[Psychocandy]

Howdy, fellow Adventurers!

Here's the issue: Lately, whenever I've attempted to play anything graphically demanding (the new Tomb Raider, Agatha Christie, Tunguska) the game shuts down after about five minutes of play, with garbled graphics and a "VPU Recover has reset your graphics accelerator as it was no longer responding to commands" message.

I had this problem about six months ago, but a friend of mine changed a setting somewhere on my ABIT Guru and everything was back to normal again. Does anybody know what that setting might have been, and would changing it again help?

If it's a Graphics card problem, I'm wondering whether that altered setting was enough to stop the crashing for a while, but not indefinitely. Could this be the case? Any help or advice would be much appreciated.

[MasterLoo]

What kind of ATI card do you have? I know some ATI cards has a problem with overheating which can be fixed by upgrading to the latest drivers from the homepage of ATI.

I am not sure about the setting nor the program, since it's been a while since I used a ATI card, but it could be something has reset this setting that was altered. Still, a card shall not overheat when it's used normally, unless it has been overclocked. I would try to upgrade to the latest drivers, since that will usually make the overclocked settings return to normal, and make sure the fan on the graphics card can move smoothly(watch out for dust in the fan). If the card uses a heat sink/pipe, make sure the air flow in your cabinet is good, so the heat got a place to exit the cabinet without overheating other components or cards.

Also, try disabling/closing software which is meant to utilize the card better. They sometimes causes problems with certain games, and if there are hardware problems already, they can sometimes make them worse(like, if you have poor air flow in your cabinet, too few fans... etc...). An example of such software is the Catalysator, which the ATI driver installs. Just close it down while playing the game with the issue to see if it has a positive effect. It will open again the next time you reboot.

[Collector]

I think what you are looking for is to set the AGP aperture size to 128 MB in your BIOS.

[Psychocandy]

Thanks muchly for your advice and assistance!

I have a Radeon 9800 Pro (or so my DXdiag tells me...) I'll scout out the newest drivers and see if that helps.

Incidentally, I checked out the BIOS and the AGP aperture size is already set at 128 MB... Would shifting it up a notch help, or would that just cause more problems?

[Collector]

128 worked for me. Try 64 MB. It might be from a number of issues. Take a look here: http://www.foxpop.com/imre/2005/vpur...purecover.html