Crash Exception Policy Update

Denniz said:
I guess it depends on your system. If 3.17 were crash proof then I guess we can forget about a crash policy then... :mischief:
Click to expand...

:lol: If only that were true. The game is pretty stable per se - I only have crashes related to my graphics card :( I've changed graphics cards *twice* to try to solve this problem, and have all the latest drivers, have turned the graphics in Civ down to minimum, no films, no animation, low res etc etc

Anyone got any recommendations for a totally solid graphics card? I know I should post what I'm using now but :ahem: I need to wait for in-house systems to get home to find out what the current one is :blush:
 
Denniz said:
Are you sure it is the card? Heat can cause the card to stop working. You might want to check your ventilation, etc. Maybe get a more powerful fan. (got to be cheaper than a new card)
Click to expand...

or a stronger power supply
on basic towers, you don't have enough power supply for thetop graphic cards (which you don't need to play cIV anyway)
 
Upgrading the power supply:

cabert said:
or a stronger power supply
on basic towers, you don't have enough power supply for thetop graphic cards (which you don't need to play cIV anyway)
Click to expand...

I agree with cabert 1000%:

On my old system, I needed to upgrade my graphics card just to run Civ4. I got an ATI AGP 9800 Pro with 115W of power required. My 400W Antec PS (excellent brand - not a generic Taiwanese) blew after just running the opening animation a second time. Replaced it with 650W BFG PS and had no problems until a got a new system about a year ago. That system has ATI 2400X graphics on the mainboard. It also works fine.

Concerning PS, get the biggest and best your money can buy. PC Power and Cooling is the ultimate in stable and especially clean DC power generation. No glitches in the output is even more important as stable DC voltage levels as the power draw changes, usually most critical on boot up and when the graphics is working hard.

I'd also still go Antec, despite my bad luck with one already old PS.

Power Sopply tip: Add the maximum power draws of all components together and multiply by 60-70%. If the result exceeds the rating of your PS, get a bigger PS. Your system will only draw as power as it needs to run, so get the 700W PS and not the 500W PS, especially if they are both the same brand/quality. The 700W PS will handle the strain of powering your system much better than a 500W PS; it will also last much longer and it will not use more electricity. A 300W draw is already stressing the 500W PS whereas the 700W PS will probably keep going forever, since the draw is well below 50% of its rating.

Upgrading cooling subsystem:

As far graphics card stability goes, Denniz is absolutely right. When I got my ATI 9800 Pro, I also installed a blower card in the slot right next to it. Heat dissipation problems solved. Once I replaced the blown 400W PS with a 650W PS, I had no more power worries and the blower kept the graphics card "icy" cool (not literally, but you get the idea). With the blower running, I could seriously risk touching the graphics card without too much concern about getting burnt.

When one buys a pre-built system, don't expect it to continue working after adding a component with a significant power draw. You may have to upgrade both the PS and the cooling subsystem. Try improving the cooling first. Also, note with pre-built systems, the PS is the first place where even Dell cuts corners and provides a PS with at best moderate quality and moderate power rating that will be adequate only for the system as configured by the builder. They always use the cheapest components with adequate quality that will minimize returns and upgarding the system often voids the warranty - what a deal - for the box vendor that is.

Crash Exception Policy recommendation:

Perhaps, the first sentence in the Crash Exception Policy should be about prevention and a link to tips on how to improve the stability of your system, including configuring the game to place less demand on the hardware and even recommended systems that fellow Civ4 users have found extremely reliable.

Sun Tzu Wu
 
Thanks very much for the responses and suggestions.

I'm using a GeForce 8600GT card at the moment, so my system tells me.

I'm pretty sure it's not the cooling issue. We upgraded the cooling quite a while ago - it was the first thing we tried, but it didn't have any effect. Anyway, I get problems right from the start, booting from cold. It's not consistent either. Sometimes I boot and it's absolutely rock solid, no matter what. Other times, I boot and the graphics corrupt after a few turns of the game.

