GTA IV random 1-second black screen freezes while playing on G73, anyone else get them?

i get these very annoying black-screen freeze-pauses, which only happen when i'm driving and usually last from half a second up to 2 seconds. there's still sound and it seems like the game doesn't stop running, although one time it actually never came back from the black screen and i had to restart.

sometimes i can play for several hours without problems, but sometimes i get like 5 of those in the span of 20 min.

i'm playing on an external monitor and i didn't get the freezes on the laptop monitor, but then again i haven't played on the laptop monitor long enough i guess.

 

what vga driver are you using?

 

Which ATI driver are you using?

I have no G73, but I had the same problem with GTA IV with the ATI 10.7 driver on my desktop ATI HD5850. Mostly while driving around the screen was going black for a few seconds.
Actually the 10.7 driver also caused BSODs with other games like Bad Company 2 and COD Modern Warfare 2.
I also tried 10.6, but it still caused BSODs with stop message concerning ATIKMDAG.SYS.
I went back to 10.5 and so far all seems to work normally now.

I orginally had 10.5. In June and July I had no time for gaming so I never tested 10.6 and 10.7 until about a week ago. Now I am back to 10.5 and waiting to test 10.8. Let's hope the problems I had would be fixed with the new driver.

 

yup, when i got the laptop a week ago i immediately installed the Catalyst Software Suite from the AMD site (2010/07/26 update) , and it's got the 10.7 driver in it.

so you're sure this is the reason for the black screens?

ok, do i have to uninstall the whole Catalyst Suite or just replace the driver with the 10.5 ?

thanks.

 

You should uninstall the complete package before installing an older version.

After uninstalling reboot the PC before installing the other driver.

On my desktop PC, I don't experience the problem anymore after I went back to 10.5.


I just made some internet search and the 10.7 seems to cuase problem for many people, escpecially the BSOD on some games with desktop GPUs.
Here: AMD Game Forums - 10.7 BSOD ATIKMDAG.SYS

Please let us know if the older driver also solve this problem for you.

 

I have the ATI 10.7 drivers installed in my G73 and GTA IV works AMAZING, I've been playing it pretty much every night for the last week, it has a 1 second stutter when you first load a game and run out of your safehouse, but after that it's smooth as, not a problem... I have the 1600x900 monitor and everything is set to high, water on very high, distance is on 60, details on 40 and vehicle density on 40, max settings for AA

AWESOME

 

1. Uninstall current drivers.
2. Boot up in safe mode, run Driver Sweeper to get rid of remnants of the ATi software.
3. Reboot and install new drivers (the 10.1s or the 9.12s found on Asus's G73 download page are known to be most stable with this machine)

 

so, is it possible to have the stuttering problem on GTA IV when your ATI driver is not updated?
I bought mine from bestbuy ($1200 one) back in April, and the game was stuttering every 3seconds which basically made impossible for me to play.