mb card.
Since the swap over, I have been experiencing alot of temporary monitor blackouts (1-2 seconds) in windows. But the real problem is when I try to run some of my favourite games. Here's what happens with these games:
Halo (trial) - Fails To initiate due to some "exception"
GTA III - Fails to initiate at all
Doom III - Runs good. However, after playing it today for around 35-45 minutes, it locked up. The lockup is the same as the games listed below and I will dexcribe more about the lockup below.
Star Wars: Battlefront - A bit touch and go. Certain maps it runs ok. Other maps (for those that know the game) such as the battle of hoth always lockup. But, like Doom III, after playing it for about 35-45 minutes, it locked up.
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Now, with the lockup different things happen, but always eventuate to the same thing. The majority of the time the graphics will just freeze where they are. The sound will jump. This happens for about 10-20 seconds, then the monitor goes on standby (as it does when there is no signal sent to it). On other occasions, particularly in Star Wars: Battlefront, I get a complete jumble of colored pixels, and the monitor goes on standby. In one instance, the computer just restarted and my windows resolution changed from 1024x768 to 800x600 (or the one below, I can't remember).
I only bought the card two days ago. This morning, I rang the place where I bought it from and they suggested formating and re-installing windows. I needed to do that anyway, so I have done that and I am still experiencing the same problems.
This is greatly annoying because with my old card, even though it is much slower than this new one, had no problems at all. I must also say that the performance of the games, in particular Doom III, has increased significantly. The problem is instability.
I have checked in the device manager and it shows no problems or conflicts with any hardware. I have also installed all of the drivers that came with the card, including Direct X 9.0c.
Please help me... This is the most frustrating thing that has ever happened to my computer in its history... And there have been quite a few things, believe me.
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Off-topic: I am a new user and I think this is a great forum!