DooomTrain

Ok, like the jack *** that I was. I had just thought I had to use all my cables not realizing that my monitor should only be plugged in once. I was wondering if this would have stressed out my video card? Would it have thought that I had a dual monitor set up, but it really was only one. Would it have been working TWICE as hard trying to display on what it thought was two monitors? Or would the video card have been smart enough to realize that it was just one monitor? I had NO troubles running my games at all when I'd first bought my PC. but then this had started happening







The map would have this "curtain" covering doorways and sometimes half the map, just stretching all the way till it covers everything in it's path from one side to another

This had not happened till about. August 14th 2008 give or take a week. I'd reformatted my PC and reinstalled everything then updated everything and this is where it began. But this is also the time I tried the Crysis Demo out of curiousity. I'd tried it all on Ultra High settings for about 5 min till I got tired of everything being so choppy. then b4 I quit, my guy grew a 3rd arm and the map hard started to tear and all these lines filled up the screen. could crysis + me plugging in my monitor twice had been the cause of this?

MY system is :

Dell 9150
Windows XP Media Center Professional Edition
(Don't know why, but on my partition it says) Windows XP Professional
(note, in my boot menu and info etc. it says I have XP 64 Bit edition? I thought it wasn't possible? And I only have 1 install disc and when installing on 2nd partition it ALWAYS installs the opposite of what's on the other partition)
Nvidia Geforce 7900 GS
Pentium D 940 Extreme @ 3.2 ghz X2
Mobo : Dell 0fJ030
Bios : A05
RAM : 4 Gigs DDR2
All software + hardware updated (June, 21 2009)

Thank you very much, for any help I may recieve.

zerofire

Your problem is not in the connection since the monitor should have a system of switching between connections. Your computer has no possible way of running Crysis at the settings that you have set them at. Your computer needs a more powerful graphics card and processor. Basically your computer is creating a image but is not completing it in time and is moving on without finishing the creation process. That is why the image looks so bad. You need at least a Core 2 Duo @ 3Ghz or Athlon 64 X2 @2.8Ghz to have it go correct. Pentium D's are too slow for Ultra High. Also you need at least a nVidia GeForce 9k or ATi Radeon HD 2k video card to process the image. Your computer is not equipped to play the most resource hungry game of all time at the highest setting so don't try.

DooomTrain

No, I know what the minimum specs are (since August, haha), my question was.....

Did my video card get fried because I had played a demanding game while having my single monitor plugged in twice? and Did my my video card work twice as hard trying to display for two screens when it didn't have to.

Was probably my fault, I tend to get sidetracked when writing in forums leaving out info, putting unecessary info in etc.

wrench97

No the monitor would only use 1 of the inputs the other would have been switched off in the monitor.
Try cleaning the cards heat sink with a can of compressed air(walmart had a large can for $4.69 last week) and check the fan on the card.
Are you running the stock Dell 375w PSU with this card? If so it's under powered and that can damage the card over long periods.

zerofire

You basically had a single card attempt to run a game that is too demanding on the computer with that hardware. It does not matter if there was one monitor connection or two. One monitor can only have one active input at any one time.