TerraShock

Using a H50 on my system atm, I like it, nice and quiet. I did however find out that using a waterblock on your processor, takes away the air cooling process of having a fan blowing down onto the motherboard. I added a spot fan, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835209017 to help cool the MB and it works well.

With the weather warming up, (didn't see your ambients), the lack of cooling onto the MB maybe causing a heat related issue for sure.

Head over to, http://www.overclock.net/water-cooling/ and see what you can find out from those guys if you hadn't already. You'll be able to get alot more info I think.

I'd go with the i7, and see if you can get it configured a lil cheaper, with less ram and maybe a smaller HD. 12 gigs is a little overkill atm, imho. Onboard sound is fine for most setups unless your running a 5.1 speaker setup, but if it's important to you, go for it. GL and hope you enjoy your new system!

Discussed some over in the tech/bug forum
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=257203

Suspicious_Pkg noted that the buff icons were made a little smaller if the team window is detached from the chat window. Might help until they get it fixed.

I have had the popup come up again as well.

"this version of he driver and later will have an auto-update feature"
I think there is a check box to undo, (when installing), if you don't want that feature. Nice to have if some people didn't want the service running.

Those new drivers, 270.51 are getting pretty good feedback on guru3d. I've considered installin 'em. I think you will need to redo the global performance setting again after a new driver install.

I've only had this crash a couple of times, so hadn't been forced into looking for a fix. Hyperstrike, did you come across and try this possible solution posted,

This idea of the card downclocking itself and others' related power issues led me to this fix: go to NVIDIA Control Panel --> Manage 3D Settings --> Global Settings, and switch "Power Management Mode" to "Prefer Maximum Performance" (the default "Adaptive" setting seemed to be the culprit). And that's it! The key here is changing the "Global" setting, as my individual programs were already set to "Prefer Maximum Performance." I have been running fine for 3 days now, and I can cause the error to reoccur by changing back to "Adaptive."

Another person had better luck with an older driver, 197.41's.

Another mentioned fix was a tweak to the registery allowing more time for the driver to respond, before the program was put into unresponsive/crash state.

On the plus side, I do find I use much less endurance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_S...nit_(Computer)

and a similiar discussion on a that system regarding upgrades at,

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/in...4073344AATplla

and more,

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&s...1+power+supply

You can find lots of videos on youtube on how to change one but sounds like you might need some technical assistance. Maybe there is a computer service store near?

A graphics card upgrade as Gangrel said, depending on what you have for power. Before my upgrade, I was gaming on a low end AMD 4400 2.4, I had oc'd a bit, and a GTX 260 216 core, oc'd, at mostly med-high settings with good frame rates, 25ish. Ambient Occ settings off and shadows turned down to medium and near.

Ultra mode plays different in different zones. Pratoria and areas in Grandville cause the most slowdowns, with most of the main blue side "older" zones playing just fine allowing a lil higher settings.

I've seen the issue hunting badges in Mercy before. Not sure if I've seen it anywhere else though. Didn't "bug" it myself.

Hmm, wonder if a browser redirect spyware program, running in the background, might cause this as well? Are you using the new updater?

Seems someone also had that error, in an AE mish.
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=238131
Did you contact support? Looks like there was no more info on the other person's post.

I wouldn't roll back to an older OS, but thats me. Sounds like it's an issue with not enough ram available, "he had this issue last night outside of COH trying to run Skype"

You're aware that XP will limit you in how much ram you can actually use in the system, correct? App. 3.5 GB incl the video card memory. If it's an option, and I think a better idea would be to add some ram to the system. 2 more gigs would make a difference I'm sure. Good luck with what ever you decide.

I'd start with updating the Realtek AC97 Audio drivers. Did you try some older video driver versions for the video card? Not familiar with Radeon graphics drivers, but there have been some issues with 'em I think.

300 secs, kind of sounds like it's heating up and something is breaking after it gets hot, so it could just be the video card biting the dust so make sure the fans are all running too.

Try turning "Ambient Occlusion" and shadows completly off and see if you get any errors. If you do, try running in safe mode and see if any occur. Stressing the processor/video card with eye candy can cause heat issues in itself, so I'd try to eliminate some of the extra calculations their doing.

Your card and processor are kinda toward the low end running Windows 7, and you do have quite a few services running in the background, and I think skype pretty resource hungry.

See if changing settings in game first, helps, before buyin into any new gear.

One more thing, download and run http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

It's a fairly easy to use registery cleaner that is pretty safe. Just make sure to make a backup when it asks before hitting "fix all". You can always reinstall the backup should it cause an issue. I use it all the time and it can fix alot of errors.

Im currently gaming on a recertified ASUS
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883220051
$700 isnt bad for the specs it has, if you have a copy of Windows 7 to stick in it, makes it a good buy.

Problem with adding newer cards is you'll most likely need more power to run one. There are quite a few to choose from in that price range, but if you need to stay with the current power supply, that will narrow down your choice.

Have a look at this one, looks decent, EVGA GeForce GT 240 SuperClocked
http://www.evga.com/products/moreInf...family=GeForce

$60 after rebate and free ground shipping.

Also, check for card size. some of the newer cards are quite a bit longer and may have issues in that case. Better safe than sorry.

"is there a noticeable performance difference between DDR3 and DDR5 gpu's"

If its the exact same card, with the same memory/processor clock speeds, yes, but seeing a performance difference will depend on the game as well.

A higher # DDR card might be actually slower in performance if its memory/processor clocks are slower. Don't worry about which one you buy, just get the best card you can afford based on overall performance.

Here's a ranking chart you might wanna look at.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...rd,2857-7.html

Good lil informative guide
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6142716/index.html

Task Manager and "performance" tab opens up a memory monitoring program. You can see what is being seen by the OS there.

As FatherXmas said, your system can only use what the OS limitations allow it to use, be it XP/Vista/7, so even if they are installed properly, you will only see what the OS can use.

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html is a great lil program that has some memory monitor functions as well if you'd like more info on your system memory.

Thanks Jak, thats was informative. I've just recently got into spending some cash and using IO's to improve my tanker and having fun with the sets trying to make him more enjoyable.

Over 6 yrs and have done next to nothing in IO sets for any of my toons so it's been a bit of a learning experience.

He does have tp which is fine, but havin some running capability has made him lots more fun to play.

That system should be able to handle almost all of the eye candy turned up. Not familiar with tweakcoh at all, sorry. When was the last time that program was updated?

Did you try some older drivers? Newest isn't always the best, and can introduce issues at times to systems that were good before. Just a thought, have you checked some other forums if people are having issues with the card and those drivers? guru3d.com has lots o' info in their forums GPU/Driver related.

This seemed kinda odd,
Memory: 6144MB
.Net Memory Report: 2927MB out of 6134MB available
Page File: 6655MB (5610MB currently in use

Seems like alot of pagefile being used for a 6gb system?

Just wondering what running speed you've been happy with using Granite exclusively in mishs? Also, did you regret any missing powers to get there?

After a couple respecs, my lvl 50 is up to about 23 mph atm, and that seems pretty good, for me at least, and I don't feel to bad about any power losses or tanking ability atm.

Can I get up to 25, or 26? BTW, stone/fire

Open GL games are very GPU intensive and with the upgrade they did it is more so now. I was running a 260 GTX 712 core OC'd and an older AMD 4400, and had to turn down some things to stay in playable frame rates. Your card isn't much lower than that one.

Start with turning off ambient occlusion, then take down your shadows. You may need to lower the draw distance some as well. By doing those I was able to keep near 32 fps in most of the game, even in Pratoria.