FryGuy

My favorite glitch I experienced. During a trial, a friend's Male level 50 Force Field controller somehow got duped with a female level 24 Dark/Ele defender who was also on the team. Almost like the database records got crossed up in some kind of race condition. He tried to respec his character, but the game client would instantly crash when he typed "/respec".

How's this for an impossible power set... dated 06/24/2006:

What's the point? The heart of the game was the development studio: The writing, the graphics, etc. Without that you have nothing. Programmers are such a small part of the package.

I'd start with Verifying All Files (consistency check). I've had the patcher mess up before patching the files.

I smell a Nemesis plot.

Unfortunately, this is almost surely some kind of hardware issue. Could be heat, could be a failing fan in the video card, could be power supply problems, could be just about anything. You can try to mitigate the any heat issues by cleaning any fans inside the case: CPU, video, etc. and generally removing as much dust as possible. But in the end, some kind of hardware needs to be swapped. I'd start with the video card.

I agree, noticed a large difference in initial loading time when starting the game. It's the time after you accept the Terms of Service in the updater to the time when the initial login screen comes up. It takes at least 3-4 times longer than it did before. I believe this issue started happening after the hotfix last week.

Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (6.1, Build 7600) (7600.win7_gdr.100618-1621)
BIOS: BIOS Date: 05/21/10 11:46:54 Ver: 08.00.15
Central Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80GHz (8 CPUs), ~2.8GHz
Memory: 8192MB
.Net Memory Report: 6540MB out of 8190MB available
Page File: 14160MB (2218MB currently in use)
C Drive: (ST320006 41AS SCSI Disk Device) 1332984MB out of 1499999MB (88%) free
D Drive: (PLEXTOR BDDVDR PX-B320SA SCSI CdRom Device) zero-size drive
Windows directory location: C:\Windows
DirectX: DirectX 11
DirectX Diag version: 6.01.7600.16385 (64-bit version)

Monitor:
Monitor's Max Resolution: (blank)
Video Device Name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480
Manufacturer / Chip: NVIDIA / GeForce GTX 480
Video Memory: 4063 MB
Driver Version: 8.17.12.6658
Driver Date: 1/7/2011 7:27:00 PM
Driver Language: English

My game directory is a network drive (Samba) from a Linux box.

I also noticed a slowdown on my Mac loading the game. Although the difference isn't as large as the slowdown on my Windows system.

Definitely go after all of the Exploration badges if you want to get a good feel for the zones. Also, there's a nifty island in the far Southwest corner of Cap. Or is it Port Oakes? I can never remember.

And I like the tree with the Skeleton hanging in it in St. Martial. (Dead Man's Tree badge, you can only see the skeleton from a certain angle.)

Why would they do anything? Oro is meant to be a zone where you can go back and play/reply old content. It's not meant to be an inter-dimensional train station.

Villains and Rogues get the "red" Oro because they run red-zone contacts. They can't get missions from "blue" contacts, so that's not the content they can access in Oro.

Yes, it's a little bit a pain when I run the STF as a Rogue that I can't pop back and forth between PI and IP, but it's not a huge deal.

Yeah, an NVidia 8300 is pretty weak. It's not really a gaming class card. As you've seen, the game is going to be slow no matter what. I just want to point out that during a Rikti invasion, a lot of "lag" comes from the server anyway. If it's any consolation, I have a very powerful gaming machine and the Rikti raids are pretty much a slideshow for me, too. On your machine, I shudder to think what it must be like.

I have 2 suggestions: First, turn down the max particle count. A lot. Like maybe to 15-20,000 or so. I though I remember a post on the forums that states that 50,000 was way overkill for the game. I keep mine close to 25-30K

Second, just avoid the zone-wide events. They aren't useful for you anyway.

According to the Gigabyte site, that motherboard has 6 memory slots. 4 slots for DDR2 memory that supports up to 8GB. And 2 slots for DDR3 memory which supports up to 4 GB. I'm wondering if you're putting your new memory in the wrong slots? I'd check the motherboard manual very carefully to make sure you're putting your new RAM into the proper slots on the motherboard. Avoid the DDR3 slots.

I'm a Logitech guy myself. They have several wireless KB/Mouse combos to choose from. Pick one you like.

