After about 5-10 minutes of having civ loaded, the machine locks up with a strange checkerboard pattern:

http://img448.imageshack.us/img448/3092/checkerboard0fk.jpg

I have to turn my machine off before it will boot again.

I decided to do some testing to see if I could track down the issue.

I turned the graphics from high (all)/4x over sample to medium (all)/0x over sample. Same lockup, same time frame.

I thought there might be a temperature issue, so I decided to hammer the GPU with futuremark and auqamark to see if I could cause the card to fail. I ran each programs for 4 hours straight without issues. The highest temperature I could get the card to was 79 C (from a start point of 45 C)

Next, I let the game idle (i.e., not playing it) and the lockup still occurred after 5 minutes, so I don't believe it's any kind of "auto save" bug for me (this was mentioned on another thread).

My next test involved hooking in a second monitor to the video card, and keeping all the temp displays (video, cpu, ram, etc) on this monitor while I loaded the game onto the first (original) monitor. As with the previous test, I didn’t play the game, but left it idling at the end of a turn. It locked up in the normal time frame, dropping the checkerboard on both monitors. The video card temp at lockup was 74 C. The CPU, RAM, etc, were within their normal range.

My next test was to open the case and bring in a floor fan. I then ran the floor fan at high speed (from a safe distance), pointed at a 45 degree angle to the case. I then repeated the test above. Failure occurred in the same time frame, this time at 69 C.

I’m not sure what’s causing this problem, but I’m reasonably sure it’s not an overheat issue with my machine. If anyone has a similar issue, post up – let’s see if we can help Firaxis get this one solved.

Some interesting side notes:
[1] The game eats between 48-52 percent of my available CPU, even when at the end of a turn. This is regardless of how much “action” is on the screen, i.e., over a city full of activity, or looking over an unexplored (completely black) part of the map.

[2] Some people are reporting a memory leak. I can confirm that the memory used by the game goes up each turn, but I’m not sure if it’s a leak, or if the game is just pulling needed memory. At “idle”, the games memory usage on my machine did not change.


[3] As a final test, I ran the game, but moved the view area over an unexplored part of the world (everything on the view area of the screen was black). Same lockup time, same normal video/cpu/ram temps.

[4] Like other reports, I also get the weird mini map graphics (banded horizontal lines) at certain zoom levels.

[5] I can play every other modern game out there - BF2, Doom 3, WOW, EQ2, etc with the graphics turned up to max settings without issues.

[6] I installed the game onto an older computer with GeForce 4 card. To date, no issues on the older machine. It’s just dog slow.

Machine Specs:
Asus A8V Deluxe
AMD Athlon 64 FX-55
BFA 6800 GT Video Card (using nvidia 81.85 driver)
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Plat Pro (latest driver from creative)
480W Power Supply
Two Sticks of 512 PC-3200 DDR
Windows XP SP2
DirectX 9.0c (also let the CIV4 installer do it’s install of DX9.0c as well).
Scanned all logical volumes before starting any testing
Defragged all logical volumes before starting any testing

Same thing here -

I posted in this thread.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=133686&page=2

Tech support has no clue... this is even off a fresh install of Win XP.

Same thing here -

I posted in this thread.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=133686&page=2

Tech support has no clue... this is even off a fresh install of Win XP.


Doh!

My install isn't fresh, but it's good to know I won't have to go that far to troubleshoot this one :)

I'm beating up my machine with an 8 hour memtest (prime95) now. After that, I'll try yanking my sound card and playing.

Not really sure where to go after that...

same here:( Im going to try my good'ol ti4200 later tonight and see if that helps. Im like you I can play BF2 for hours on end with not a single hiccup.

p4p800
6800gt 256
1gb
audigy2 zs

Doh!

My install isn't fresh, but it's good to know I won't have to go that far to troubleshoot this one :)

I'm beating up my machine with an 8 hour memtest (prime95) now. After that, I'll try yanking my sound card and playing.

Not really sure where to go after that...

I doubt it is a sound card issue because the music and SFX still play AFTER the screen checkerboards... until reboot of course. Hell if I know.

Also - it is not your GFX card overheating. I spoke with BFG tech support for about an hour yesterday, they said anything under 113 C is considered normal. I max at 87C in BF2 and 81C in Civ4.

Well If I counted right there are four people (with my humble self) with this specific 6800GT problem.

But what can be done? Ask Nvidia to look into what causes this. They are experts and they should know what can cause this kind of screen corruption. As I really doubt that Firaxis can pinpoint and correct the "6800GT screen corruption bug". Or can we expect some love from MS and their DX9.0c?

