WC3 Video card error

Ok, this doesnt have much to do with notebook, but you guys are preety smart so I thought I could find some help here. Ive got a dell dimension 3000 with a PCI Radeon 9250 256Vram (thats PCI not PCI-X, jaelous?)

when Im playing WC3, usually when a tower blows up or a lot of graphics are going on, sometimes my monitor will turn black, click a few times, and then come back with the ATI error screen kinda trying to come through the WC3 screen, and it wont let me actually alt+tab to switch screens, i can tell it switches because my mouse changes and it wont let me control my guys in WC3, so I have to cycle back through with ALT+tab untill WC3 is back up. And then when I finally close out of the game my resolution is set back to 800x600 instead of the 1152x864 I had it set at.

This problem happens no matter what resolution my screen is set at, I think its actually happened at 800x600 before, but im not sure. Ive got catalyst version 5.11, pretty sure thats the latest version. This is the only game Im having problems with, can play Counter Strike fine, and when I played WOW before I quit that worked fine too. So... any ideas what I should do?

 

Hm, I was going to suggest get the latest drivers, but it appears you already have a fairly recent version. I would still go download + install the latest Catalyst 6.1, see if that helps any.

If it only happens with stuff blows up, try turning down the particle quality/density to low, maybe you are getting some sort of overload.

What is your monitor's refresh rate? I would set it to 60Hz, see if that works some.

And yes, I am jealous that you have a PCI interface!

 

WC3 shouldnt be running like that on a dedicated video card. Same as chaz i would check the refresh rate. Also what other apps are you running while using the game?

 

I lmost always use Windows Media Player while Im playing, but I dont think thats effecting it. I dont have anything video card intensive running, thats for sure, and I've got 512 Ram, which should be plenty for a game this old. I updated to 6.1 catalyst and it still happened, I need to look in to changing refresh rate, I think I can do that through catalyst right? not on that computer right now.

Its funny when I was running it on the integrated extreme graphics 2 I wasnt having this problem, it just got choppy at some points, this is much more obnoxious though. I need the video card to be able to play CS though, so i dont want to just switch back. I didnt have this problem when i first put the card in either =(

thanks for the replys

 

No, just go into Desktop > Properties > Settings > Advanced > Monitor, then set it to 60Hz. That's the standard.