Smashing My Head - Can't Play Q3A, or OA

[elvisthedj]

Hi all,

About a month ago, I decided I'd start playing Q3A again.. I (then on Gentoo) fired it up and it would randomly (usually within 1 minute) freeze.. More accurately, The vid would freeze and the sound would stutter for anywhere between 30 seconds to several minutes.  I tried every known fix and plenty of straw grasping.. same thing repeatedly. 

Fast forward a few weeks:

Decided to install Win XP (first time in years I've ran Win at home) for several reasons.. one of which was to run quake.  It does EXACTLY THE SAME THING!  Ok.. so that pretty much narrows it down to either

1) Hardware
2) Freaky Coincidence.


I just downloaded the latest OA and it does the SAME THING.

Since all of the Q3 issues have pretty much come and gone.. it's hard to get help, but I was hoping since this was a thriving community, somebody might have an idea


I'm using:

ASUS a8nsli 32 deluxe
Opteron
Win XP 32bit
Geforce 7600GT
Crative Audigy 2 EX
2 GB Mushkin Redline Ram

Have tried to run the game from drives with the same result, so I think I can rule out media. 

FYI:  Quake 4 does the same thing, but it typically takes longer.  Runs great til it dies.

Any thoughts?

[damocles]

It could be your hardware, perhaps your graphics or sound.

What about your power supply (manufacturer, model, amps / watts)?

Maybe it's coincidence.

[sittingduck]

Video card overheating?
Have you run memtest?

Tough one to diagnose..... I hope you can figure it out soon.

[pulchr]

i can't run quake 3 either. it randomly crashes after a few minutes. openarena runs fine though. no idea what causes it.

[menganito]

Sounds like a HW problem to me.
How about other games (non-q3 engine based)?
Have you ever before run Q3A or OA or other Q3 based game on the machine?