ATI 1900 GT Keeps Crashing...

Playing 1 game is fine, dont have any problems. The issue comes when I try to run 2 VM playing a game and 1 game on the Host OS. I have to use 3 game clients to do what I want in the MMORPG. The Screen will go black and Windows 7 will tell me that ATI Has recovered from a serious error. The Host OS game is fine, but the 2 VM's are dead after this.

I have cleaned my card and put new thermal paste on it. Temps get into the 70C range, but for this card that is normal.

System specs are:

AMD Phenom II X4 955 @4000Mhz
HT Link 2000Mhz
NB Freqency 2600Mhz
4GB of DDR3 at 1600Mhz


Im wondering if there is anything else I can do to keep this card running? I cant get a new one right now.... Im wondering if this is a bad OC? Anyone have any ideas?

I have heard reports of the newest ATI drivers crashing on older cards... Try uninstalling your drivers and installing an older set. Also, I didnt quite understand your comment. Are you running games inside the virtual machine?

It kind of sounds like you are Multiboxing on WOW. If so, why inside a VM? I thought you could launch multiple clients on 1 OS?

yes I am running Games inside a VM. I have actually found that it makes things work more smoothly for what I am doing. Makes managing all the accounts much easier.

And thank you I i will try to find an older driver version,

downgraded the drivers and still the same thing, I'm starting to think its a hardware problem.... To bad I have no money right now.

poopboypat said:

downgraded the drivers and still the same thing, I'm starting to think its a hardware problem.... To bad I have no money right now.

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Well... It is hard to say. Hard drive I/O throughput might be a problem since you are running multiple VM's.

VM's are taxing to begin with on a CPU (and memory and especially hard drives) so that might me your problem. I know WOW is VERY CPU dependent so if that's the game your running, multiple VM's on a single hard disk paired with your low-end video card and sharing CPU I/O might combine to be the problem.

If you are using VMWare, try assigning each VM a single CPU instead of 2. Also assign each VM less memory as it will eat up less host memory. You have 4GB so, 512mb or 768mb a piece for the 2 VM's? (just a guess)

If you have spare hard drives, it might be best to install an extra hard drive and move all your VM's to it as well. This will give your host OS (Windows 7) all available IO for the game.

Also, it may be in your best interest to use Windows XP Pro SP3 in your guest VM's as they use very little memory and run excellent under emulation. Windows7 or Vista use much more IO and memory.

One last thing. Turn down the resolution and graphics settings withing the VM's as far as possible. DirectX is VERY limited within virtual machines.

I'm running Eve Online. Im using VMware each VM has 512 MB of ram and is using Windows XP SP3. Resoultion and settings are on the bare min to run the game. I will try adding a spare HDD to the computer to see how that works.

poopboypat said:

Unfortanitly I have done all that prior to posting....

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Hah, well....

Without being in front of your PC its hard to say. Vm's really are picky about graphics. We didnt even have 3D acceleration in VM's a year ago.

What version of VMWare are you running?

VMware Workstation 7.0.1 build-227600

And I just got the new drive in, Formatting it right now. One thing I am wondering is should I put the VMware program on the seperate HDD too?

Also I Edited my earlier post.

poopboypat said:

VMware Workstation 7.0.1 build-227600

And I just got the new drive in, Formatting it right now. One thing I am wondering is should I put the VMware program on the seperate HDD too?

Also I Edited my earlier post.

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Nah, keep VMWare on C. Just put the virtual hard drives on the secondary hard drive.

... Still Crashing....

Sounds like an excuse to upgrade. Congratulations!

ya, robbed a Goat, and I bought a 5770. Hopefully be here soon and fix my problems.

poopboypat said:

ya, robbed a Goat, and I bought a 5770. Hopefully be here soon and fix my problems.

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Good luck. I know VMWare has issues with DirectX, hopefully it solves your problem. Moving the VM's to a separate hard drive should help with overall performance anyway.

One more question LOL. Is DX9 acceleration enabled in the VMware configuration?