datter

Same, after my overclocking experiences with the Q6600 (see sig) I'd absolutely recommend Quad.

I bought from "Yogi Computers" on ebay which is in the US (I'm in Canada). I was surprised to see they labeled the package as a $20 gift, so there was no cross border stuff to pay. ;)

If you're using Win7 (or God forbid, Vista) the built in defragger is perfectly fine despite what the third party companies will tell you.

... +2

Short version : It seems some ArmA2 menu screens can cause your GPU temps to climb out of control so don't leave your system unattended when playing the game. Longer version : When I first started playing ArmA2, I noticed something odd about the game menu screens and my GPU temps. When playing co-op with a friend I found that if I sat in the multiplayer lobby menu screen for too long waiting for him, my system would lock up. I eventually noticed that my GPU temps would start climbing on these menu screens for some reason, and if I didn't hurry my friend along the system would crash as the temps got up around 90c. I found this occurring with my system overclock in place, and at stock speeds so it was unrelated to that and rather random. Over time, I tweaked my system a lot and sort of forgot about this as it didn't seem to come up anymore. At the time I'd been experiencing in-game CTD's related to an n4v_disp error which I tracked down to a slightly too high factory overclock on my video cards. Once I pulled that back a bit, the CTD's stopped completely and the menu screen GPU temp thing seemed to have went away too. At least that's what I thought. A couple of nights ago (prior to installing Win7 RTM which I have in place now) I was happily playing single player ArmA2 (see specs/settings in sig). Great frame rate, no CTD's, freezing or blue screens. At one point I got called away from the computer so I hit escape to pause the game and I went off for about 10 minutes. When I returned I found my screen was a bit weird looking. The text was fuzzy and blocky, and totally unreadable. The graphics were distorted, miscoloured and there were odd shapes/lines all over the place. I was a bit confused for a moment until I noticed my GPU temps had climbed to 120c (the temps were available via my keyboard LCD). I quickly clicked where I thought "resume" was and as soon as I got out of the menu and back in the game my temps started coming back down. Not fast enough for me however, so I just rebooted the system. Everything was cooled off and fine when it fired back up I'm glad to say. I have an overclocked system, and monitor my temps very closely. I know for a fact the GPU temps never get over 70c in ArmA2 and in fact usually hover in the mid 60's. For some reason, leaving it at the menu screen caused the temps to climb out of control. I thought I'd pass this along for general knowledge, just in case someone happens to hit escape and leave their computer for awhile only to come back and find a fried video card (or worse). datter

Aside from campaign CTD's patch 1.02 worked very well for me. Great frame rates, no mouse lag, no issues at all on the system detailed in my sig (click "spoiler"). Now that Ive installed 1.03 however, I'm having problems. I notice that when I zoom in through the sights of any weapon I get graphic anomalies all over the place. Odd triangles, flashing textures and weird geometry. This happens only when zoomed in, and as soon as I zoom back out it stops and things look normal again. If I didn't know better I'd say my GPUs were overheating as it sort of looks like that, but the temps hardly get out of the 60's. Both GPUs have had their factory overclock pulled back as well, to stock speeds. I've been running them like that for some time now actually. I've also had two instances of "ArmA2 has stopped working" in the 45min I played around in the (restarted from scratch) campaign last night. CTD's I'd get before were always of the straight to desktop variety, or solid system lock. Slightly frustrating.

No reboot, just disabled Physx and problem solved. Yes, strange... but I'll take it.

No, you really should have it scheduled to be done nightly. The original post is sound advice.

I inititially thought 1.03 was causing me some odd graphic glitches, but I discovered I had Physx turned on by mistake (I usually leave it off). With that disabled again the graphic oddities with 1.03 have gone away. So far I've played for about an hour and 15min total. Last night for 45min with the Physx thing mistakenly on I had graphic issues and two "arma2 has stopped working" issues. This morning I played for a further 30min and (with Physx off) had no graphic issues and no CTD's in the campaign, though I'll have to play longer to see if any crashes begin happening. Performance wise I've noticed an improvement. I restarted the campaign with 1.03 and am on the mission where we've just entered Chegnorsk (sp?) and are patrolling across the city. With the settings as outlined in my sig, frame rates hover around 30 at all times which is great. They dipped into the mid to low 20's with 1.02. Frame rates in single missions and the editor are through the roof, as was the case before 1.03. More testing required, but so far I'm very pleased with 1.03.

