Heya, for a month now I've been having problems with my Nvidia FX5200 128MB 3D card. I can play FS for about 30 minutes and then suddenly the screen becomes a jumbled mess and the computer freezes. I have the 45.23 drivers as they are the only drivers in which all my games play decently on. I have changed drivers and the effects are still there. UT2004 and Battlefield Vietnam are games which are also affected however games which also use the 3D card such as Simcity 4 and Orbiter are perfectly fine. Any idea what it is? Here are my computer specs:Pentium 4 1.8GHz 512MB RAMGeforce FX5200 128MBthanks in advance!

You should first rule out overheating. Easy to do... simply remove the left side cover of your computer and blow air into the innards with a house fan. Then go fly and see what happens.Greg

I've had the jumbled screen lockup only once with my 5200...Not sure what caused it, but overclocking the card with the provided software made it more prone for this. I'm having a bit of trouble with mine, if I overclock my box. I'm using the "56-64" drivers at the time. At first, when I got the card, I was running both the core speed, and the memory speed at full clock, or should I say full overclock...It seemed ok, but lately I was getting random crashes. I found that the ramped up memory clock seemed to be the problem. I can run the core clock full speed, and it seems ok. So anyway, this cured the problem running at stock speed. "P4-2.4 ghz" . But when I overclock the CPU, I'm getting the same glitch. I assume my video card does not like the ramped up PCI speed? But even declocking the card to "safe mode" does not prevent the occasional crash, when I clock up. I had previously thought I was having a system ram problem that was glitching when overclocking, but now I've come to the conclusion my box is stable in itself, but the video card is causing the hang. I'm not sure what to do about mine. It's not hot as I have a big fan on it. I felt the heat sink last night after it did this, and it felt like it was off. It was that cold...So it's not getting hot. My PS seems ok, but who knows...I may look into that more. I guess on the positive side, my box is overclocking stable, but it doesn't do me any good if I can't run it in fs9 that way...:/ BTW, I am locking my pci speeds to 33/66 in bios..That helps, but not enough...If your software lets you adjust the clock speeds, try reducing the "memory clock". Kind of a bummer...My 2.4 cpu will overclock fine well over 3 ghz, but my lousy video card is throwing a wrench in the works...The cpu is stable anywhere else in windows.. Only fs9 hangs up... And I'm starting to blame the fx-5200's memory.. :/ MK

After putting a fan near it I have ruled out over-heating. Any other suggestions?

still sounds to me like its overheating. is the fan on the heatsink spinning fast enough? a lot of times the fans on graphics cards get old and start spinning at really slow speeds, you can usually tell just by looking at them while they are running. another possibility is that the heatsink is no longer seated properly.go to a computer store and get a new heatsink/fan combo that fits the 5200 ($10-$15) and install it. not only is it a fun little project but I think it'll probably fix your problem. if not you're only out $10.ive had similar problems before (as have others) and this usually solves it. also make sure your case fans are clean and spinning efficiently.

After installing the latest patch, I was looking for ways to improve my box. Myself, I've been having trouble with errors when overclocked.At first I thought it was the ram. Then I ran loads of tests, and the ram *seemed* to be ok. I then started looking at the fx5200 card I'm running . "gainward pro660TV". I noticed that I have been crashing when clocking up the video card, using the built in software. "The overclock is gainward approved, being they made the setup..." This led me to believe perhaps my video card was kind of flaky with it's ram or something. So then I tried some more tests..I reinstalled the original drivers. This might have helped some, but I still crashed when overclocked. But!, I seemed more stable when normal clocked. So then I tried all kinds of bios settings...One that seemed to help stabilty was turning OFF the "video bios caching" in the bios. I left system caching ON. At first, I though it was fixed...I flew a flight, and all seemed well for about an hour. I was starting to feel pretty good, but at 6 miles out to land...Yep, it crashed again with the dreaded g2d...Actually, it's usually g3d, but it varies...So anyway, back to the drawing board...I then started looking for better drivers, and I also downloaded the riva tuner, so I can mess with my video settings. I decided to d/l the latest "for win98se", forceware drivers. "version 61-76". I seem to still be crashing overclocked, but now at normal clock, the sim seems to be more stable than it's ever been. It has not crashed once since the new drivers when running at normal speed. So then, I installed the riva tuner, and was able to farther overclock the video card to 315-400 mhz, instead of the usual top Nvidea setting of 280-250. Guess what? It's faster of course, and is still totally stable so far. Also, my graphics seem as good or better than ever. So now, I'm starting to lean back to my RAM as the problem with overclocking, unless it's the faster pci-agp speed which is causing that. "more testing to do"If my video was flaky, surely the sharp overclock would have sent it over the edge. But nope, totally stable as long as I'm clocked normal.But anyway, so far, it's quite an improvement over what it was doing.So to sum...As a test, you could start with turning off your video bios caching in the BIOS setup. I'm not sure, but it sure seemed to help here, and framerates are the same. Then, if you feel brave, you might wanna try the forceware drivers. I'm using the 61-76 version with good stable results so far. At normal clock anyway... Might be worth a shot. Whats goofy with my overclocking, is windows in itself is totally stable. Also boot disk ram testing...Only fs9 crashes, and it seems mostly 3d graphics file related when it actually gives an error message. Maybe due to the heavier load when running 3d???? Back to the ram maybe...?? Dunno...I wish I had some good o/c ram laying around to test it...When I tried it 2d, it seemed stable...So anyway, I may yet have flaky ram at overclock speeds...IE: notice some O/C boxes seem stable until you run something heavy duty like Prime, etc... BTW, my whole puter is cool. Big fan on the side, so heat is not an issue. Anyway, at normal speed, it's running better than it ever has so far. I think the new drivers are part of it. But the video bios caching being turned off may be a reason also..MK