Video Card Burning Up (Possibly)

[Tighfield]

For awhile now I've been dealing with the problem of "Blue Screens" & "Rebooting" on occasions while playing Final Fantasy XI Online. This only happens when I play Final Fantasy XI Online! All my other games run smoothly. Several people told me that it's my video card overheating. So, I cleaned out my computer & added a blower underneath my video card. I went one day without any problems but then the next day, it happened all over again. Blue Screens & Rebooting...

What I want to know is... should I buy a new video card? If so, what would be a good "compatible" card for Final Fantasy XI Online that is under $300? It can be ATI or NVidia, I've dealt with 'em both. I'd appreciate any help given. I'll be here all weekend.

SPECS:
AMD Athlon XP 1700 1.43Ghz
512MB DDR PC2100
Radeon 9500
Soundblaster Audigy X-Gamer
40GB Hard Drive
Windows XP Pro

[L0gik4l]

Well I use to have the same problem for a while, and from the looks of it, its not the video card. Its the processer right now, the one that you got right now AMD athlon XP 1700 is not formatted and not strong enough to handle the power that FFXi puts out. The only thing that you can do right now is get a better processor and motherboard with it....I would recommend the AMD Athlon 64 BIT FX. It is the most smotth running one that will run with FFXI, and then you woun't have to worry about it anymore!

[Kuldahar]

I think your problem is the AMD processor I had an 1 gig t-bird and never could get it to work with high end games get a p4 new motherboard and nvidia card

[Tighfield]

SOLVED! FOR NOW!

Doing some research I came across a post on another FFXI board where a guy with a Radeon 9600 was having the same problems as me. He solved this by downgrading the Catalyst driver to 3.1 (Catalyst 4.1 is the highest). He said he did this weeks ago & hasn't had a problem since. I installed 3.4 on my system BECAUSE it was the driver I had at the time I was playing the Japanese version, which I had no problems with. So far, it's running good. I ran FFXI for 4 hours with no glitches, blue screens or reboots.

Believe me, I do want a new motherboard/CPU but I'm a little tight on money right now. Can't really spend too much for high end stuff. Especially since I got a new car & I'm going to trick it out. That cost more than a computer, lol.