The "fix" (sort of) is to save, tab out to Windows and then go back into the game. But when it's really bad, it will corrupt almost every turn, making things *unbelievably* tedious :( And then, very infrequently but too frequently for comfort in a Time game, it crashes instead of just corrupting, the whole system freezes and I am invited to report a serious system failure to Microsoft when I reboot :( With this latest card I do typically get some warning that it's about to crash completely - a 5 second pause, then the corruption and then I get the cursor back. Generally time to save, quit and reboot! That's an improvement on my last card. No warning at all with that one ...

The other strange thing is that it is at its worst in the early stages of the game. The more it has to do, the more stable it is, so later in the game it's maybe corrupting every 30 minutes to an hour or so, which is tolerable (by comparison, at least!) It also seems to be true that the longer it's running in Civ, the more stable it gets, regardless of map size.

I haven't switched my computer off for five days now, because it has been rock solid and I just don't want to risk rebooting :rolleyes: Honestly, it's that bad. So I'm sure it can't be that it's getting too hot - surely it would be in meltdown after 5 days if that were the case?

The power supply thing is interesting. I mentioned this to in-house systems a while ago, but he assures me that I have more than sufficient power. Sometimes, though, I wonder whether he forgets to add the phrase "in my opinion and anyway I'm too busy to look at it now" :) He built the system and swears it's correctly specified. I will talk to him about it again though, given your comments. Thanks for taking the time to write all the detailed info on this Sun Tzu Wu! Much appreciated.

With power supply problems, are they sometimes intermittent in the way I'm describing? That's what gets me. Why would it be perfect on some boots and absolutely *dire* on others??? :confused:

From an ecological point of view, I'm going to have to turn the PC off. But I'm dreading it ...
 
What OS are you using?

I have an 8600GT in my (wife's) desktop and it is rock solid running Win XP.

I have an 8600M in my laptop and it is the definition of unreliable while running Vista. My laptop is one of the reasons this Crash Exception policy keeps getting changed. I have just stopped trying to recover crashed games.

I am convinced that the problem is Vista related and not video card related. The only reason I run Vista on the laptop is that it is designed for Vista. I do not have drivers for XP, and I do not have the nerve to experiment with Linux and get it to do everything that I need.
 
I'm using Win XP too, so I guess it's not that :( I'm quite prepared to believe that it isn't the card, but I'm really at a loss to know what else to change. And I only have problems with Civ of course - anything else runs just fine. My son has a pretty much identical system. He doesn't play Civ but he plays a load of other games and he doesn't have any problems.
 
The computer is probably tired of getting smacked down again and again Misotu ;)
 
You think I should stop beating it around the case with a Civ manual then ? :)
 
LOL maybe. Another possibility is WastinTime has hacked your PC so he can stay in retirement for a bit longer.
 
I've also been running Civ IV on Vista laptop w/ an 8600M for over a year. It has not crashed. The only issue I had was a bug in the Great Wall. Nothing hardware related. I work that video hard too...1920x1200, anti-aliasing, and expanded field of view (24 inch widescreen).

...and yes, I have hacked Misotu's system. It's fun! I haven't done that in years.
 
Misotu said:
Thanks very much for the responses and suggestions.

I'm using a GeForce 8600GT card at the moment, so my system tells me.

I'm pretty sure it's not the cooling issue. We upgraded the cooling quite a while ago - it was the first thing we tried, but it didn't have any effect. Anyway, I get problems right from the start, booting from cold. It's not consistent either. Sometimes I boot and it's absolutely rock solid, no matter what. Other times, I boot and the graphics corrupt after a few turns of the game.

The "fix" (sort of) is to save, tab out to Windows and then go back into the game. But when it's really bad, it will corrupt almost every turn, making things *unbelievably* tedious :( And then, very infrequently but too frequently for comfort in a Time game, it crashes instead of just corrupting, the whole system freezes and I am invited to report a serious system failure to Microsoft when I reboot :( With this latest card I do typically get some warning that it's about to crash completely - a 5 second pause, then the corruption and then I get the cursor back. Generally time to save, quit and reboot! That's an improvement on my last card. No warning at all with that one ...