All is not lost. Looks like you can custom order HP laptops with better graphics. How big of a screen do you want? For example, the HP Pavilion dv6z is a 15" monitor and comes with the crappy Radeon 4250 graphics by default. But you can custom order a a Radeon 5470 for $50 (barely passable) or better yet, the Radeon 5650 for $100. The 5650 will at least be decent and you might be able to turn on some UM graphics settings.

Or you can move up to the 17" models if you want that. Keep in mind the 5650 is still a mid-range mobile graphics card and if you get a bigger monitor, that means more pixels which will just slow you down.

CoH is pretty heavy on the CPU too, so get a faster CPU if you can afford it. And make sure you get at least 4gig of RAM. It looks like they are including 8 gig of RAM in those notebooks now, so you should be good to go there.

Looks like if you want even better graphics you can move up to the HP Envy line which features the mobile Radeon 5850. This will be even better yet... but the price of the laptop goes up pretty quickly.

Judging by the benchmarks I have seen, the Radeon 4250 chipset is pretty weak. I wouldn't attempt any kind of Ultra mode settings with this card. You can probably play CoH with it, but you'll have to turn the graphics down a bit. It's not a screamer.

Just to give you an idea, one benchmark put that chipset at approximately the speed of a GeForce 3 Ti 200, a desktop video card from 2001!

It's about half the speed of the GeForce 8600m I have in my 3-year old Mac Book Pro.

Much like others in this thread, I was getting the NVidia "driver has encountered an error and will recover" dialog box when I was running with an Nvidia GTX 285. Nothing I did seemed to make any difference... until I swapped video cards.

Yes, it sucks. And it's expensive. But it completely solved the issue for me. Now I'm running an NVidia GTX 480 with the 260.89 drivers and I haven't had a single crash on the same machine that was running the 285 video card. I'm even overclocking my CPU.

I don't know if there are stability issues with the 2xx chipsets or the older card had hardware issues.

I keep the Win 7 clock desktop app running in my second monitor.

I don't see there's any reason to respec early. You won't pick up the "new" inherent fitness pool until you respec *after* update 19 is out. Respec-ing before update 19 doesn't really gain you anything other than practicing or something. And you can do that on test server.

SGs with low numbers of members gain a prestige bonus when someone joins. And that bonus goes away when a member leaves. I'm guessing that's the "feature" you're seeing. WAI

I think you'll see a nice speed increase. Assuming you leave the resolution the same, the graphics should be much smoother than what you have now. I upgrade in increments as well. This video card can be used on a newer CPU+MB later, so no worries there. There's always a bottleneck no matter what you do. So upgrade the video card and worry about the rest later.

Unfortunately, that's a sign of hardware problems. Either overheating or other hardware failure with your card. You could try cleaning out the fan on your card if it has one. It's possible the only solution will be a new video card.

It's a giant friggin' robot! Woohoo!

My settings aren't completely maxed, but they are most of the way there. And this is at 2560x1440. I get 30+ outside in Paragon City consistently. Generally around 30 in outdoor CoV except in Grandville where it slows down for everyone. Praetoria is quote smooth.

---System information gathered by CoH Helper version 0.2.0.2---

DxDiag gathered at October 9, 2010 02:27 (-07:00)
Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (6.1, Build 7600) (7600.win7_gdr.100618-1621)
System Manufacturer: System manufacturer
System Model: System Product Name
BIOS: BIOS Date: 05/21/10 11:46:54 Ver: 08.00.15
Central Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80GHz (8 CPUs), ~2.8GHz
Memory: 8192MB
.Net Memory Report: 6666MB out of 8190MB available
Page File: 14379MB (1998MB currently in use)
C Drive: (ST320006 41AS SCSI Disk Device) 1336235MB out of 1499999MB (89%) free
D Drive: (PLEXTOR BDDVDR PX-B320SA SCSI CdRom Device) zero-size drive
Windows directory location: C:\Windows
DirectX: DirectX 11
DirectX Diag version: 6.01.7600.16385 (64-bit version)

Display Notes: No problems found.

No problems found.
Sound Notes: No problems found.

No problems found.

No problems found.

No problems found.
Input Notes: No problems found.

