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problems running fear, and civ4 vid problem

post #1 of 19
2/4/06 at 7:02pm
Thread Starter 
so i have a nice new 9300 and immediately put in the 6800 ultra card into it (and xps bios)... i also have a 6800 ultra in my pc and it runs fear and the videos in civ4 no problem whatsoever, so i would figgure, i should at least be able to run fear, maybe not at full settings, but would run at least.

so i installed fear, and no dice... it starts to go, and then when it trys to adjust resolution, it just dies. i was reading through previous posts saying that it could be run at full resolution on the WUXGA screen, but in the little config manager, that resolution isnt even listed.


as far as civ4 goes, some of the videos wont run for more than a couple seconds... and then only sound.


any suggestions as to how to fix this and get these to run properly?

thanks
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post #2 of 19
2/4/06 at 7:50pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by adamadam
so i have a nice new 9300 and immediately put in the 6800 ultra card into it (and xps bios)... i also have a 6800 ultra in my pc and it runs fear and the videos in civ4 no problem whatsoever, so i would figgure, i should at least be able to run fear, maybe not at full settings, but would run at least.

so i installed fear, and no dice... it starts to go, and then when it trys to adjust resolution, it just dies. i was reading through previous posts saying that it could be run at full resolution on the WUXGA screen, but in the little config manager, that resolution isnt even listed.


as far as civ4 goes, some of the videos wont run for more than a couple seconds... and then only sound.




any suggestions as to how to fix this and get these to run properly?

thanks
I still don't know what the problems you are encountering is. Can you make it more clear? Was your computer restarting? Did you get a black screen? I can't tell what kind of problem you are experiencing.

What do you mean by "it starts to go", then "it dies"?
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post #3 of 19
2/4/06 at 9:09pm
Thread Starter 
i get a black screen like its changing resolutions... and then a "F.E.A.R. has encountered a problem and needs to close." windows error box.
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post #4 of 19
2/4/06 at 9:39pm
oooo that sucks sorry i dont really know how to fix pcs or laptops but i hope you find someone that can
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post #5 of 19
2/4/06 at 9:48pm
Do you have the latest patch for FEAR and the latest video drivers? Sometimes updating the game can fix some problems.
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post #6 of 19
2/4/06 at 10:01pm
To get the resolution you want, you have to change the settings.cfg file in FEAR folder.
It is explained here, http://www.tweakguides.com/FEAR_7.html
Check out the whole guide to get the best from the game.
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post #7 of 19
2/5/06 at 6:39am
With Civ4, I get the same problem sometimes, I run a reasonably maxed-out XPS2... So, I think it's a problem with the game. It usually happens when the world is flippin huge...
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post #8 of 19
2/5/06 at 8:44am
Yep, in regards to FEAR, you have to manually specify the widescreen resolution in the settings.cfg, as described in that tweakguides tutorial.

I was playing in 1152x864 and have now changed to 1440x900. Looks so much better filling the whole screen, and the only thing that is stretched is the background image of the menu screen. Everything else is perfect. As far as performance goes, it's only a tiny bit more jittery than 1152x864 was, still very acceptable, although i haven't tried out MP yet.
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post #9 of 19
2/5/06 at 9:51am
CIV4 vids crap out for me too. No significant problems in FEAR with the 1.02 patch. Can't say that it crashed once on me.
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post #10 of 19
2/6/06 at 10:24pm
Thread Starter 
thanks for all the advice guys.

i updated fear w/ the 1.02 patch, and adjusted the settings.cfg file, but still no dice. only things left that i can think of is to try one of the slightly modified video drivers for the 6800ultra, or possibly reformat since i havnt done that since installing the new video card.

do you guys think that a faster HD would help at all, or help to run the videos in civ4?

i do notice that in civ4, the game definately starts lagging and appearing choppy when u get further along, having explored lots of the map and having a lot of units, etc running around... maybe that is just a game thing... altho, it runs fine on my desktop when all of that is going on.
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post #11 of 19
2/6/06 at 11:10pm
Did you download Notebook Hardware control and set the harddrive to max performance? This may help for the choppiness in civ4.
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post #12 of 19
2/7/06 at 10:01am
I had what sounds like the same problem with FEAR. I went to the game's website and searched their FAQ and discovered that FEAR uses MP3s to play sounds and music. The solution for me was that I had to uninstall my ACE Mega Codec pack. So if you have that, or any other Codec packs installed for viewing various movies, unistall it and try to run FEAR again- it worked for me.
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post #13 of 19
2/7/06 at 12:41pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by KevDol
I had what sounds like the same problem with FEAR. I went to the game's website and searched their FAQ and discovered that FEAR uses MP3s to play sounds and music. The solution for me was that I had to uninstall my ACE Mega Codec pack. So if you have that, or any other Codec packs installed for viewing various movies, unistall it and try to run FEAR again- it worked for me.

HA, that was it!!

tanks a ton man!


edit: although now it runs, im not getting anything in the way of sound. did this happen to you after you uninstalled the codec pack?
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post #14 of 19
2/7/06 at 9:25pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by adamadam
HA, that was it!!

tanks a ton man!


edit: although now it runs, im not getting anything in the way of sound. did this happen to you after you uninstalled the codec pack?
I'm glad it worked. I didn't have any problem with sound after this. Maybe you'll have to re-install FEAR now that the other CODECs are gone.
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post #15 of 19
2/8/06 at 12:32am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Liam
Yep, in regards to FEAR, you have to manually specify the widescreen resolution in the settings.cfg, as described in that tweakguides tutorial.

I was playing in 1152x864 and have now changed to 1440x900. Looks so much better filling the whole screen, and the only thing that is stretched is the background image of the menu screen. Everything else is perfect. As far as performance goes, it's only a tiny bit more jittery than 1152x864 was, still very acceptable, although i haven't tried out MP yet.
are you running the game on the 6800 Go? What settings do you have on it? because I tried running it, and it is very choppy!
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post #16 of 19
2/8/06 at 1:07pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by KevDol
I'm glad it worked. I didn't have any problem with sound after this. Maybe you'll have to re-install FEAR now that the other CODECs are gone.

uninstalled and reinstalled fear... something is still wrong with the sound tho. not sure. i guess i'll keep fiddling with things. but at least it runs now!
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post #17 of 19
2/8/06 at 1:41pm
For Civ4, update windows media player as much as you can. I know that's how the videos in RTW worked, dunno about civ4, though.
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post #18 of 19
2/8/06 at 4:55pm
Civ 4's still a little buggy... I occasionally get sound-drop-outs or other quirks after playing for a while. Make sure you've updated to the latest build, via the main menu.

Also, Civ 4 gets choppy in the late game. I don't believe this is a graphics card issue -- I have a 7800 -- but rather a CPU issue. There's simply a ton of calculations going on, especially with multiple AI opponents on a large world. Same effect can be seen on 3dMark 06's new CPU tests.

Foul
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post #19 of 19
2/9/06 at 3:49am
Quote:
Originally Posted by jmbgator
are you running the game on the 6800 Go? What settings do you have on it? because I tried running it, and it is very choppy!
Yeh i have the 6800Go (specs in sig). I tried out MP against a mate in 1440x900 earlier this week and it was awful... way to choppy to play well. Whereas in singleplayer you don't really notice it as you tend to move around a lot slower. I'll play around with some more settings and see what works out best.
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