PC gaming sucks

[AOFanboi]

Today's math question:

nVidia GeForce 4200 Ti 64M + latest Microsoft certified drivers (61.76) + DirectX 9.0c + Doom 3 demo equals what?

Answer:

Black screen (followed by system crash) at particular points in some cut scenes, and this demo has lots of those. The one that always does this before I manage to hit ESC is when I first meet up with the sergeant, and that's very early. Same goes for nearly every other driver I've used, including the DX9c-supporting 61.77.

Screw PC gaming with its maddening hell of drivers and APIs. Excuse me while I fire up the vastly more playable Burnout 3: Takedown on my non-crashing PS2.

(If I wanted to admit to downloading the trial, I would mention the same happens during normal gameplay in Horizons as well. But I won't admit I played that trial so I won't mention that.)

[Furiously]

Thought the 4200 wasn't a DX9.0 card.

[kaid]

I am pretty sure that your video card is not dx 9 rated so the high end games like Doom 3 are likely going to cause problems.

Kaid

[Rasix]

It's a DX9 card. Doom 3 ran fine for me.

[Soukyan]

It's a DX9 card. Doom 3 ran fine for me.

It's not a DX9 card, but Doom 3 will run on it. The 4x00 series of cards were all DX8. The 5x00 series were the first of nVidia's DX9 cards. Something else is up there. Did you try uninstalling the nVidia drivers from the Add/Remove Programs applet on the Control Panel and then restart and install the 61.77 drivers fresh?

[Margalis]

I have a TI-4600 and I was able to play Tribes:Vengeance, even though it said it required DX9 and my card doesn't support some DX9 features.

Of course, whenever I tried to use the in-game browser it would CRASH MY CABLE MODEM requiring me to unplug it and plug it back in...

[AOFanboi]

Did you try uninstalling the nVidia drivers from the Add/Remove Programs applet on the Control Panel and then restart and install the 61.77 drivers fresh?

Yes, except that was the 61.76 drivers. You know that huge warning Microsoft throws up when you try to install non-certified drivers...

I've uninstalled it now, though. However, I was impressed at how well the non-cutscene game ran (at 800x600 medium graphics) on that rather underpowered card (perhaps the 2.8 GHz P4 helped).

[Liquidator]

The card is DirectX 9 compliant.  There's a big difference between that and a true DirectX9 card that can display all of the extra things provided with DX9.  That being said, I played through Doom 3 on a GeForce 4 Ti4600 with no problems.

[Sable Blaze]

I initially used a Ti4400 with DOOM3. It did run, but that's about all I can say. It was quickly disposed of in favor of a FX6800. Much improvement was apparent in a number of games (duh).

Sometimes you just get incompatibilities. Consoles have less, but only less. My own Xbox is a royal pain the butt in a variety of ways. It doesn't play well with other Xboxes; it hates a rather large number of my DVDs; it doesn't like a certain copy of Rainbow6 3; the list goes on.

I've had some machines more problematic that others. My present build is very solid. My P3 version of this box was a tempermental piece of junk.

Some days you eat the bear. Some days the bear eats you...

[Resvrgam]

I wonder why they never bothered to release a patch for the XBox version of Thief III: Deadly Shadows?  I guess players will have to win that game in one sitting (which shouldn't be surprising when considering how short console games are becoming).

This unholy bastardization of merging PC & Console games is dragging down the visual quality on PCs and making console games as buggy as the rushed PC titles we PC gamers have been enduring for years. WTF?!

I can only imagine the horrors being released by the hyrbid games' next turd off the assembly line: Star Wars: Battlefront (...wasn't that already a BF1942 MOD?).  

The point is:  ALL PLATFORMS ARE STARTING TO SUCK.  

I sure hope the industry gets its head out of its ass before we see a repeat of Atari's mistakes circa 1983.

[AOFanboi]

I wonder why they never bothered to release a patch for the XBox version of Thief III: Deadly Shadows?

I was under the impression that Microsoft FORBADE bug patching of XBox games unless they were Live-enabled (as in multiplayer, not just Live-"aware", i.e. having online highscores).

This unholy bastardization of merging PC & Console games is dragging down the visual quality on PCs and making console games as buggy as the rushed PC titles we PC gamers have been enduring for years. WTF?!

I think that's the XBox owner talking. As a DC, GCN and PS2 owner, I don't see that as much, since I generally buy "exclusive" titles with no match in the PC area. You cannot make Mad Maestro on a PC.

As for the original post I made, I tried disabling DirectDraw/Direct3D, but that only made the cut scenes crash faster. So I guess it's in the video (or audio?) playback, whatever that uses. (The game itself ran just fine, since that uses OpenGL.)

Maybe it should be Turtle Beach + DirectSound + Doom 3 Demo = teh crash instead?

[Trippy]

I think that's the XBox owner talking. As a DC, GCN and PS2 owner, I don't see that as much, since I generally buy "exclusive" titles with no match in the PC area. You cannot make Mad Maestro on a PC.

One of the reasons why that is is many titles on those consoles are in Japanese-only first and the delay in localizing and releasing to other areas gives them time to fix bugs in the original releases.

[Soukyan]

Maybe it should be Turtle Beach + DirectSound + Doom 3 Demo = teh crash instead?

It could be the sound card or drivers. Video cards aren't the only thing notorious for crashing games. ;)