Monitor:
Monitor's Max Resolution: (blank)
Video Device Name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480
Manufacturer / Chip: NVIDIA / GeForce GTX 480
Video Memory: 4063 MB
Driver Version: 8.17.12.5896
Driver Date: 7/9/2010 3:38:00 PM
Driver Language: English

Monitor:
Monitor's Max Resolution: (blank)
Video Device Name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480
Manufacturer / Chip: NVIDIA / GeForce GTX 480
Video Memory: 4063 MB
Driver Version: 8.17.12.5896
Driver Date: 7/9/2010 3:38:00 PM
Driver Language: English

Sound Device Description: SPDIF Interface (TX1) (VIA High Definition Audio)
Driver File: viahduaa.sys
Driver Version: 6.00.0001.7500
Driver Date: 5/4/2010 8:41:39 PM

Sound Device Description: Speakers (3- Plantronics Wireless Audio)
Driver File: USBAUDIO.sys
Driver Version: 6.01.7600.16385
Driver Date: 7/13/2009 5:06:32 PM

Sound Device Description: Speakers (VIA High Definition Audio)
Driver File: viahduaa.sys
Driver Version: 6.00.0001.7500
Driver Date: 5/4/2010 8:41:39 PM

Sound Device Description: Digital Output Device (HDMI TX0) (VIA High Definition Audio)
Driver File: viahduaa.sys
Driver Version: 6.00.0001.7500
Driver Date: 5/4/2010 8:41:39 PM


WMI Information
Motherboard Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer INC.
Motherboard Model: (empty)
Motherboard Product: P7P55D-E DELUXE
Motherboard Version: Rev 1.xx
BIOS Manufacturer: American Megatrends Inc.
BIOS Name: BIOS Date: 05/21/10 11:46:54 Ver: 08.00.15
BIOS Version: 052110 - 20100521
BIOS Release: 20100521000000.000000+000


Registry Information for Current User
Resolution: 2560x1440
3D Resolution: 2560x1440 (Not using renderscale)
Full Screen: Yes
Maximized: No
Screen Position: 0, 0
Refresh Rate: 60Hz
Vertical Sync Enabled: Yes


Physics Quality: Medium
Maximum Particles: 38685
Max Particle Fill? 10.000
Physics Card Enabled: No


Anti-aliasing: 8x
Anisotropic Filtering: 4x
Texture LOD Bias: Smooth
Water Effects: Ultra quality
Bloom: 1.000 (turned on)
Depth of Field Enabled: Yes
Desaturation Effects (Sepia) Enabled: Yes
Shader Detail: High


World Texture Level: Very High
Character Texture Level: Very High
World Detail Level (Vis_Scale): 1.826
Entity Detail Level: 1.419
Shadows Enabled: No
Shadow Mode: Unknown (5)
Shadow Map Shader: High quality
Environmental Reflections: Ultra quality
Advanced Occlusion Settings: Yes
Ambient Occlusion: Performance
Occlusion Strength: Strong
Blur: Bilateral depth
Ambient Resolution: Quality


Gamma Correction: 1.000
Geometry Buffers (VBOs) Enabled: Yes
Suppression of FX When Camera Close Enabled: No
Close Suppression Range: 3.000
Show Advertisements: Yes

Audio Mode: Performance
3D Audio: No
FX Sound Volume: 0.273
Music Sound Volume: 0.169

Show Advanced Graphics Options: Yes
Overall Graphics Quality: 0.500
Reverse Mouse Buttons: No
Save Login Username: Yes
Transfer Rate: 1077254 bytes/second
Current Game Version: 1850.201009101722.3T2
Installation Directory: R:\City of Heroes

Mod files in the Data directory
.\texture_library\GUI\Icons\Powers has 75 files
.\texture_library\MAPS\city has 1 file
.\texture_library\MAPS\Safeguard has 9 files
.\texture_library\MAPS\Midnight_Squad has 1 file
.\texture_library\MAPS\static has 34 files
.\texture_library\MAPS\sewers has 44 files
.\texture_library\V_MAPS\Static has 16 files
.\texture_library\V_MAPS\Outdoor_Missions has 9 files

I was constantly getting this error message as well. I've got bad news. It could be a problem with the card (cooling, RAM, whatever).

I was getting this error with my video card and ended up swapping the video card for a new one. Since I've swapped my video card, these crashes have stopped completely. Before the swap I was getting 2-3 crashes a night.

I was also suspicious of my old video card because I got a frame or two of garbled textures once. That's never a good sign, but it only happened once.

You may have to get a new card to fix the problem. But keep in mind that if any other part of the hardware in your computer is suspect (power supply, CPU cooling, memory, etc.) then the new video card may not help.