A "Crysis" with my Hardware?

[Cerulean]

I'm not sure if this falls more under hardware or software, so please move this topic if it's in the wrong place.

I recently installed Crysis on my PC. Hardware is Athlon X2 4800+, 2GB DDR400, ATI x1900xtx 512MB graphics card, 17" Envision CRT. There is onboard video as well, but I disabled it in the BIOS. I think that's all that's relevant here.

The game installed just fine, but whenever I start it up, it gets to the EA screen, and then the monitor just winks out, almost like it loses connectivity. The only way to get it working again is to restart. I currently have the latest Catalyst drivers installed for my graphics card, but have also tried previous versions too. I can't really tell if this is a driver issue, although I'm more inclined to believe it's hardware related now. The card is brand new and seems to work just fine on everything else. I'm now gearing towards the monitor. Only issue now is I really don't have a "better" one on hand to test my theory.

Now I'm wondering if there's anything else it could be before I consider dropping $200 on an LCD monitor. Any suggestions?

 

[sPlAtOiD]

Have you got the patch for crysis. The game is buggy as ****.

 

[Cerulean]

Do you mean the Catalyst patch? There was an ATI driver patch made exclusively for the game that I downloaded and applied. Is there now another one too?

Thanks for a quick response

 

[Cerulean]

*UPDATE*

I was able to trace the problem back to my video card. Whenever I started up Crysis, it would sound like the card was being pulled into overdrive. I also noticed a red LED would light up on the card.

I swapped its power source with another connector and got different results. Now instead of the screen just winking out, it displays an array of colors like borderlined static on a TV. After loading the EA menu, the monitor goes black, but doesn't lose connectivity. At least now I can ALT+TAB back to the desktop and close the program via task manager, but I still can't play the game. I've tried several different sets of drivers. What next?

P.S. No more red LED.

 

[Peter.Cort]

try and running the game in safe mode.

 

[Cerulean]

You mean boot the computer in Safe mode and try to run it?

 

[Peter.Cort]

you could do that. but there is a way that you can run it in safe mode, i just don't know how... lol. try and google it.

but yeah first off just boot to safe mode and run the game and if that makes it work then dandy.

 

[Cerulean]

I've Googled the crap out of it and I can't figure out how to put the game into safe mode. lol. when i run the computer in safe mode, it won't load the game at all.

I should also add that I have an nvidia motherboard and an ati video card. does this cause conflicts with the system?

 

[Nitestick]

the reason safe mode didn't work is because it doesn't load your card's 3D driver, just a generic VGA driver. nVidia chipsets don't conflict in the slightest with AMD/ATI cards (and vice versa for that matter). in fact there are some benchmarks showing relatively better performance of ATI cards on nVidia chipsets.

 

[Cerulean]

That and I figured it would just be bad business for the two to not be compatible as popular as both actually are, but it's a brand new card and more than capable of handling the game. If it can handle Starship Troopers, C&C3, Halo 2 Vista, etc. at full spec, I don't see why it can't at least start up Crysis.