Unreal II help needed

[stncttr908]

Well, my brother is home from college, and he's brought back his shnazzy system that I put together for him. Here are the specs.

MSI KT333 (can't exactly remember the model no.)
XP 1700+
Gainward GF4 ti4200 64MB
256MB OCZ PC2700
40GB Maxtor
Liteon 52X CDROM
SB Audigy
41.09 dets (tried numerous others)
DX 9.0
VIA 4in1's 4.46 (could be the culprit)

I installed Unreal II, since I've been dying to play it on a decent system. Fire it up, everything works ok. I start a new game, the intro screen runs just fine. Then it loads the first level (you know, the training, the base, etc.) As soon as it loads, all hell breaks loose. The screen flickers, goes awry with colors, and reboots the computer. At this point I nearly flipped out. After the reboot, the screen is still flickering with colors. I pull the power, catch my breath, and start it up again. Everything works alright. I thought I had fried his card!

After this I proceed to try many sets of drivers (what a pain in my ass, had to run upstairs, download them, copy to CD-RW, run downstairs, try them, uninstall a set, reboot, reinstall a set, etc.) None of them work. Not even once were any of these components overclocked. All other D3D games (UT2K3, NOLF2, Nascar Racing 2003 Season, etc.) work flawlessly. The game is patched to the latest version, although I haven't tried the EAX patch. I doubt that it would help, since that's probably already included in the game patch, but it's the only thing I can think of.

So please, if you have any advice, help me out!

[DaveW]

It could be a heat issue if your graphics card is overclocked, i'd try underclocking it a little.

Otherwise this could be a memory/AGP problem. You have a 64 meg graphics card, Unreal II uses more than 64 meg of textures. It also uses more than 256 meg of system ram. I'd check using the dxdiag tool that AGP texture acceleration is enabled. If not, reinstall your motherboard's AGP driver. Also check in the bios to make sure that your AGP apature is set to 64 meg or higher.

[stncttr908]

Thanks Dave, forgot about this post.

That's sorta what I was thinking too, about the system memory and the 64MB card, but it runs on my ****ty system without a hitch, albeit incredibly slow. This clunker only has 384MB of system memory.

The card isn't overclocked, never has been. The GPU fan is unobstructed and whirring away. AGP aperture is currently at 128MB. I removed the 4.46 hyperion drivers and installed 4.45, but no luck. Oh well, we're ordering another stick of OCZ PC2700 soon anyway, I'll see if that will help at all.

If that doesn't do the trick, I have my GF2MX sitting here, I'll just throw it in and see if it errors.

Update:

The GF2MX/400 worked just fine, so it appears to be the card malfunctioning. It's odd that it only does it in Unreal 2, but what can I say. I'll hopefully get an RMA tomorrow, as I don't like the idea of putting unstable hardware back in, even if it's random.

[AgentX]

Yea sounds like uve got it o/ced to hell with no cooling, but if not could help reinstalling drivers

[ebasol1]

I noticed you have a gainward ti4200. Those had issues with their memory when they first came out. They caused exactly what you describe. My brother has one, and he never sent it back to get repaired, so there are some games that work fine, and others that do what you are experiencing. Call gainward, and see if they will repair it for you.

[stncttr908]

AgentX: The card was never OC'd.

ebasol1: I'm getting an RMA from newegg, I sent it back Monday. If they don't have anything comprable, I'll just get a refund hopefully, and I'll convince him (my brother) to throw in a few extra bucks for a 9500 Pro.