DX9/D3D games freez, OpenGL doesn't

[Stizzle]

Yeah, i'm 99% sure i've got this in the wrong place. But i honestly don't know where to put this topic but i'll continue and if anyone can move it please move it EDIT: I also misspelled freeze in the title. My bad.

Anyway, my computer has been freezing alot (total lock out - nothing short of a power off does the trick) and it's been frustrating me alot.

First it only happened in BF2, then in other games. It was also freezing in Red Orchestra until i changed the renderer to OpenGL. No problems since then. Then I installed Sim City 4 and that game froze on me. It must be a DX9 or D3D problem right?

I've updated my drivers for all the things i could update. Updated DX9. Still freezing in those games but never for Red Orchestra because that's in OpenGL mode (CoD also doesn't freeze, i think that's because that's OpenGL aswell?)

What's going on? Is OpenGL that awesome or does DX just suck that bad? What can i do to fix this? Am i doomed to OpenGL until i get a new computer? (It can't be heat buildup, otherwise RO would also eventually freeze but i've logged loads of hours at a time on that)

Speaking of OpenGL, it required some trickery to get RO in OpenGL mode. I was wondering if i could run other games in OpenGL to bypass the gayness of DX9/D3D. Plus things run so much better in OpenGL than in DX9/D3D - literally 60% boost in fps in RO when switching to OpenGL!

Thanks for any help.

 

[tom61]

I encountered that problem before, oddly enough it turned out to be the system memory was bad in my case. Best guess is that Direct-X pushes the system memory harder to do fancier effects, whereas OpenGL rendering is done mostly on the graphics chipset.