FlatOut + 2405fpw = Not So Much

FesterSilently · Post by **FesterSilently** » 11 Nov 2005, 03:26

Guys,

I just finished assembling my uber-Rig (and its twin), only to find out that my two STAPLE games do not work! They both suffer the same problems: the games and menus will load, but once in game/in engine...hard lock/freeze up!

These two games are Battlefield 1942 and FlatOut.

BF1942 is not natively supported, so I'll skip it for now, but...I've tried both the European version (patched up to 1.1) as well as the American version (1.2, yes?) of FlatOut, both of which work fine on my (slightly) older rig, but do not work AT ALL on the new rig...the only major difference being the monitors. Rig 2 has got my old NEC 2141SB CRT; Rig 1 has a new Dell 2405FPW, and will not run FlatOut (either version) in ANY resolution: 4:3; 16:10; 16:9, despite having (seeming) native support. The NEC CRT will run at any (4:3) resolution all day long.

My system(s) specs are as follows:

RIG 1
AMD64 4400+/Zalman CNPS 9500
Asus A8N SLI Premium/1009 BIOS
2 x 1GB G.Skill PC3200@2-3-2-5
2 x XFX 7800GTX
X-Fi Fatal1ty
PC Power & Cooling 1000w
Dell 2405FPW 24" LCD
Win XP Pro + Service Pack 2
Latest official chipset & video drivers
everything at stock speed/voltage

RIG 2
AMD64 3700+/Zalman CNPS 9500
DFI SLI-DR/623-3 BIOS
2 x 1GB G.Skill PC3200@2-3-2-5
2 x eVGA 7800GTX
Audigy 2 ZS
PC Power and Cooling 1000w
NEC 2141SB 21" CRT
Win XP Pro + Service Pack 2
Latest official chipset & video drivers
everything at stock speed/voltage

Help! :o

Yours,
Fester Silently

Post by **skipclarke** » 11 Nov 2005, 06:46

Welcome to WSGF!

Nice rigs!

EDIT: BF 1942

Search here
Link

FesterSilently · Post by **FesterSilently** » 11 Nov 2005, 08:05

Dougofthenorth,

Thanks - I worked hard for those rigs (and I hope I can get 'em all paid off without having to sacrifice other luxuries, like: rent; food, etc.!), and I'm glad to be here.

As far as the two links go: I didn't have a problem with Battlefield 2...it's Battlefield 1942; and what's with the link to Microsoft.com?

Anyway - thanks for the welcome.

Fester

Post by **skipclarke** » 11 Nov 2005, 15:34

Micro soft com ?? - not in those links I gave ??

BF 1942 Link

just go to that page & search for the (any) game you want in the drop down box there is a link at ini with the solution.

I will let you practice :wink: & search this site for FlatOut solutions yourself. :D

FesterSilently · Post by **FesterSilently** » 11 Nov 2005, 20:08

...I have searched, but every thread I've found just mentions that the game (FlatOut) supports widescreen natively (which it does) and/or that it looks great and runs fine in widescreen resolution (it *does* look good; unfortunately, it only looks good for a second before it freezes up on me!).

Perhaps I should elucidate (my apologies): I have been a lurker for a few months now (since deciding upon the 2405fpw as a future purchase) and I've checked out threads/solutions regarding all the games I play/have played and might throw in again (for widescreen gazing purposes!), so I have already perused the site (as well as TigerDave's site) for a fair bit.

The BF1942 http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6461&highlight=bf1942#6461 threads all mention getting it to go widescreen, which I *can* do, the problem is keeping it from freezing/locking up once I get into (the properly rendered) widescreen game.

The same goes for Flatout http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=10494&highlight=flatout#10494 - I can spin the game up (although the in-engine menu stutters like a bitch) in proper widescreen resolution, but once I get to the actual game, it locks up almost instantly!

So.

Any suggestions for *those* difficulties? :?

Fester

Post by **skipclarke** » 11 Nov 2005, 20:26

Well I'll pull out the stops for you!!

read here through these tweaks & see if that doesn't help.

Including the BF 1942 one.

Link

I suspect a software/driver system or vid card issue.

Should not be freezing up on either of those sterioded PC's :lol:

EDIT: did you try running some video benchmarking programs & stress the hell out of those systems & monitor the GPU & CPU temps?

FesterSilently · Post by **FesterSilently** » 11 Nov 2005, 21:02

Thanks for the game tweaking links, but, as you noted, these rigs are both kinda buff! And, yeah, I've 3dMarked, Prime95'ed and Super Pi'ed 'em both for 24 hours...no problems.

And, as far as tweaking for BF1942 and FlatOut...Lemme just say that I'm running Quake4; FEAR; Far Cry and BF2 at 1900 x 1200 with all the bling [normal mapping, specular lights, shadows (no soft shadows for FEAR, sadly), Anti-Aliasing to 4x and Anisotropic Filtering between 8x-16x] all without a hitch and running smooth as silk.

So, considering the meagre demands that BF1942 and FlatOut make on the GPU/CPU/memory subsystem, I'm pretty confident with running those two normally with no problems. And they *do* run fine! On the 2nd Rig - the one with the 4:3 CRT!

