I have an Asus a7v MB and Asus v7700 deluxe video card. (GF 2 GTS and VIA Kt133 chipset for Athlon Tbird) I have no problems whatsoever in any application or game that I've tried so far.
Here it is, my general video problem solution guide:
1. On VIA chipsets MAKE sure you update your AGP driver. Go to
www.viahardware.com and then download and install the newest AGP driver. Don't bother with the other 3 drivers. There are 2 modes to install in: turbo and normal. Normal mode basically limits you to AGP 1x. If you pick this you should probably be 100% stable, but performance will suffer. The better option is to install in turbo mode. If you experience lockups, limit Agp speed to 2x. You usually can do this in the bios.
2. You NEED a 300W power supply, and a good one at that, if you plan on running a Geforce card. You also need to be sure that your system is not overheating. AH can put a heavy load on a system and temperatures must be kept under control to prevent a lockup. Make sure you have proper ventilation for your system. You may be able to isolate heat related problems by running the system with the case off and a fan blowing into the case. If the lockups cease you have found your problem, add some fans.
3. IMO if you are using DX7a under Windows 9x (95, 98, ME), then going to DX 8 or 8a is likely to create more problems than it fixes. If you have Win 2000, then Dx 8a is the best. (DX 8 WILL break RW, you will have to set it to WAV recording to get it to work again.)
4. Update your sound and video card drivers to the newest OFFICIAL versions if you are having problems. If you find one that works, why update it??? My experiences are that the 6.31 driver works well for DX7 systems and that DX 8 will cause the tearing. If you have Dx 8, then try the 7.5x versions or the newest 11.01s if you are daring. (New detonators are usually at
www.reactorcritical.com ) Before trying the detonators I would recommend using the newest driver from your video card maker. Often times the video card maker will spend the extra time to support extra features like TV out etc.
4. Check to make sure interupts aren't being shared between your video card, sound card, and modem. Also, never put a sound card in the PCI slot below your AGP slot for your video card. 99.9% of MBs will share the IRQ between these 2 slots. This WILL result in problems.
5. Stuttering problems on Voodoo cards are almost always related to the connection icon on the taskbar for modem users. Try removing it: my computer-> dialup networking -> connections menu -> settings -> uncheck the "show icon when connected ... "
I've found that ATI cards and even some Nvidia cards also benefit from this.
6. ATI video card users: Except for the Radeon drivers, almost ALL ATI driver revisions in the last 6 months have been full of bugs. I would avoid buying ATI video cards with the exception of the Radeon, which is OK IMO. Nearly all ATI video card users will get text tearing problems in the chat buffer. This is something to be aware of.
7. Make sure windows is up to date. Go to
www.windowsupdate.com .
8. Voodoo 3 and below cards CAN NOT do 32 bit color. They will lockup if you try. Delete the video.cfg file in the Aces High settings directory and pick 16 bit the next time you start AH.
------------------
bloom25
-MAW-
(Formerly of the)
THUNDERBIRDS
