More Awesome Than You!

Hi, not sure if you can help me or not.  I am going though withdrawal, so I am willing to be made fun of!
See one of my problems here:  http://www.geocities.com/jenn_dossenko/Sims2/untitled2  ALSO  .../untitled1
(Getting screenshots of the other distortions is much harder!)


 Info:
Windows XP
Driver 93.71
AMD Athlon XP 2800+
41.2 GB of FreeSpace
Sims 2 + University + Nightlife + Open for Business - Pets + GLS
Official Maxis patches.
The only hacks and fixes that we have come from this site.
Windows Updates are up to date
Computer and Card fans have been cleaned twice in the last two months.

The game had a couple errors prior to purchasing and installing Pets.  I had two instances of graphics distortion, once causing a crash and loss of two Sims from game and family trees.  These distortions happened a few months apart.  After installing Pets, the game crashed more.  Pets sank into the floor, game play would freeze, screen would distort as picture above and with triangles.  We play on a "Sims only" desktop.  Also attempted playing on owner desktop where there are no downloads, only a "clean" game.  Graphics problems continued.

After looking around, found out that 6 & 7 series card was causing BSOD and other problems.  Tried Maxis' work around "boolprop useshaders false".  It didn't work.  Attemted to lower graphics settings in-game, this also did not work.

Uninstalled Pets since differential diagnosis at that point was that we may be having the same problems.  Installed Glamour Life Stuff.  Even without Pets, the graphics errors continue.  I even went back to the previous version of the driver which was 71.89.

My questions are:
1.  Is this the same problem as the 6 and 7 series users are having?
2.  If it is not, is there something wrong with my card?
3.  Will increasing the paging file help?
4.  If so, I need paging file increase instructions.
5.  Did Pets ruin my graphics card or was my card already "broken"?

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated!

Thanks,
Jenn

I played with a 5500 until a month ago (with Pets), and did not have these problems. The only thing I can think of is either the fan on your card (perhaps even processor) is so dirrty it is overheating, or the card has gone bad. If the card is bad, it has a lifetime warranty, so you should be able to replace it for free.

Also, you may want to check your RAM. I have 1GB, and that is just barely enough to have the game run smoothly with good graphics.

Let Windows pick your pagefile size.

I was playing with a 5500 and very similar specs to yours.  Started encountering very similar graphical corruption with OFB.  Went to a 6200, which fixed the graphical corruption but threw the occasional BSOD with Pets and Seasons.  (Imagine my chagrin to discover I'd traded one problem for another after purposely staying with NVIDIA because they are a "partner" of EA. This all happened before the problems were widely reported).

I have added Pets, Seasons, and Celebrations since then, and have been budgeting for a new computer for possibly next month, so have just been playing carefully since then.  BSOD only occurs on my larger lots and generally only when scrolling when not paused.  Pausing to scroll has reduced the incidence of BSOD to next to none.  When I do experience problems on my larger lots, shutting down background tasks pretty much takes care of it.

Anyway, that's my experience. (Oh, and my page file is as large as it will go, fwiw).  Take whatever answers you can find from it.  I'd didn't offer direct answers to your questions, because since the only experience I have to go on is my own, I can't offer any measure of certainty in answers.

I had the same card, and it gave me a few problems (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=7593.0) before I got an ATI card. However, not to the extent of your problems. Have you tried rolling it back to an earlier driver? If not, try this (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=117748&c=1&ht=0&page=1&pp=25#startcomments).

ive got a geforce 7900GTX and ive had absoutly no graphical problems whatsoever.

Mind you i refuse to update my drivers... so thats probably why

2)It looks like the card's overheating.  You could always try installing different drivers and see if that helps but chances are you're going to need a new card.

3)The Windows Page File should NEVER be increased manually unless you have the "Virtual Memory is Too Low" prompt.  Making this file bigger means you will use less real RAM which means your programs will run slower and increase disk thrashing.  Lowering the page file size will coax XP into using more real RAM but it doesn't work all that well compared to Vista's memory management.

4)I suggest setting it from Minimum (2MB XP, 16MB Vista) to 1.5x your RAM (even this is still a little high).  If you get "Virtual Memory is Too Low" errors, increase the maximum size by a little bit until you no longer get the errors.

By default the system puts it at 1.5x to 2.0x of your RAM.

5)If Pets did kill it, it would have on any graphics-intensive game.

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone who tried to help out!  Soon after I posted this, I had to go without my computer for a while.

Essentially, nVidia decided that it was a dead card and replaced it with the wrong type (AGP vs. PCI).  That didn't help either, so being frustrated to the max, I took the computer to Best Buy and activated my PSP.  They did nothing, except update to the latest driver which nVidia had told me not to do.  Finally, called back nVidia and they replaced the 5500 with the right type (AGP vs. PCI).  We  have not reinstalled Pets due to fear of having a bunch of problems all over again.  For the most part everything is working fine without Pets.

So, thanks again