I recently started getting problems in some of my games getting a BLANK BSoD. Sometimes it could handle several hour powersessions without a hitch and sometimes it wouldn't even let me play a game for five minutes. It was kinda difficult to track down the cause of a blue screen that doesn't tell you anything, but I eventually found out it was the softmod driver. It's worth mentioning that I had this softmod working flawlessly for like YEARS up to this point.
Here's the deal, "ati2mtag" shows up as an Error in the Event Viewer every time I boot up, "CPLIB :: Open Session - Failed to load the library". This ONLY shows up with the softmod driver. I tried various (but recent) driver versions to no avail.
The official ATI or Sapphire Catalyst drivers do not come up with this error. Of course, the error may have always been there with the softmod and I just ignored it up until now. Either way, when I use the standard driver, everything is rock-solid-stable. The fact that the softmod comes up with an error like this in the first place makes me think that it could have a bug or two in it...
BUT it's worth mentioning that this blank BSoD issue might appear to be heat sensitive. It seems to happen less when I have the side of my case open. I'm thinking it's entirely possible that either the gold-colored cooler on my 9500 is either crapping out, or my graphics card is slowly dying and is overheating with the 8 pixel pipelines active... if the softmod driver itself is fine. I don't know how to check my vidcard's temp, though, so I'm not sure if it's getting any hotter than it normally has.
If anyone can shed some light on this issue and what's likely the real cause, I'd surely love to know! I really miss having those extra four pipes.
System Specs:
Epox 8RDA+ mobo (pin modded)
Moble Barton 2200+ @2.2GHz (133x16.5) (166x13.5 if in a good mood)
1GB Dual-Channel PC2100 RAM, Infineon modules (2-3-3-6 at 133 regardless of proc's mood)
Sapphire Radeon 9500 non-pro
SB Live! 24-bit
Seagate 160GB ATA133 8MB
WinXP SP2
Yeah, this thing is an abomination!
Here's the deal, "ati2mtag" shows up as an Error in the Event Viewer every time I boot up, "CPLIB :: Open Session - Failed to load the library". This ONLY shows up with the softmod driver. I tried various (but recent) driver versions to no avail.
The official ATI or Sapphire Catalyst drivers do not come up with this error. Of course, the error may have always been there with the softmod and I just ignored it up until now. Either way, when I use the standard driver, everything is rock-solid-stable. The fact that the softmod comes up with an error like this in the first place makes me think that it could have a bug or two in it...
BUT it's worth mentioning that this blank BSoD issue might appear to be heat sensitive. It seems to happen less when I have the side of my case open. I'm thinking it's entirely possible that either the gold-colored cooler on my 9500 is either crapping out, or my graphics card is slowly dying and is overheating with the 8 pixel pipelines active... if the softmod driver itself is fine. I don't know how to check my vidcard's temp, though, so I'm not sure if it's getting any hotter than it normally has.
If anyone can shed some light on this issue and what's likely the real cause, I'd surely love to know! I really miss having those extra four pipes.
System Specs:
Epox 8RDA+ mobo (pin modded)
Moble Barton 2200+ @2.2GHz (133x16.5) (166x13.5 if in a good mood)
1GB Dual-Channel PC2100 RAM, Infineon modules (2-3-3-6 at 133 regardless of proc's mood)
Sapphire Radeon 9500 non-pro
SB Live! 24-bit
Seagate 160GB ATA133 8MB
WinXP SP2
Yeah, this thing is an abomination!
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