I don't think it is a 6800GT problem. I don't think it is a driver problem. I think it is a Civ 4 problem interfacing properly with the card/driver.

List of games that work:

EQ2
WOW
BF2
Q4
D3
COD2
Guild Wars

Games that exhibit this problem:

Civ 4
FEAR

How would one go about asking Nvidia to look into the issue? Their support says to talk to your video card manufacturer. Perhaps contact BFG again? They blamed it on the game developers.

Same problem here.

A qoute from another thread by me

I have seen that message a few times.

I had alot of problem with the game freezing at more or less random, I have tried several of the sugested fixes on these forums but none have worked, except reduse the number of crashes after i disabled the autosave.

Upgrade to the latest drivers failed somehow, so I decided to make a clean new installation of my PC. Now I have the latest of all my hardware drivers no other program accept Civilizatio IV and it still hang, though not as often as before.

I have the following...

Windows XP Professional, SP2
DirectX 9.0c
Nvidia 6800 128MB, 81.85
1024 MB RAM
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.2GHz

The game and graphics is beutifull and runs very smothe (with one accepting, the globe view is distorted sometimes) untill it freezes up and I have to reboot, or it reboot by itself or rarely it may crash to desktop with an error message of something going wrong with a file called 'nv4_disp.dll'.

I have given upp hope now, must wait for a patch. The game crashes from 5-30 minutes into the game right now.

But still at Nvidia they are experts/masters on this kind of profession. They designed the GPU and they should definitely know what can cause this kind of screen corruption.

Interesting - an ATI user with the same problem...

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?threadid=141016

Crimson - I agree with you 100%, just don't know if it really is their problem. I really think it is Firaxis' problem.

I am aware of this. But to fix "the screen corruption bug" collaboration between Nvidia and Firaxis (maybe even MS) is pretty much needed. As we don't why is this happening. It could be some kind of combination between DX9 or Windows specific, drivers and the game itself that produces screen corruption.

Only combined effort from involved parties will solve our problem quickly. One to supplies the information, the other (Firaxis) top fix it, unless it's some sort of a driver bug. (Which is even in my opinion not very likely?)

Anyone with 6800GT that can run Civ 4 without problems?

The only thing we know is this:
Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4910, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'
Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4918, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'
Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4926, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'
Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4983, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'
Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4991, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'
Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4999, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'

And yes, there is no HUD directory in Civ 4 folder? :confused: Results? Game not working properly. (At least there is no: the way it is meant to be played intro. :D )

And yes, there is no HUD directory in Civ 4 folder? :confused: Results? Game not working properly. (At least there is no: the way it is meant to be played intro. :D )

A HUD directory with numerous files was placed in my Civ4 folder when I installed the game.

I moved the file to the HUD folder and then I erased the logfile, there have not been any new information in the log since then, though it has not done anything to my situation.

I have run some more tests now. When I play un a huge map with 18 civilizations, tested both on maxed graphics and on medium. The CPU are at 100% all the time, even when I don't even do anything just looking at the screen.
It takes around 600-650MB memory, from my 200-230 normal usage.

The game freezes after about 5-10min now...

My temp on the CPU are normal as is the GPU...

I'm going to do some more tests

I had the exact same problem. And I see that many people with the GF6800GT card are having it too. After 5-30 minutes the machine locks up. What I did was downclock the engine clock and the Memory clock on my gf6800gt. Now I played the game for two and a half hours without any problems.

I had the exact same problem. And I see that many people with the GF6800GT card are having it too. After 5-30 minutes the machine locks up. What I did was downclock the engine clock and the Memory clock on my gf6800gt. Now I played the game for two and a half hours without any problems.

Ludde, how did you downclock the card? I'm not sure where to do this.

Yadda, if you are using an nvidia card you can download a file called coolbits.reg to add an overclocking tab to the base driver. There are also a variety of third party utilities like RivaTuner that can be used to adjust your GPU/Mem clocks. You should be able to find coolbits and RivaTuner at www.guru3d.com or through a simple google search.

Yadda, if you are using an nvidia card you can download a file called coolbits.reg to add an overclocking tab to the base driver. There are also a variety of third party utilities like RivaTuner that can be used to adjust your GPU/Mem clocks. You should be able to find coolbits and RivaTuner at www.guru3d.com or through a simple google search.

Thanks Raezal, trying it out now.

I had the exact same problem. And I see that many people with the GF6800GT card are having it too. After 5-30 minutes the machine locks up. What I did was downclock the engine clock and the Memory clock on my gf6800gt. Now I played the game for two and a half hours without any problems.

And another thing. Please inform us if Civ 4 is capable to run for an entire day on downclocked GPU. For some of us it could be useful info. :D When you will have time.