PROBLEM RESOLVED As it turns out it had nothing to do with 1.03 at all. It seems that one of my kids turned on Physx in the nVidia control panel and I didn't think to check into that as I always have it turned off. With Physx deactivated the problem seems to have gone away. Weird perhaps, but true. Please carry on with your lives as per normal.

Overclocked current CPU > new CPU :)

This is a fresh new problem with patch 1.03, but regardless I've not seen any mention of it elsewhere so far, the nVidia sticky included.

Well, I had no real problems before but now with 1.03 I find graphic artifacts (triangles and such) when zoomed in through the sights. This only appears when zoomed in, and goes away as soon as zoomed back out. So I guess I could be a bit more satisfied.

I haven't had any problems at all, especially of this kind and I've never heard of a TrackIR unit "frying" anything much less a motherboard.

Now how exactly did that happen? Pretty strong accusation there.

No problem. Don't get frustrated if you find yourself stuck. I tested the hell out of this thing and found an FSB hole right around the 3.6 are where I was trying to get. NOTHING I could do would get me stable at anything between 3.4 and 3.6, but as soon as I pushed it a bit past to 3.7 it was rock solid again. I can do 3.8 but it's not 100% and 3.9 is just not happening. I ended up with 3.3 and 3.7 as good solid OC's, in between were no good. Anyway, you might have to hunt around a bit to find your sweet spot.

I got that when I moved to 8GB of ram (from 6GB). When I added the -winxp switch to fix the texture problems that show up with >8Gb of ram, it fixed the underwater menu problem as well. If that doesn't work, try a voodoo doll. This game is like that.

Sorry yes, my VTT is at 1.55v with no troubles at all. I highly recommend you look over this long ass thread. It's got just about everything you could ever want to know about overclocking on this board.

A troll would be someone asking silly questions just to cause a stir, I think wizbomb was genuine... as scary as that may sound.

wizbomb you are fast becoming my favorite internet person. ;)

Kremator is now officially in charge of all things wizbomb. There will be long hours and no extra (or any) pay. Frustration is assured. I just wanted to make that clear. :)

I can think of one other place. :)

The 8800GT is still a great card, two of them get you performance equal to something in the GTX285 range.

At 3.7ghz my CPU cores idle in the low 50's and never break the mid 60's under load, if that... and it's summer time, and hot. My "do not exceed" is 70c for this CPU so I'm content as is, and it's not a 24/7 OC anyway. It spends most of the day at stock speeds, then I boot up into 3.7 when I sit to do some gaming, hd video editing or 3d stuff. I'm at 9x412 (1651 quad), 1.45v on the cores. SB is set to 1.5v (lowest it will go, auto runs it at 1.52v) and NB at 1.45v. Memory is running at 2.0v at 825mhz (linked/synced) and timings at 4-3-3-5-2T. You'd probably need more vcore and some more volts to the NB, but it's your rig so I won't go so far as to advise. This is just what I'm doing, and it works for me. As for you, we've been over this. You have a 1.8ghz dual core processor, not a 3.8. Keep that in mind. You need a faster processor, likely a new mobo to support it, more RAM (likely new RAM as I bet yours is only DDR), a better video card (or better yet, cards) and an updated OS (at this point, Win7). In that order.

Dude please. Based on your posts here you are the last person on Earth who should under take an OS reinstall of any kind, especially just for the same of some extra FPS in a game. If what you have works, then be happy with that. Given your hardware, you're lucky to be getting the frame rate you're getting. A new OS is not going to help you. EDIT: That sounded harsh. Having a frustrating day here, sorry.