UT2004 missing/flickering textures and objects

[Wreath]

Indoor maps are the worst, but on every map textures, and even whole chunks of the map, disappear and reappear sporadically. Sometimes it is possible to see battles between players several floors above or below me. Often I will be walking on a bridge that I cannot see or firing at a player only to have the bullets stopped by a "invisable" wall that flickers into existence later.

I have already tried:

-Reverting back to an earlier forceware driver - 91.XX
-playing in software mode (graphics are okay here)
-uninstalling my mobo IDE drivers (no change)
-turning off fast writes and switching from AGP 4X to 1X (texture flickering was better, but still very noticable)

Here are some pix of the problem. If you or someone you know has fixed this prob, please enlighten me as to how they did so!

http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i1.../Shot00007.jpg

http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i1.../Shot00003.jpg

http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i1.../Shot00001.jpg

My specs:

DFI AK76-SN
Athlon 1400mhz
512 RAM
Geforce 6800nu
Windows XP
all the latest drivers for everything

[Lenny]

Could you video card be overheating? Are you overclocking? How is your case cooling? Put the GPU temp display up on your desktop, play the game for a while and then alt-tab out to the desktop to check the temp.

[Wreath]

Temps for the card are low - 47C idle, 56C load. Case has plenty of fans. I am not overclocking at all because this 6800nu is way overpowered for a athlon 1400mhz.

[Lenny]

All games or just UT2004? Does it happen in UT immediately or after a while of play? Running the latest UT patch?

[Wreath]

It happens in other games as well. I recently reformatted to fix another problem and I remember Myst Uru had similar flickering and missing textures. The flickering happens immediately and doesn't seem to get better or worse as I play.

Could this problem possibly be remedied by replacing the motherboard? I know that the video card is ok because I have used it in another comp and it worked fine. I've had other non-game related problems with the AK76-SN comp and I am wondering if maybe replacing the mobo would kill two birds with one stone - fix the textures AND the other probs. I wonder if I can still can find an AGP mobo with the AMD 761 chipset...

[Lenny]

You never can say for certain if new hardware will fix the problem. Maybe it's time for an upgrade to an Athlon 64. I think I saw a socket 939 A64 3000+ on newegg for $65. Add a board like the ASRock 939 Dual Vista AGP/PCI-E board for $66 and you'd get a nice increase in performance. The BIOS settings on that board would allow you to reuse your PC2100/DDR266 memory. Use you existing AGP video card then when you next upgrade you can get a PCI-E card and use it on the same board.

[Wreath]

Lenny, that sounds like a good idea. I didn't know they made PCIE/AGP boards, especially for that low price.

Do you know how long socket 939 is going to be around? I would hate to find that my upgrade path for the new mobo was cut off because 939 was about to be phased out.

Are AGP/PCIE mobos plentiful or is that ASrock one unique?

[Lenny]

I don't know how long 939 will be around. AM2 is here now but you need DDR2 memory for that which right now is expensive. Another nice thing about that ASRock board is it you can buy a add-on card (around $30 I think) which accepts an AM2 CPU & DDR2 memory. They call it the Future CPU slot. So there's your upgrade path I have the ASRock 939Dual-Sata2 which was the predecessor to the new 939Dual-VSTA. That's in my son's PC. For a budget board it is very solid and overclocks nicely too. I have a 3000+ (1.8 Ghz) running at 2.4 Ghz in that ASRock board with 2x512 of PC3200 + 2x256MB of PC2100 both running dual channel. Dual board are not plentiful. I'm not aware of any others. It's a feature of the Uli chipset used in the ASRock board. I know of 2 others using the same board without issues.

So you really get a good upgrade path from AGP to PCI-E and from socket 939/DDR to AM2/DDR2.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157097

Oh and btw my family PC is still running a AMD 761 board - the infamous Epox 8K7A