If any at Nvidia reads this, downclocking GPU is not a solution for extremely heavy 3D calculation like in FEAR, where every FPS counts. Please, present if possible a solution for 6800GT users.

I know that this forum is Civ related but anyway. Does 6800Ultra has the same problems with FEAR and Civ 4 of course?

Guess Im lucky, I get 30-60 minutes, but the exact same result. I am not going to screw around with underclocking my $500 (at the time) video card to play a slow paces strategy game. This is pathetic to have such a premier title shipping in such piss poor condition. I can play any other 3d game with zero issues for hours and hours and hours.....so this is CLEARLY an issue with CIV4 code.

Too bad Fruxis has now sullied the name of Sid Meiers, truely major suckage.

I also have this same exact issue at random intervals. Sometimes an hour sometimes 2 min. Evga geforce 6800gt standard clock.

I had the exact same problem. And I see that many people with the GF6800GT card are having it too. After 5-30 minutes the machine locks up. What I did was downclock the engine clock and the Memory clock on my gf6800gt. Now I played the game for two and a half hours without any problems.

Following Ludde's and Raezal's suggestion: I've downloaded coolbits.reg and have changed my card settings as follows:

Originally: Core Clock: 370 MHz, Memory Clock 1.00 GHz
Now Running at: Core Clock: 330 MHz, Memory Clock 899 MHz

Civ 4 has been stable so far (about an hour and half). I haven't tried any other settings (either faster or slower) at this point. I'm going to try to play an extended game and see if it remains stable. If it does, I'll start bumping up the speeds.

I agree with Crimson Shadow, it's be a shame if the permanent solution is to have to downclock the GPU/memory to play the game.

Following Ludde's and Raezal's suggestion: I've downloaded coolbits.reg and have changed my card settings as follows:

Originally: Core Clock: 370 MHz, Memory Clock 1.00 GHz
Now Running at: Core Clock: 330 MHz, Memory Clock 899 MHz

Civ 4 has been stable so far (about an hour and half). I haven't tried any other settings (either faster or slower) at this point. I'm going to try to play an extended game and see if it remains stable. If it does, I'll start bumping up the speeds.

I agree with Crimson Shadow, it's be a shame if the permanent solution is to have to downclock the GPU/memory to play the game.

I think atleast, powerstrip can make different clocking configurations for different games. So as long as powerstrip is running, when you start the .exe file of the game, it should change the clock settings. I myself used this a while a go. Though on that case I wanted to overclock the card

I think atleast, powerstrip can make different clocking configurations for different games. So as long as powerstrip is running, when you start the .exe file of the game, it should change the clock settings. I myself used this a while a go. Though on that case I wanted to overclock the card

I underclocked as well and it works just fine now... They need to fix that.

I underclocked to 300 and 800 and still crashed to checkerboard after 2 min!!! :(

I've started a new thread with the solution that was uncovered in this thread.

Lets hope it helps out more people.

lThanks for all the input! :goodjob:

OOPS! Correction - It work for about 2 hours underclocked, however now it is back to it's old tricks. 5 minutes max before crashing... Damn.

Yeah underclocked or no I get the crash. It's strange though because it's in really random intervals. Could be 2 min or 2 hours.

Whats weird is it did work for a few hours, I thought it was fixed. But now I can't last more than 5 minutes. Really sucks because I had a great game going... heh

Hmm? At first I thought that would not be important but now it seems it is.

When I ran the game for the first time it had worked for almost 3 hours straight before I got that checkboard screen. Every next consecutive run gives me an error in 5 - 10 minute.

Try to change the settings (core/mem) of your GFX or try with that HidePythonExceptions = 0

I too have the lock up, the mutli-faceted nightmare usually hits within 5-10 minutes....Here are my specs...
Athlon 3400
1 gb of Ram
Nvidia 6800Gt
Audigy
Everything is upgraded....

I also disabled agp texture acceleration but that did nothing

Just finished playing HL2 Lost Coast add-on which is supposedly a super hog on your system and it ran fine for it's duration...

I'm figuring maybe it's a memory leak of some sort. I'm wondering could it be possible since this is happening to a lot of 6800 and 7800 that it has to do with the way the game uses the cards on board memory....

I'm suprised there's still no ideas for a solution to this. :sad:

Games that exhibit this problem:

Civ 4
FEAR

FEAR does it? In that case, maybe it's a problem with DirectX - FEAR also uses a not-yet-publicly-released version of DX 9.0c. (Civ IV uses d3dx9_26.dll, FEAR uses d3dx9_25.dll)

Edit: Pasting in something I thought of and posted in another thread about another crash/freeze problem which happened with both Civ IV and FEAR:

On the plus side, maybe Civ IV actually will work for me - I didn't have any problems running the FEAR demo, other than a mediocre framerate on minimum settings. (Which is ridiculous. NOLF2 runs as smooth as silk on maximum settings, and looks better than FEAR IMHO...)