Aiiigghh! I'm gonna pull my damned hair outta my head.

Worrying Endlessly,
Fester

P.S.

Even when attempting to run either of those two games at a "normal" 4:3 aspect ratio, neither will run on the Dell 2405. Meh.

Post by **skipclarke** » 11 Nov 2005, 21:33

So did you do the BF1942 tweaks as suggested & see what happens?

That might eliminate any issues the BF1942 might have with the NVidea drivers If that game doesn't mess with the latest *1.00++ series of drivers??

From what I've read & seen posted I understand that the game has to provide inherent SLI support or issues will likely (may) result. Maybe BF1942 doesn't like (provide support for) the drivers you have??

Why not try the tweak for BF 1942 & see what difference it makes (if any) - on 1 of the machines.

If it is NOT system related - as you suggest, & have seen other games run well, then it must be the game(s) themselves - make sense?

Maybe with all your soft/hardware config you can't run the 2 games at 1900X1200?? Perhaps the "hacks" might also cause a conflict, with YOUR rig?

Here is a guy having similar problems (oct 29, 2005)
Link

Similiar CPU's & similiar MB's - but with ATI cards --- Hmmmm

Sometimes it can be the wierdest conflict.

Post by **skipclarke** » 11 Nov 2005, 22:05

Found this Link

Read the large edit fixes

Game starts up then screen freezes.

"This problem appears to plague Asus motherboards with AMD processors"

FesterSilently · Post by **FesterSilently** » 14 Nov 2005, 01:55

...sorry for the bout of incommunicado - a clean install reared its ugly head over the weekend, and then homework happened.

Anyway.

Thanks for the link (I'll try it tonight or tomorrow, depending upon homework needs), but I'm not terribly hopeful - the game worked fine before (on the same board) when I was just running a single 6800GT and 1GB of RAM. Plus, it works fine on the second setup-the one with the CRT. Which makes no sense.

In any case - I *will* try it and let you know.

Yours,
Fester

FesterSilently · Post by **FesterSilently** » 14 Nov 2005, 02:57

I DID manage to play BF1942(!)(hooray!) for exactly 12 minutes and 36 seconds (I only know that because the remaining time on my 20 minute map was 7 minutes 24 seconds...and that is where my game /computer froze up)

So that "heapsize/dxlevel" command line prompt DOES work for me...kind of.

In any case, none of this answers the question of why FlatOut (with native support) does not work.

I'm gonna go do some homework now. Or nap. My head hurts. Meh.

Fester

Post by **skipclarke** » 14 Nov 2005, 03:11

RE: "In any case, none of this answers the question of why FlatOut (with native support) does not work."

FlatOut was coded to support SLI at the resolution you are playing...???

FesterSilently · Post by **FesterSilently** » 14 Nov 2005, 05:20

Yes - the drop-down menu in the FlatOut graphics options utility DOES indeed have 1920 x 1200 already in there. But at that res or even 1600 x 1200 stretched, goes a sslow as a poke in-menu (which is in-engine), and just plain locks up once a map loads.

*sigh*

Fester :cry:

kyleb · Post by **kyleb** » 14 Nov 2005, 23:17

Did you try dissabling SLI? As for being streched, yeah Flat Out just doesn't support widescreen aspect ratios even though it does support widescreen resolutions. There are a number of games that are like that.

FesterSilently · Post by **FesterSilently** » 15 Nov 2005, 01:26

...but the nVidia applet won't let me disable SLI in FlatOut's profile. Am I doing something wrong?

Fester

FesterSilently · Post by **FesterSilently** » 15 Nov 2005, 03:21

...the applet says that the individual profiles are "read only".

Any ideas?

Fester

kyleb · Post by **kyleb** » 15 Nov 2005, 16:43

You could always pull one card and see how it goes then.

FesterSilently · Post by **FesterSilently** » 15 Nov 2005, 17:11

...thanks, man - just finished doing that, and...no go.

*defeated sigh*

I dunno. I'm close to giving up on these two games. I thought for SURE the one video card would do the trick. Show's ya what *I* know.

Anyway - I'm at school - gotta go.

Fester

spazmochad · Post by **spazmochad** » 18 Nov 2005, 15:06

You said you have an AMD 4400+ which is an X2 right? So your problem is proberbly dual core related.
Alt tab out of Flatout while on a menu and cntrl alt del to bring up taskmanager. Right click on the flatout process and run on just one core.
Sometimes new technology is more trouble than its worth ^_^
Now someone post a fix for NFS:MW :D

FesterSilently · Post by **FesterSilently** » 20 Nov 2005, 12:55

Thanks for the idea - once I start up BF1942, alt-tab out and set affinity for 1 CPU, it runs like butter, baby! :D

Flatout, however: the (in-engine) menus and the game itself (race tracks, etc.) run as they should when I hop out and set the .exe to run on only one CPU, but...the loading screens BETWEEN the menus and the tracks...take between five to ten MINUTES (still) to load, where they normally take 5-10 seconds (and ten seconds is a looong time).

So, technically, FlatOut is now playable, but with those horrifically long loading times, the game is, in fact, still *un*playable.

*sigh again*

Thanks again. Anyone got any ideas for this final problem?

Fester :?

Widescreen Gaming Forum