is my 9700pro dying?

[Cartoon Corpse]

im replaying gta vice city on my old 1.4Gz, 1Grdram, 9700pro rig.

although now...loading savegames takes a minute or so (black screen) AND when i am loaded, the textures don't load till (longtime) after im in area (especially when moving fast, like in a car)...im surrounded by blur (no curbs, railings, windows) just blurred boxes (buildings) and plains (streets)...also get 1-2 seconds loading... screen every 500? ft or so. after i've been playing awhile (visit and revisit same areas), they seem to improve greatly

in previous vice city excursions, the only load time i experienced was crossing bridges, i'd get a .5 second "welcome to...." popup. loading games missions was practically instantaneous.

(as a matter of standard procedure) i kill all killable pc procs before gaming. also defragged last weekend. no viruses.

outside of game, everything seems normal on desktop.

from the symptoms i've described, is this a combonation of under performing hardware? or could this be solely the GPU?

it is 3-4 years old. do the GPU's get tired after awhile?

could it be something else? hard drive going? (doesn't explain texture loading while driving does it?)

 

[Deathlike2]

It sounds more like you need to defrag your hard drive. All the problems you have mentioned are symptoms of it.

 

[Cartoon Corpse]

i did that on sunday. still have the problem. vice city has been perma installed on my drive since i got it.

 

[Colourless]

It's just GTA VC not loading the data fast enough off the disk. When i played the game I used to be able to drive so far into an unloaded section the road and buildings completely disappearaed.

 

[Cartoon Corpse]

Is it bit rot? I loaded and played san andreas last night, and it ran perfectly. vice city used to run much better (as of last night i am unable to load any save game, even after waiting 5 minutes!)

is it a cd issue? bit rot? dang. am i gonna have to periodically repurchase the game? (it's a favorite...i think it touched off my LOVE of pc gaming)

 

[Colourless]

Just an engine problem as far as I know.

 

[Cartoon Corpse]

but why would it degrade over time? it's fun fine since 2003. 3 years later it starts getting confused?

so is it associated with the state of the savegame files? or would a reinstall of the game (backup save files) clear it up? sounds like it's a known issue?