ATI Crash...Arma has encountered a problem

[Silent Pro 0]

Hi,

I've searched around the forums a bit and have seen quite a few suggestions on how to get around this "Arma has encountered a problem" CTD but i've not seen anything definitive for a particular setup. So to start, I'll explain my issue and my setup.

CPU: AMD Barton 3200+

RAM: 2GB PC3200 OCZ DDR

GPU: AGP Visiontek ATI Radeon HD2600XT 512MB RAM

Sound Card: Sound Blaster X-FI XtremeGamer

ATI CCC Settings:

(Running Visiontek/ATI 8.6 drivers. Can't run 8.8's since those cause my games to go into a full lock)

AA = Let software choose

AF = Let software choose

VSYNC = Disabled

AI = Disabled

ArmA Settings (Running ArmA v.1.06 right now, but have tried 1.08 and 1.14 also) :

All Texture Details = Normal(except Object = High)

Shading Detail = Low

AA = Normal

AF = Disabled

Res = 1280 X 960 @ 32bit

Sound:

Hardware Acceleration = enabled

EAX = enabled

Symptoms:

Launch ArmA, successfully starts up and heads into the intro. The intro runs till the part after the town and the soldiers are walking around, the next scene has the camera fly up and over a hill, once it gets over the hill strange artfiacts appear(a wall of untextured polygons forms in the sky in the distance) and then boom, CTD.

If I also run the "Sanitize" mission I can get into the mission for a few moments, the minute my squad and I are able to view down on to the main street of the town where all the baddies are...the game CTD's.

I have tried Disabling Catalyst AI, disabling HW acceleration, EAX, lowering my GFX settings, played with maxmem and disabled my swap/page file and I have not seen anything get better.

I read somewhere that there is patch being developed to fix this issue with ATI cards, but there are so many issues with ATI cards now I am probably mistaken and am thinking of a patch to fix the problems with crossfire.

Anyway, I've had ArmA for 7 months now and haven't been able to do squat. Someone help, please. Don't make me go back to OFP.

[kklownboy 43]

Your card is a AGP card? Then you will need some AGP magic.

http://support.ati.com/ics....D=31542

The whole AGP thang is on the way out... but there are work arounds.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=49249

or go back to a 7.8 driver. The ARMA ATI fix was way back, it was the 7.6? or 7.3 for a mem leak or some such.

[Silent Pro 0]

Quote[/b] ]Your card is a AGP card?  Then you will need some AGP magic.

http://support.ati.com/ics....D=31542

Yep, thats what the Hot Fix drivers are for. Been installing those since they released them in January(Catalyst 8.1). Basically anyone with an AGP card on vista or XP was unable to run any DirectX based game, you couldn't even get the dxdiag tests to run.

Quote[/b] ]

The whole AGP thang is on the way out... but there are work arounds.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=49249

The link above isn't resolving for me right now.

Quote[/b] ]

or go back to a 7.8 driver. The ARMA  ATI fix was way back, it was the 7.6? or 7.3 for  a mem leak or some such.

Can't really do that since ATI borked their AGP support as of the 7.8 release till 8.1. Believe me I've actually spent almost a whole year patching this turd of a video card trying to get it to work.

Thanks for trying, I just wish I knew someone who has been able to get past this.

[Silent Pro 0]

I updated my ArmA to 1.14, performance seemed to get a nice burst of life after that! All I needed now was to ensure the stability.

So i began perusing some of these threads some more and found a few instances of people droppping their ArmA graphics settings to Normal or Low and disabling Audio Hardware Acceleration and EAX.

Guess what? It actually worked. Not the greatest solution as I absolutely love EAX and having Hardware Accelerated audio, and 2x anti-aliasing. But, hey I can run ArmA!

I guess i'll sort the rest out as i go.

[thr0tt 12]

Your card is a AGP card?  Then you will need some AGP magic.

http://support.ati.com/ics....D=31542

The whole AGP thang is on the way out... but there are work arounds.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=49249

or go back to a 7.8 driver. The ARMA  ATI fix was way back, it was the 7.6? or 7.3 for  a mem leak or some such.

HD3850 AGP here, all working fine and as far as I know ATI don't add a fix then remove it later in their drivers.

AGP 'thang' is still here as it performs just as well as the pci-e 'thang'.

[Silent Pro 0]

Thrott, do you have a Creative Labs X-Fi sound card? The thing that seemed to increase my stability the most was disabling the hardware acceleration and EAX? Any experience with that?

[kklownboy 43]

Your card is a AGP card?  Then you will need some AGP magic.

http://support.ati.com/ics....D=31542

The whole AGP thang is on the way out... but there are work arounds.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=49249

or go back to a 7.8 driver. The ARMA  ATI fix was way back, it was the 7.6? or 7.3 for  a mem leak or some such.

HD3850 AGP here, all working fine and as far as I know ATI don't add a fix then remove it later in their drivers.

AGP 'thang' is still here as it performs just as well as the pci-e 'thang'.

My suggestion was that you WONT loose the fix/patch for the ATi Mem. leak if you go back to 7.8.

And yeah there are lots of ppl with AGP, but very few AGP mother boards for sale.

I run into Creative driver issues also in this game, and have resolved them by reinstalling right over the top again.. Some of my crashes with NVDA cards i believe where creative issues.

Glad to see its running now for you Silent Pro.