Edit: To get the latest version of DX, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/sdk/ - Use the "DirectX 9.0c Redistributable for Software Developers" link. Maybe that's newer than the one on the Civ IV CD? Or maybe not. (I haven't gotten Civ IV yet myself)

Well no mater for me anymore and I sincerely wish all of you luck. I went and bought an ATI card and all my probems disappeared. Also, BF2 looks a lot better so I am a happy camper again.

Downclocking my card seemed to be it. Ive been running the game all day and no more checkboard:D

I have the same card and when I put the game on MEDIUM settings on the options screens it stopped the 'checkerboard' problem. But now I have a 'low virtual memory' thing from Windows pop up and the game crashes. I think it's my RAM(512). I'm planning to get more anyway. So when I do, I'll see what it does.

I have been poking around trying to find solutions to this very same issue... interesting it was noticed back in october.. I sent in a question to support and haven't even gotten a confirmation email yet... 2 days ago... I too have the nvidia gforce 6800... strange checkerboard lockup... ugh... I'll try underclocking and the other suggestions... seems sort of lame to me that we have to cripple our hardware...

Tried changing graphics settings to medium... to no avail still get the checkerboard lockup....

I didn't try Civ 4 for really long time (from October last year), but previous week I tried open beta of MMORPG Dungeons&Dragons Stormreach.

Well to make my story short my GFX (6800GT) was badly overheating while playing the D&D Stormreach, regardless of settings. In 10 minutes of playing my GFX temp went over :eek: 110C with geometry and texture artifacts. Extremely strange, because in other games I didn’t have such problems. But, even in idle 2D mode (under WinXP) temp of my GPU was over 60C. After I had cleaned the NV Silencer (was very dusty) and made an exhaust open at the back of pc case, temp dropped significantly. (In 2D mode under WinXP temp is now at around 40C.) After that I was able to play D&D Stormreach normaly without GFX overheating.

I have yet to try if Civ 4 would work now without this checkboard screen.

Well, this is an interesting issue.

I organised the purchase of a brand new system for a friend of mine as their old system would hang when running CIV IV. I assumed it was mainly a video card not being good enough and overheating or something as they had a Athlon 2600+ XP with 1536MB ram but only a GForce 2MX graphics card.

On my 'old' system (mine got upgraded recently too, and my old bits got given to my sister) which was a Athlon 2100+ XP with 1024MB ram and a GForce4 MX440 8x, the game ram just fine. I never once got a single lockup or thrown out or anything (wish I still had it around now to check some of the stats out on it for comparison).

So, with this in mind, I quoted up a new system for my friend. Something with heaps of grunt (he likes football manager style games that require large processing power). So, the following are what are in the system:

Athlon 4400+ 64 X2
Galaxy 256MB 6800GS PCi-E
2048 MB RAM
Windows XP professional SP2

So, pretty much a fresh install (also has football manager on there too now), and he reports to me that he can't play Civ IV. Plays for about 30 minutes, and then the screen goes black, and the LCD monitor reports no source. Sound continues just fine, but the only way out is to hit the HARD power off button on the front, and restart the computer.

So, I got him to try the following actions:
(Being not all that computer literate, I'll have to check at some stage when I can get around there that he's done it all correctly, but assume he has)

1 - Update to civ IV 1.52 release
2 - Download latest drivers from galaxy (appear to be v 78.01)
He didn't get to install those drivers though
3 - Download latest drivers from NVidia (gave him link to v81.98)
Test game.

Apparently this has not helped at all.
I'd personally like to look at it for him, but given that it sounds like testing changes takes a while, it would take me like a whole weekend to get it to be correctly stable for him.

Also of interest, I had no issues running civ IV for hours on end recently on a work laptop while I was interstate. That was a average specced machine with a Mobile Radeon chip (don't remember exact one). So, sounds like the game just doesn't like high specced machines...

I'll have to try the game on my upgraded system and see how it goes.
Athlon Sempron 2800+ 64bit (S754)
GForce 4 MX440 8x
1536MB RAM

I've been searching around this forum, and came across this post yesterday:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=133686&page=1

Now, I wonder if that topic is similar (if not the same) as this one.
Anyway, I passed this (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=133686&page=2#40) particular config item onto my friend, and they tried it.
They have now been able to play Civ IV for an hour or so both last night and today, and as yet, no crashes.

So, just wanted to report back on these findings..