Display driver crashes when playing Mass Effect - Bad for gpu?

[Pwncracker]

I have an old Sony Vaio laptop that has an ATI HD3470 256mb graphics card. I understand it's pretty crappy for playing games but I bought Mass Effect on a whim and much to my surprise it seems to run quite well in 1026x768 and medium settings even with the crappy graphics card.

However I have this one problem, after about 40 minutes to an hour of play time the screen will go black and Mass Effect will crash to desktop - windows tells me my display driver has crashed and recovered. But since it doesn't happen every 5 minutes I'm quite content to just reload the game and continue for another hour until the next crash.

Probably a dumb question, but can I ignore the problem (is it just a software issue)? Or am I over stressing my graphics card by doing this and will it eventually destroy itself!?

PS, Judging by fan noise and heat the laptop doesn't seem to be working any harder then when I'm playing an older less demanding game....

 

[Fat.Clown]

for starters, have you updated the graphic card's drivers?
also check for an update for DirectX.

how are the temperatures?
sounds like it could be overheating.
you could download a programs such as GPU-Z to track the temperatures.

 

[Pwncracker]

Hi Fat.Clown,

Actually I'm running very old drivers from 2008: "Driver Packaging Version 8.513.1-080717a1-067445C-Sony". This is because Sony refuses to let AMD support the ATI cards in their laptops so I can't use the installer that comes with the new driver packages they release. I've heard you can bypass the Catalyst installer and install new drivers manually but I haven't looked into it. I once tried to use a program someone made called ATI mobility modder to force a driver update but I ended up just breaking something and had to reformat my hard drive and start from scratch again. I'm not very good at these things...

Mass Effect updated my Directx when I installed it... I got it from Steam.

I did what you said and checked my temps - with a program called ATI-Tray Tools (GPU-Z didn't work for me) - My card runs at a stable 70 degrees when I'm playing Mass Effect, and sits at around 45 degrees when I'm just staring at my desktop and running nothing.

Do you think that's too high? Next time I try I'll run the temp graph untill Mass Effect crashes to see if there is a temp spike.

 

[Sheepykins]

so what are sony doing about updates? they cant just stop software updates on their laptops. are you sure that information is correct?

btw, does it always crash in the same place? or just always after a certain time has passed?

 

[Pwncracker]

Sony doesn't care much for gamers, they'll only release new drivers if they have to remedy a serious fault. Their last update for my graphics card was back in 2008, and no more since. (To fix a problem with external monitor support or some crap like that)

As for ATI(AMD), they just sell the chips to Sony who are the OEM manufacturer of the HD3470 in my laptop.

So AMD need permission from Sony to support my card as it is Sony's product.

There are generic HD3470 drivers on the amd website I could use, but If I download them they come as part of an installer package. When I run the installer it detects the Sony card and refuses to continue .

I've read that other Sony Viao gamers have managed to extract the drivers they need from the installer package and install them manually through device manager. I've followed some steps on other forums but have never managed to get it to work for me yet, I think I'll give it another try. (Being part of the plug and play generation I suck at these things it must be said)

As for Mass Effect it just tends to crash after I've been playing for a while. Then I'll load it up and play some more and after an hour or so it'll crash again. I had a look on the bioware forums and apparently my card doesn't meet the minimum spec and is 'unsupported,' (what-ever that means?) so perhaps that is the problem.