Incessant game crashes

[dalewb]

These are the two worst game launches I have seen since Painkiller came out: Gears of War (PC) and Unreal Tournament 3. GOW was so bad that my brother and I gave up ever playing it. Three months later we tried again and were able to play the game finally. Now UT3. Geez where do I begin? I've updated my video card drivers, soundblaster drivers, checked for directx 9 updates, downloaded over 500 frickin megabytes of patches.

Since installing the game 4 days ago it has crashed roughly 40 times on me (randomly crashes to the desktop). I've read and followed every piece of advice I could find on this forum and it still crashes! Unbelievable.

Here are some of the steps I've taken so far:
=Disabled hardware Open AL
=Made adjustments recommended to my ini file for those with ATI graphics cards
=double checked to make sure nothing was overclocked (I don't overclock, but I checked anyways) - my CPU was actually underclocked. Setting it back to its default setting hasn't improved the situation (but the game runs a bit faster, lol).
=Made sure "Support DXT Texture Formats" in the Catalyst Control Centre was enabled (it was, I think it's set that way by default)
=Got latest soundblaster and ATI drivers

I am a game developer at a Raleigh studio and this is shameful that one of my local peer companies released a game in this state, but I understand it probably can happen to anyone if a game isn't thoroughly tested enough. It's out of my hands in our studio, but I hope our game doesn't wind up like this - bleh.

Here are my specs:
Athlon X2 3800+ (939 socket)
2GB DDR Ram
Radeon HD 2900 512MB
Soundblaster X-Fi PCI audio
Windows XP (SP2)

Edit: Ultron seems to have a good thread going at http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=586697. I ignored it initially because of its title (I'm not interested in tweaking the game - I just want to play it without it crashing!!)

[rumple9]

The problem is with ur specs - u need a new chip dude

[Moloko]

The startup intel ad as the game loads is a pretty big hint really, this game doesn't like AMD X2 chips much at all(even the 3ghz plus ones). The current Intel chips are years ahead in certain cpu benchmarks and this game seems to put more of that performance advantage to use.

[yabbering yeti]

firstly, his system is fine to run the game. Second, I've had about 1 crash since launch day and im on AMD X2. It's often in how healthy you keep your system, rather than hardware issues.

OP, did you try unchecking all items in startup tab of 'msconfig', restarting, and trying the game?

[dalewb]

firstly, his system is fine to run the game. Second, I've had about 1 crash since launch day and im on AMD X2. It's often in how healthy you keep your system, rather than hardware issues.

OP, did you try unchecking all items in startup tab of 'msconfig', restarting, and trying the game?

It's pretty clean, though it's been over a year since the last fresh install. I ran **** cleaner and reg cleaner a month ago and got all the **** out of my OS
(shrug).

Yes, I am looking at options to replace my CPU/mobo/RAM. At the moment, I am just saving up and keeping an eye on what options are out there. I might try installing this game a new windows user account - that has helped other games in the past.

[dalewb]

The startup intel ad as the game loads is a pretty big hint really, this game doesn't like AMD X2 chips much at all(even the 3ghz plus ones). The current Intel chips are years ahead in certain cpu benchmarks and this game seems to put more of that performance advantage to use.

The Intel logo is there because Epic persuaded them to give them lots and lots of cash to place that ad there, not because their game leans toward Intel CPUs or has special code to run faster on them. That being said, Intel CPUs are much much faster than anything AMD can cough up at the moment; so from that aspect alone, an Intel CPU will run just about anything faster (including Unreal 3 Engine games).

In one of the known issues posts, the one about "overclocking graphics card creates no appreciable performance increase" has a solution: If the computer is CPU-bound, then overclocking the GPU will not help much, if at all. This applies to my situation, though it does not explain all the crash problems I've been having.

When I bought my CPU back in late 2005, it was one of AMD's first consumer-level dual core CPUs. Now it is very dated. Time for a replacement.

[[FfFC]_-(MAD)-_]

Maybe your system runs instabil. Such an behavier is not normal. Check your RAM for errors. Use Prime95 Stress test and metest86+ to test if there is a problem. Try higher RAM Voltage or higher timings (try standard CMOS settings in BIOS first) and look if all is working fine.

[dalewb]

I'll give that a shot - I've already made the diskette for memtest so I'll give it a whirl - thank you!

[[FfFC]_-(MAD)-_]

even if these tools wont find an error, you should go to a pc-specialist to ensure all is ok.

[dalewb]

Check for additional Soundblaster drivers

I discovered that there was another Soundblaster driver update I had failed to install. Using their hardware autoupdate feature, I got the driver that featured openAL and thought that was it. Turns out you have to run the autoupdate a second time for it to show the newest driver update. Like Windows Update, some things can't be installed at the same time, I guess.

I played UT3 last night for about an hour - 1/2 with hardware audio off and 1/2 with it on and it did not crash once.

Update:
1. played for 50 minutes and it crashed.

[BuckoA51]

I've had this game since launch and never been able to get it to run stable, constant lockups, sometimes after 5 mins sometimes after 50. I've tried everything suggested. Frankly I'm wondering if I can get my money back. I play dozens of other titles on this rig and never have a problem. (AMD Athlon x2 Skt 939 2GB RAM Gforce 7900 GTX graphics card). My memory checks out 100% in memtest after 5 passes. I've tried lots of different Nvidia drivers. The game is just half finished I think, Epic aren't really that concerned about the PC any more, they are more focused on the consoles I think.