CTD problem solved

[gravitysux]

Hi!

I've had problems with CTD's in all versions of the game, but it's been very variable. Sometimes I could play for a whole evening, other times it CTD within 5 min. I had various other problems in hte game, but those have been solved with the patches, and 1.3.2b is working almost flawless except the CTD.

I've done all the codec stuff, and did a fresh XP install with only X3 on a separate disk, without solving the CTD's.

I thought my hardware was good, I've got a watercooled CPU, GPU and northbridge. No exotic add-ons, and a stock SB Live PCI card. The computer have never ever failed in any other game or app. I've done extensive CPU, GPU, mem and IO testing to make sure it's OK without finding any flaws. Even heated the water in the cooler to verify that my sensors are correct, and that I had no temp. related issues.

I disabled all I could onboard (Raid, LAN, FireWire, USB), and changed the memory to another brand of PC3200 DDR tried 3-4 different BIOS versions. Still got plenty of CTD's in X3.

Finally I changed the mem frequency, from 400Mhz to 333Mhz. Lo and behold - I've played for a week now, no CTD's.

My motherboard is an Asus K8V-SE Deluxe, my 2x512MB DDR is on the Asus compability list as supported. Time for a MB upgrade methinks... (New CPU, PCI-X GPU, Mem, mucho $$, ah well...)

Seems like X3 is able to stress my memory subsystem harder than any dedicated HW test program.

Just thought this might help someone else having CTD on Asus AMD64 boards.