Graphic card problem yet again :| why me :(

[robbro]

[Kestrel]

VPU recover is used when the gra[hics card encounters a hlitch it has problems recovering from.. the driver automatically boots out of the program causing the problem to prevent a possible system hang.. I used to get it a lot when alt-tabbing out of everquest....

It may be that there is no actual problem.. but if a program using 3d takes more than a few seconds to alt-tab from.. the driver 'assumes' it has frozen and kicks in..

[robbro]

ah okay no wonder , thought it was doing it for nothing thanks kestral. Also kestral wanted to ask you my freinds got near enough same spec as me, same mb, ram just the CPU is different . and on CS source/hl2 he gets 100 FPS constant :S mine doesnt. would that be to do with my ram more or cpu? i thought ram and cpu only was to do with 10% of the fps speed you get during gaming? or am i wrong ? i got amd athlon barton 2600+ 333FSB hes got a amd athlon barton 3200 + 400 fsb. Would that much fsb make a actual difference in game because ive heard its mostly to do with what ram you have rather then the cpu speed ? , Rob.

[Kestrel]

okay.. well.. the reason he is probably getting better speeds is one because of his increased CPU speed.. and secondly because of the higher FSB speed..

the amount of memory you have will make very little difference if any to the performance of games.. but will allow you to run more programs without resorting to the swapfile.. which generally makes loading times much faster..

the 3 primary factors that will affect 3D performance are.. CPU speed.. FSB speed.. and Vid Card... (please note that the FSB speed is also the clock speed of your memory.. so increasing that.. increases the speed at which the CPU and the memory communicate.. obviously increasing performance).. 2 identical systems.. one with 1 GIG of memory.. and one with 3 gig.. will perform almost identically.

[robbro]

thanks kestrel man you know your stuff but one thing kestrel what about the make of the ram ? i got 1 crucial 512mb ddr400 and 2 that are dueling on my asus a7n8x board are exlixier ? (spelling) . And my freind that i was talking about thats got same amount of ram has Corsair ram , would that make any different or still the same because its same amount of ram ? , Rob.

[Kestrel]

the main factor is the speed the ram is running at.. Elixir, Crucial and Corsair DDR 400 ram will all operate at pretty much the same speed... one brand may be a little more reliable.. but performance wise.. no difference