Having recently bought a 2900xt, ive been getting a Vpu recovery everytime i play the game, its getting real annoying as i cant access my clan server. Also considering how old this game is and not very gfx intensvie even at max settings and all my other games are fine including ET:QW.
Does anyone have a lcue to what could be wrong.
aww alienware, i wanna get that x2900 too, too bad it comes here in about 3 months.
main games hl2 episodes and etqw, should i buy a 8800GTS?(this is the best thing here, we dont have alienware)
also my x700 handles etqw good, outdoors 30-60fps and indoors 60gps @low settings 1280x1024
vpu recovery would normally be a sign of overheating or insufficient voltage. Or ATI driver bugs 
It is unlikely that ET is directly responsible.
Usually overheating (GPU or RAM) or low/wrong voltage. Also possible (but less likely) is a driver conflict. I doubt its a bug in W:ET, since there are no other reports about such erros.
I highly doubt its a problem with the card as the vpu recovery ONLY happens in ET, ET:QW is fine so is the various other games i play like GRAW 2, Dirt, HL2, CS:S etc etc
I did talk to a guy who does beta testing for ATI and he said it may be an openGL bug, that effects certain games, like doom3 and it may be a driver issue.
I would also like to point out that with the 7.4 drivers on my old x1900xt-x i never had any problems.
ET may stress parts of the GPU more than other games, so I wouldn’t completely rule out overheating. How soon after you start ET does it happen?
It could also be that the voltage to the GPU drops when ET.exe loads the CPU 100%, in which case you’ll need a better PSU.
Since changing to the 7.7 drivers as soon as i load up the game i get to class selection and BOOM vpu recovery, with the old 7.6 drivers i could usually get about an hours worth of gameplay.
My PSU is recommend by ATI/AMD its a thermaltake truepower 700w.
A 700W PSU won’t consume significantly more than a 350W under the same load.
A 700W PSU won’t consume significantly more than a 350W under the same load.[/quote]
There can be a great difference in efficiency between runnning a 350W PSU and a 700W PSU (assuming the both power a similar system).
A 700W PSU won’t consume significantly more than a 350W under the same load.[/quote]
i could argue with that. but it mainly depends of what is pluged into PSU not it’s ‘wattage’. :stroggtapir:
was referring to the thing that he bought such PSU because his PC takes about that much wattage… cant be certain without a list of hardware.
Im running a C2D E6600 @stock, 2gb geil ultra low latency, 2 harddrives
1 at 200 gb and 1 at 300gb, my HD2900xt, x-fi fatal1ty, and running in an ANtec 900 case with all 4 fans on ohh and i forgot a 16x dvd rw
500~550W would do imo (but i am no expert at all, just my feeling (i have athlon 64 @ 3800 / R X1900XT / 2GB GEIL DC / 2 HD (2x80GB) / DVD / SB Audigy and it runs fine on 450W)
edit:
ahh, 2 fans in PSU/ 2 in chase/ big & loud on graphic card/ small on CPU
C2D E6600: max. 68W (TDP)
HD2900xt: max. 215W
Other components: ~10W each
DVD + x-fi fatal1ty + Mainboard + 2x1GB RAM + 2xHD: ~7x10W
You end up with: 68+215+70 -> ~350W peak.
PSU has about 80% effiency + some W as buffer, so take 350W * 5/4 = 437,5W-> 450W PSU
You have to take into consideration that your system willl use about: 100W when idle - 350W at peak. So your PSU should have a good efficiency over this range. But since efficency is usually best at 30%-90% PSU load, a “fitting” PSU is the best choice.
