Mass Effect 2 (textures crash?)

[arges86]

When i play Mass Effect 2 i generally get good frame rates (low 50s - high 40s).
During cut scenes however, the frame rates plummet to 20 fps, or sometimes 0.
Then, it seems like the texture crashes, the screen turns purple and sometimes the game recovers. the sound never lags, but the video seems to stop.
If the game doesn't properly recover, i have so many random polygons covering everything that i have to restart the game.
Twice i've had to restart the PC (once i ended up having to do a system repair after, because windows wouldn't start).
Any Ideas?
Thanx for taking your time reading.

My computer is:
AMD: Athlon 64 X2 5200+ 2991 MHz
Mobo: Gigabyte M57SLI-S4 v.2
RAM: 4GB Mushkin DDR2 PC2-6400
OS: Win 7 64bit
VC: EVGA 8800 GTS 320MB

 

[daedalus685]

Sounds like it could be VRAM starting to go, or simply heat issues.

How is the dust build up? Are the temps ok?

Texture corruption is almost always due to memory issues.. though the failure to boot up again main mean it is more than just the video RAM that is the problem.

Check the temperatures on the CPU, GPU, and GPU RAM. If they check out, clean them anyway and re seat things. If it still happens then we will see .

Does it happen in any other game? If something was broken it should be a pretty common thing. Though perhaps ME2 is just harder on your rig than the other titles you play.

 

[arges86]

Heat is pretty good i think
the gpu gets to 72c degrees while running Furmark or Folding@Home GPU
I'm don't believe i can check the GPU RAM temperature.

the CPU gets hot, but stays within the Manufacturers limits (the BIOS would shut down the PC if the CPU gets above the max temp i'm comfortable with).

This is the only game it occurs on.
I play Dragon Age Origins, Crysis Warhead, Borderlands (another U3 engine game) w/ no adverse effects.
I've played several games based off of the U3 engine and they have all worked fine.

 

[JofaMang]

GPU-Z might be able to provide you with more detailed temps of the different parts of your card.

 

[arges86]

forgot about that...
it shows two GPU Temps.
one @ 73 C
another @ 64.3 C

 

[daedalus685]

Crysis should explode if there is anything wrong with the hardware well before mass effect 2 does. ME2 is not much more demanding than DAO, certainly no more so than any other new UT3 game.

I have run into bugs with ME2, DAO too, but not the same bugs .

As is par for the bioware course, they often have quirks in the games. Are you forcing AA through the drivers? Does it happen at all detail settings?

Wouldn't hurt to use GPUz to check the graphics ram temperatures. They should not be getting higher in ME2 than Crysis.. but one never knows.

Assuming the only place anything goes wrong is ME2, then you might just have a bug I am not aware of. I will occasionally get pathing glitches, and once the cut scene just went to hell (wrong textures, no screen refreshing, just looked like visual vomit). That being the case all I can tell you is double check that ME2 isn't making anything get hot.. then try the bioware forums for possible glitches others are having.

 

[daedalus685]

forgot about that...
it shows two GPU Temps.
one @ 73 C
another @ 64.3 C

If that is under load then you are perfectly fine.

 

[arges86]

under load

 

[daedalus685]

under load

Yeah, that shouldn't be causing issues unless the card is broken... in which case it should be blindingly evident in other games as well.

Next place to look would be ME2 itself... I don't think it is a hardware issue, of course a fresh driver install never (ok, not never) hurt anyone.

 

[arges86]

tried that...
used revo to get rid of the old drivers
and installed the latest Beta (which says adds support for ME2)

 

[daedalus685]

If you are forcing AA or other driver features that are not supported in the game itself you might try turning them off. Otherwise it is probably just a bug in the game with something on your system.

Mine works without big issues, other than the one time I had the image die during a cut scene. Though I'm running ATI atm.. so that isn't helpful.. Mine was purchased through impulse.

I have heard of bad install CD's floating around. If you got the retail version your installation could be corrupted. In any event, short of finding someone who solved the same issue as you a reinstall might be the next thing to try.

One way or another a software issue check list always ends with a format of windows

Sorry I can't be of more help..

 

[arges86]

i'm not forcing anything through the drivers. I've never found that to be stable

I've tried uninstalling the the game... didn't seem to help

I guess i can just hope a patch and/or driver update comes out that'll fix my issue
thanx for the help