Hey all,

I've been having a problem for almost a year now. When I play games, the image onscreen sometimes tends to freeze for anywhere between 10 to 30 seconds at a time, and sometimes even longer, before returning to normal. This doesn't happen all the time. On some days, I can play without any freezes at all. On other days, it may happen once or twice, and on yet other days, it can happen somewhat frequently. I almost never have to restart my computer during any of these freezes, because things almost always return to normal eventually.

Also, I've noticed that although the game sounds tend to freeze or repeat during these times, any mp3 or voice chat program that I may be running in the background works perfectly fine. Also, if these freezes occur while playing an online game, I've noticed that my cable modem also freezes simultaneously, in that only the "receive" light blinks until the computer unfreezes. This problem occurs in most of the latest games that I play. I've tried using different nVidia graphics drivers and have found that it's a lot more frequent when using the new ForceWare drivers than with the old Detonator ones. I've done complete reformats a couple of times, but the problem persists. I even opened up my case, removed the graphics card, and reinstalled it, but to no avail. I frankly don't know what the problem could be. Also, these freezes never occur when I'm not playing games. If I'm just working with desktop applications or browsing the web, there are no problems. Any help with this issue is appreciated.

My machine specs are...

Pentium 4, 2GHz
GeForce 4 Ti 4600 video card
Sound Blaster Live! Value sound card
1 GB of DDR RAM
Windows XP Home Edition

What games ? All games your graphics card does not support dx9 you know (not true dx9) think about getting a newer card ...

i know what your problem is, well im pretty sure though. if your processor supports HT (hyper threading), disable it. i've got some killer PC but just becuz of HT some of my games Especially the sims would have that kind of symptoms. Many other game just dont work with HT enabled then when i disable it surprise everything's fine !!


Hope that helped

Please let me know if that was your prob

Thanks for the replies guys.

Reverting back to DX8.1 seems to have solved the problem.

tbrunt3, you're right in that my video card wasn't designed with DirectX 9 in mind, but that doesn't mean GF4s don't work with DX9 based games and applications. Infact, my card runs all new, DX9 based games pretty well, except for these freezes every now and then.

Examples of DX9.0c games that have run very well on my system are Half-Life 2 and the Star Wars: Republic Commando demo. Also, according to Microsoft, DX9.0c is supposed to be fully backwards compatible with all older vid cards and graphics drivers. The only possible explanation here is that future versions of either my nVidia driver or DX9.0+ need some extra tweaking to run perfectly well with each other.

Thanks for the replies guys.

Reverting back to DX8.1 seems to have solved the problem.

I know dx 9 is backwards compatible but your card will not support the shading among other things try running test on 3dmark2000se you will not be able to run the last few tests then you see what i am talking about..

THe ti was a great card i use to have one

have a good one...