Display shuts down mid-game

[doveman]

I've played plenty of games lately without any problems, but I was just playing Men of War for a couple of hours, when suddenly my monitor lost signal and went into standby. I've got two PCs connected to the monitor via a VGA KVM and I switched to the other PC and the monitor came back on, but switching back to the gaming PC it was stuck in standby. I could still hear the game music, so the PC hadn't exactly crashed. In the end, I had to hard reset the PC.

I'm only running the HD3200 IGP and I've got a Nexus Value 430W, so it can't be a lack of power. I did update from Cat 10.9 to 11.1 just the other day (CCC still shows 10.9, but I think that's just a bug because I deleted everything and reinstalled and if I run the install it says CCC and the driver are up-to-date) and I also installed the 11.1 ATI southbridge driver (it said there wasn't an old one already installed, so I guess I'd not installed it before).

I'm wondering if the IGP just overheated. I did bump up the AA from 2x to 4x in Men of War, so maybe that tipped it over the edge! Unfortunately, I understand this board doesn't have a GPU temp sensor, so I can't really check, but I am using a top-down CPU heatsink, which hopefully would help cool the NB/IGP a bit at least.

[doveman]

This is wierd. I can't seem to uninstall the driver!

I uninstalled it and booted into Safe Mode, and it automatically installed the driver again. I then deleted everything ATI related with Driver Sweeper and confirmed the .dll files were gone, but when I boot back into Normal Mode, it's reinstalled the old driver again. I've got no idea where it's getting the files from, 'cos like I say, they were all deleted and I can't find any backup copies hiding anywhere else.

I also don't seem to have the Default VGA driver to install. The only display related .inf I can find is FSVGA.INF, but I don't think that's the right one.

[doveman]

Well I found some copies, which Driver Sweeper didn't pick up, lurking in system32\DRVSTORE and system32\reinstallbackups so I deleted them.

11.1 seems a no-go, as it was causing ati2dvag.dll BSOD when I was just browsing and using Explorer, so I've downgraded to 10.10, as people seem to be saying that's OK.

I actually installed the driver manually through Device Manager, by pointing to the files in C:\ATI\Support\10-10_xp32_dd_ccc_enu\Packages\Drivers\Display\XP_INF which mostly worked, except it asked for a file that doesn't exist and isn't referenced in the .inf, which was wierd, and it still says it's version 8.812 (even in CCC), which is 11.1, so it seems perhaps it's getting that from the wrong .inf somewhere, but I would have thought it would just use the .inf I pointed to in that folder. Oh, and Catalyst 10.10 install says that the current version of the driver (v8.780) isn't installed and wants to install it again, but I've checked all the driver files and they're all the ones from 10.10.

Anyway, I can put up with those little niggles so hopefully the BSOD will stop!

This certainly has made me lean towards getting an Nvidia card rather than ATI when I get round to it, as I've wasted hours over the last two days trying to sort this out.

[Cryoburner]

It does sound like something could be overheating. The IGP likely doesn't have a fan on it, so if air circulation isn't good enough in its vicinity, it could overheat after playing for a while. If the game pushes the CPU, the CPU cooler might be blowing warm air on the IGP's heat sink, which might also make it less effective at dissipating heat.

Maybe temporarily try playing the game with the case open to test whether it still crashes with the increased airflow. Also, make sure there's sufficient room for air to circulate around the case, and that none of its vents are blocked or fans aren't working. If you've had the system for a while, try cleaning any dust off fans and heat sinks to help them cool effectively.

[doveman]

Thanks for the suggestions, but happily everything's been fine since I reverted to Cat 10.10