Help getting games to play?

crobo

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Can anyone help with this one? I have bought a 'home cinema' UVEM computer and the former owner has reformatted it. It has an ATI Radeon 9600 graphics card (256 MB). DVDs work great but I'm having problems with games.

- an older one (Half Life) works a treat
- call for duty 2 and Crysis installed OK, and I get audio, but when I click 'play' the screen goes black.

Anyone have a simple recommendation? I imagine it is missing something but the question is what? I tried going to the ATI website but got no clues.

Cheers
 
Forget Crysis with that GPU. COD 2 just meets minimum requirements. Update drivers, DX and run in DX7 mode (COD 2)
 
this has happened to me once before,

but it could be any of the following driver issue, check drivers if it is the latest one, do a roll back,

check that you have the lastest version of directx installed,

check the card make sure it isnt over heating and if so give it a clean,

make sure ur monitor is set up right and if the refresh rate is too high put it to around 60 and try again,

also this could also be down to the psu might not be outputting enough power to power the card up right..........

good luck........
 
Thanks folks - something to look into. I thought that the games came with directx (Crysis should have a late version surely).
My laptop plays them both with a 256 mb graphics card and I expected this one to at least play COD2, but I'll get onto it.

I'm playing through a plasma - would that make a difference with refresh rate etc?
 
am not 100% about refresh rate but i was told this when i was getting a blank display trying to play gta(pc version), my problem was caused by the power supply it wasnt outputting enough power suppose to be outputting 500 but was only doin 200watts.....:eek:
lucky i didnt damage anything:rolleyes:
 
Thanks folks - something to look into. I thought that the games came with directx (Crysis should have a late version surely).

Some games do come with a version of directX but that's just because they're trying to be helpful and provide the latest version (at time of release) so you don't have to download it. The crysis version should be fine for CoD 2 but you could get the latest version from microsoft's website if nothing else works. You do need to go to the ATI/AMD site and get the latest drivers: http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html

My laptop plays them both with a 256 mb graphics card and I expected this one to at least play COD2, but I'll get onto it. You have one version of directX installed on your PC and that runs all the directX games you've got.

The memory on a card is storage for the image data, the GPU is the bit that matters for running the games. I know my 9800pro 128mb had no problem running CoD 2 so a 9600pro should at least start it without a problem. You can probably forget crysis on a five year old card though.

I'm playing through a plasma - would that make a difference with refresh rate etc?

That's possibly it, if the games are trying to switch to a higher resolution than your plasma supports then that may cause the screen to go black. Do you happen to have a small LCD monitor around that you could hook up and try?

Does your laptop have any problem running CoD2 through that screen?
 

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