Azaran on 26/12/2009 at 07:06
Hi.
Something that's really ticked me off over the last few years, ever since I upgraded from a CRT monitor to an LCD, is that, no matter what game I play (Thief2, Need for Speed, Blood, Serious Sam, Quake 3...), it often happens that my whole system will freeze while I'm playing. I can' t even do ctrl-alt-del - I have to restart manually. This never happened when I had my CRT. My video card has been the same even before I upgraded (ATI Radeon 7000 64mb) - I recently upgraded the drivers, but the same issue keeps happening. Now this really pisses me off every time it happens, and I just wanted to know what the root problem of it is. Is this an LCD screen issue or something? I mean, it can't be anything else can it? And has anyone else experienced this?
Renzatic on 26/12/2009 at 08:02
In and of itself, hooking up an LCD won't cause your computer any problems whatsoever. It has to be something else. Something you've changed since you hooked the thing up.
For instance, if you're now running all your games at the LCDs native resolution, and said resolution is higher than what you usually used with your CRT, that could be causing your old-as-the-hills graphics card to struggle and eventually hard freeze. If that's the case, try and drop your resolution down and run a particularly taxing game. See what happens.
Azaran on 26/12/2009 at 18:46
I used the same resolution as in my old CRT, 800x600. Although I did notice that if I go below that, it generally doesn't crash - but frankly low res looks pretty ugly. I'm still convinced it's the LCD - Videocard interaction somehow (yeah I know, that videocard is extremely old:erg:)
Renzatic on 28/12/2009 at 02:54
Man, I dunno. You've got some crazy funkiness going on I've never experienced before.
My gut reaction would be to say it's a power issue. Thing is, I don't think an LCD hooked up via VGA is going to put much more strain on your graphics card than a CRT would.
Hell, on a random semi-educated guess, I could pin the blame on the VGA cable itself. I've never heard of problems with frayed or twisted cables, or loose pins freaking out a graphics card and causing a computer to hard freeze, but that doesn't mean it hasn't happened before out in some random backwater village in Ethiopia. This is a really out there suggestion that probably won't do much of anything cept waste your time, but you could try and replace the cables and see if that helps you out at all.
Ultimately, I'd say it's your old graphics card that's causing you problems. And I'm not talking about old as in "olol you've got a janky card you can't play new games". I'm talking old old. Computer hardware, particularly graphics cards, don't age gracefully, and tends to start flaking out the longer they're in use. The problems you're experiencing now might have nothing to do with your LCD. The fact it all started happening as soon as you hooked up the new monitor might just be nothing more than a coincidence. I say just avoid the heartache, bite the bullet, and get a new graphics card. You could pick up something for 30-40 bucks that'd still run all your old games just fine, and provide far more power than your old Radeon 7000.
Azaran on 28/12/2009 at 03:00
Hmmm. Yeah I guess it could be the card or the cables. I think I'll probably get a new card and just put an end to this headache once and for all:devil:. Thanks for the help:thumb:.
Azaran
Azaran on 29/12/2009 at 18:51
Well, happy ending. Got me a new Geforce 256mb for super cheap. Problem solved:D
And now, I finally got fog working on T2:cool:
