Please Help, I'd like to play the game I purchased!!

[fenwick]

Hey everyone.. I've had Orange box for a while, but I'm having a problem playing ep2, Portal and Team Fortress2...

What happens is when playing the game I get the graphical artifacts showing up. I can alt-tab out and back in and it shows up ok again, but after a minute or so they show up again..

Here are my specs and what I have tried so far:
AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core 5400+ 2.81 GHz
4 GB Ram
Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit
Ge-Force 8800 GTX 768 MB
Updated to the latest nVidia drivers (169.09)

I have tried a number of things, I've tried running it in dx9, I've tried lowering the graphical settings (but with my card I shouldn't have to). I've read that my particular problem may be caused by my card overheating (I don't see how, I've got 2 internal fans and the card has a decent heatsink) so I've even opened up my case and put a fan directly in front of it blowing on it directly. I've updated my drivers numerous times and even used a driver cleaner to make sure everything is cleaned out.

Nothing seems to help, I get the same problem everytime after just a few minutes.

Does anyone have any suggestions, or anyway I can contact valve for tech support where they'll actually get back to me?

thanks for any suggestions and help!!!

 

[Parrot of doom]

Suggest you try XP mate.

 

[giant384]

blowing a fan right onto the card wont do crap...

your case has bad airflow apparentlly and i recommend managing your wires in your case. maybe add anothor case fan if you can. there are also pci fan alternatives that you can buy.

 

[Druckles]

Please Help, I'd like to play the game I purchased!!

Wouldn't we all.

 

[Cthrag Yaska]

Suggest you try XP mate.

Wow helpful comment! I'm running Vista and ive had no problems playing the games, next port of call i would guess at is drivers, but evidently youve tried that already... go with the overheating business.

 

[fenwick]

thanks for the helpful comments (from some of you). I'll try getting another internal fan.. I really wanted to avoid spending more money on my system...

Hopefully that'll help. I still don't understand how it'd be overheating my card when games like Bioshock run perfectly on high settings.

 

[Crash]

Maybe your GPU fan is dusty? Try blowing it out...I know those heatsinks on the GTXs are like the ones that were on my GTSs, they are monsters, make sure your getting enough air flow to it. You've got a serious heat creating rig there, and even if the room you're playing in gets a few degrees warmer, that may be all it takes to make your system malfunction. With the amount of money you have invested, I would strongly suggest going liquid on at least the CPU. The cooler you can keep your componets, the better they will run, and more importantly, the longer they will last.