Display Driver has stopped working and recovered crash. [SOLVED]

Hi all,

im totally gutted; i have a custom built pc, 8 core processor 16g ram and ASUS HD6970 video card. had windows 7 64 bit and all expansions pack and was running the sims 3 fine. the other day i turned on the computer started it up and had glitchy flashes and then an error that the display driver has recovered.....i have 3 fans in the back as it can get pretty hot so overheating is not an issue. does anyone else have this problem, tried reinstall and the same thing again. have updated drivers and done hdd, pc check and every kind of check. i would really appreciate any advice....

Have managed to run saints row 3rd and i am alive ok on the same pc

thanks in advance

Not sure if this would help, update windows (most especially the .net framework updates).

Did anything happen before the problem occurred?

Thanks ill try it out and see, nothing happened before problem occurred which is weird, literally turned on the pc and played the game......

Meh, the .Net framework should be fine. Windows 7 and 8 both come with the latest versions of everything up to 4.0 - and if I recall correctly the game requires 2.0.

I had this issue with one of my ATI cards long ago, and it turned out that the most up-to-date driver was bad. You might try googling around and see if others have are having the same issue - typically they'll also tell which version to get instead.

Ultimately the driver stops responding for too many issues to diagnose here. It could be the driver itself (as mentioned previously), it could be your Overdrive settings, it could be that your PSU isn't powerful enough for it, it could be that your PSU is powerful enough for it but you have WAAAAAY too many USB devices plugged in for everything to get power, it could be the graphics card's bios needs to be updated.. it could be.. it could be.. (the list goes on and on, in other words).

Side note: I miss that card that I had issues with. It was the last All-In-Wonder that I bought

aww thanks, yeah after googling all morning there are so many variables to the problem, the frustrating thing is that its only with the sims 3.....but it may be overclocking issues too..going to do some more trouble shooting. when i google the issue everyones fix seemed to be different....

You might try going to the Toms Hardware forums and asking them to help you out with it - those guys are ingenious when it comes to figuring out issues like this. They typically ask you to post your Overdrive settings and some other information (ie: PSU specs).

thanks alot, i have also been n the AMD forums too, but yes i know thats a really good site for tech help, you rock hexocist thanks for your advice

//EDIT

just loaded up MW3 and that plays like a dream.......i would think that was a way more of a graphic hog than sims 3..?

I wouldn't think so. In FPS games the amount of information needing to be rendered is much, much smaller than what is being rendered in an open-world game such as The Sims. It may require more advanced shader support (infact MW3 does - it requires Shader 3.0 while The Sims requires 2.0) .. but because of the amount of information that has to be rendered, The Sims is -easily- harder on the graphics card than pretty much any FPS game. Basically (extremely basic, actually) in FPS games they render the viewable portion of the world, your arms and weapon, viewable enemies, any weapons that might be on the ground that are visible, and a skybox. In most "game developer" courses offered today the first thing you do is write an FPS game because they're so easy to do. Open-world games, on the other hand, you have to render the world, each object (sim, each article of clothing including accessory, furniture around the world [not inside a house, like park benches], furniture inside any house that might be visible, the different types of floors/walls, etc) and typically some hidden objects are rendered too so that when they do become visible they're already in RAM and ready to go.

So sending my ASUS HD670 off to be fixed under warranty , it was the card after doing tests. its gonna be weird only having onboard....ah well
so thanks again for all your suggestions

Hello there,

Sorry for the late reply!
Is there anything else we can currently help you with?

no thanks im good now, you can call this solved....lol

cheers

Hello there,

Good, enjoy the game and please let us know if you need more assistance!