WoW crashes after moving from 9800GT to 4870

[moog]

I'm sure a MBer out there has gone through the same transition, so I might get some advice here...

I upgraded from nVidia 9800GT to an ATI 4870 today and have had an evening of grief, with graphic corruptions and WoW crashes

This is on a DualCore Intel PC running WinXP Pro PC with 4GB RAM.
I uninstalled the nVidia drivers through Control Panel.
I rebooted in Safe Mode and used DriverSweeper to removed the residual files nVidia couldn't be bothered to uninstall.
Swapped the hardware.
Rebooted and installed the latest ATI drivers (Catalyst v9.6).
Reinstalled DirectX (although it didn't appear to need to do anything).

All seemed fine, graphics card is running at around 50C on bootup, hitting 70C when running WoW.

However, after playing WoW for about an hour I started to see graphical glitches, corrupt textures etc, and WoW crashed very soon after.

Since then I've barely been able to play for 10m before a WoW crash.

Three or four of them left error logs, along the lines of...

ERROR #134 (0x85100086) Fatal Condition
Program: C:\Games\World of Warcraft\Wow.exe

Failed to read file CREATURE\VRYKULBOAT\WOOD.blp.

Debug Details:

[2] err=0 text=SFileReadFile - CREATURE\VRYKULBOAT\WOOD.blp - Data\lichking.MPQ
[1] err=0 text=LoadSectorTable failed
[0] err=5 text=Win32 Read - Data\lichking.MPQ
Storm Error Msg:Reached the end of the file.

ERROR #134 (0x85100086) Fatal Condition
Program: C:\Games\World of Warcraft\Wow.exe

Failed to read file Item\ObjectComponents\Weapon\Sword_1h_Northrend_B_ 03DarkYellow.blp.

Debug Details:

[2] err=0 text=SFileReadFile - Item\ObjectComponents\Weapon\Sword_1h_Northrend_B_ 03DarkYellow.blp - Data\patch.MPQ
[1] err=0 text=LoadSectorTable failed
[0] err=5 text=Win32 Read - Data\patch.MPQ

ERROR #134 (0x85100086) Fatal Condition
Program: C:\Games\World of Warcraft\Wow.exe

Failed to read file DUNGEONS\TEXTURES\TRIM\BM_HFIRE_METALTRIM02.blp.

Debug Details:

[2] err=0 text=SFileReadFile - DUNGEONS\TEXTURES\TRIM\BM_HFIRE_METALTRIM02.blp - Data\expansion.MPQ
[1] err=0 text=LoadSectorTable failed
[0] err=5 text=Win32 Read - Data\expansion.MPQ
Storm Error Msg:Reached the end of the file.

I've run the wow repair tool, which verified the installation and didn't download anything.

I've run CHKDSK on the C drive, which didn't do anything.

Hard Disk Sentinel gives me a 100% report "The hard disk status is PERFECT. Problematic or weak sectors were not found and there are no spin up or data transfer errors.".

I'm starting to wonder if it could be an issue with the 9.6 drivers, as I notice they were only released this week, so I might try an earlier release tomorrow.

Other than that, I guess it could be a fault card but how do I prove that so I can return it?

[Marious]

I would say try to run some bench marks on your graphics card while the PC CPU is not one of the newest ones, you can stress your Video Card and see what happens also do you have any other games or graphic programs that would stress your video card to see if it has the same issue? If this is happening on multiple programs then probably next step is to see if the cards official forums have any insight maybe some one there can tell you if it is faulty or if your settings are off and it is causing this issue of WoW crashing.

[Youngceo]

Make sure your running the latest drivers, the drivers that came with these cards caused wow to crash for a long time.

I have a 4870X2 I ended up swapping back to an old card for a few months as the first few drivers were shitful, now I run the 4870X2 without a glitch though.

[moog]

Make sure your running the latest drivers, the drivers that came with these cards caused wow to crash for a long time.

I'm running 9.6 which was only released this week (15th June).

Wondering if it's worth dropping down to 9.4 which I know friends use without any problems... will try that tomorrow and report back.

[spannah]

Have you tried running other 3D games? even a demo will do or 3D Mark. Install your old 9800GT if you still have it, you should be able to have both sets of drivers without issues. If 9800GT runs fine and ATI craps out take the ATI back ...

[Multibocks]

Make sure your running the latest drivers, the drivers that came with these cards caused wow to crash for a long time.

I'm running 9.6 which was only released this week (15th June).

Wondering if it's worth dropping down to 9.4 which I know friends use without any problems... will try that tomorrow and report back.

I run 4870x2 x2 and I havent upgraded my drivers since January when I got my machine. They work very well and I dont like upgrading drivers when nothing is wrong and upgrading will only net me 2% increase in fps. (A number I made up, but usually drivers dont provide a huge jump when the card has been out for a while... of course there are exceptions.)

[Drecan]

Make sure your running the latest drivers, the drivers that came with these cards caused wow to crash for a long time.

I'm running 9.6 which was only released this week (15th June).

Wondering if it's worth dropping down to 9.4 which I know friends use without any problems... will try that tomorrow and report back.

I run 4870x2 x2 and I havent upgraded my drivers since January when I got my machine. They work very well and I dont like upgrading drivers when nothing is wrong and upgrading will only net me 2% increase in fps. (A number I made up, but usually drivers dont provide a huge jump when the card has been out for a while... of course there are exceptions.)

Are the ones you have the ones that allow you to manually control the fan or you using Rivatuna to do so. if not what are you temps running at. cause my was running really hot with the old drivers, little cooler with new drivers (had to run at like 70% fan speed) but then i got an aftermarker heat sync fan system on it and its idle 29C and with 3 wows or playing crysis full graphics stays at 41C.

updating drivers is a good thing to do without a doubt, its messing with updating the BIOS is when you should question it.

[moog]

Well, that was 4 days of hell

Tried 9.6, 9.4 and 9.2 drivers, still same results.

Installed a fresh XP on a.n.other hard drive, patched up the OS and installed 9.6 only to get the same results!!!

It's either bad hardware or some weird incompatibility between the 4870 and my motherboard.

However, I couldn't make it crash with other games (over an hour of Left4Dead and Fear2 and no problems but WoW would always crash).

So, have returned the card and restored from backup and replaced the old 9800GT.

Had enough of that for a while, want to play games not play "source the cause of the crash"!