Screen flickers and then monitor switches off

As I was playing the demo, the screen would flicker every once in a while and my computer tower (Not my speakers) would beep. It was quiet, and the flicker wasn't game-halting in any way, so I thought nothing of it. After a time though, which I suspect was the time it takes for my monitor to turn itself off normally, my monitor turned off. You know, when the monitor power light goes yellow, to save energy, and you can turn it back on by moving the mouse? It did that, but neither moving the mouse nor pressing keys brought the monitor back to life. I could hear the game in the background at the time. Ctrl-Alt-Delete wouldn't work either. Nothing would bring my monitor back. It's as if Defense Grid stopped my monitor from detecting input from the computer. Very strange.

[jeff]

We heard about something like this once before.* If I remember correctly it was solved by simply updating the video drivers.* Let us know if that isn't the case for you.





Jeff

[centipeed]

Moved to below Jeff's post.

[centipeed]

Thanks for the reply, Jeff. I went to the ATi website and downloaded the latest drivers for my card. It got rid of the flickering and the quiet beeps from my tower, so I thought it was fine, but then my monitor switched off half way through the second mission. I had gotten to the third mission the time before. I also noticed this time around, and it was probably there before as well, that a red light had switched on, on my graphics card. I'm assuming this is a diagnostic light to tell you that something has gone amiss. This has led me to believe that Defense Grid causes my graphics card to switch off for some reason. I'm using an ATi Radeon X1900XT.

[jeff]

Because we're pretty heavy in the combination of our use of shaders and number of objects rendered,*we may be pushing the card a bit at times.* For my next guess (and*sadly I am guessing here since we haven't run into this before), *perhaps your card has an additional power connector that isn't connected properly to your power supply.*





Looking at the spec of the card it needs a 450W power supply connection for normal use with the 6 pin PCI Express*power connector and if used with CrossFire, it needs a 550 Watt power supply or greater.





I can imagine that the issue doesn't arise until the card really needs the additional power that it would get from the computer's power supply and when it isn't there it goes to power off mode.





Two things you can do in my opinion.* First, try lowering the quality of the graphics in the game from High to Low.* This will use a completely different shader set.* Also lower the resolution to something like 640x480.* See if the power issue still happens at the same place.* I can imagine it still possibly happening, but I bet the screen would have to be much more full of guys (like on a late wave of a grinder level) for the card to shut down.





If changing the settings like that does in fact remove or push back the problem to a place where the card is pushed harder, then I'd check the power connectors and power supply on your computer.





Hope this helps.





Jeff