The other strange thing is that it is at its worst in the early stages of the game. The more it has to do, the more stable it is, so later in the game it's maybe corrupting every 30 minutes to an hour or so, which is tolerable (by comparison, at least!) It also seems to be true that the longer it's running in Civ, the more stable it gets, regardless of map size.

I haven't switched my computer off for five days now, because it has been rock solid and I just don't want to risk rebooting :rolleyes: Honestly, it's that bad. So I'm sure it can't be that it's getting too hot - surely it would be in meltdown after 5 days if that were the case?

The power supply thing is interesting. I mentioned this to in-house systems a while ago, but he assures me that I have more than sufficient power. Sometimes, though, I wonder whether he forgets to add the phrase "in my opinion and anyway I'm too busy to look at it now" :) He built the system and swears it's correctly specified. I will talk to him about it again though, given your comments. Thanks for taking the time to write all the detailed info on this Sun Tzu Wu! Much appreciated.

With power supply problems, are they sometimes intermittent in the way I'm describing? That's what gets me. Why would it be perfect on some boots and absolutely *dire* on others??? :confused:

From an ecological point of view, I'm going to have to turn the PC off. But I'm dreading it ...
Click to expand...

Your issue is very likely insufficient Power Supply wattage. Note that the total Wattage Rating of a Power Supply doesn't have much meaning in itself. Different computer systems have different Wattage requirements at different Voltage levels. Old Power Supplies had just basically just 5V and 12V power rails. Newer computers have added the need for 3.3V power rails and even smaller voltage rails. My three year old 650W BFG PS has seven separate power rails with 3.3V, 5V, -5V, 5VSB, -12V and two 12V. Each rail has its own power rating that must not be exceeded. The negative voltage rails can be ignored, since no add-on devices will use them for power and they typically have a low power rating anyway. The maximum power rating of each rail should appear on the power supply's case and on the box, if you bought a retail replacement like I did. My advice is to keep each rail below 60% of its maximum rating. That's very hard to compute or measure, so just add +50% to +100% (double) to whatever the box builder recommends.

Only one power rail needs to be close to its maximum power rating for unstable operation. (Just to be clear, stable operation means running a system continuously for at least several years without rebooting. That usually requires a UNIX or Linux operating system on server quality hardware as opposed to desktop/laptop quality hardware.) Unstable operation often means some failure while booting or shortly thereafter, but it also means intermittent errors that may occur as little as a few times a month or year.

It might be helpful to identify the power supply. The part of the PS case that is exposed near the back of the system where the PS fan should have the PS vendor and model stamped/printed on a metal plate or sticker. From that information, you can look up the Power Supply's power rail specifications on the PS vendor's site or a hardware review site.

It is a fact that the first place where system builders skimp on quality is the power supply, since extremely few people will insist on a server quality power supply in their desktop system. All the big box builders like Dell and most small box builders use third tier (mostly reliable at low power demands) power supplies in the systems that they build to keep costs low.

Power Supply Recommendations:

1) Use a Power Supply vendor with a great reputation for quality like PC Power and Cooling, Antec, or any vendor whose power supplies are consistently rated high at reputable hardware review sites.

2) Always get a Power Supply with a Wattage Rating of +50% to +100% (double) more than you are sure you need.

3) Try to ensure that peak power demands on each power rail doesn't exceed 60-70% of that specific power rail's maximum rating.

All computer issues that aren't 100% reproducible are probably due to a low quality power supply or a quality power supply with insufficient power on one or more rails.

Sun Tzu Wu
 
@Sun Tzu Wu: Thanks again for great quality info. I wish I were more technical. But this gives me the ammo I need to tackle in-house systems again ... :)
 
Misotu said:
@Sun Tzu Wu: Thanks again for great quality info. I wish I were more technical. But this gives me the ammo I need to tackle in-house systems again ... :)
Click to expand...

Good luck!

Profit vs. Quality in Computer System building:

Remember that any system builder, from the Mom & Pop [Owner/Operator, 0-10 Employees] shop to Dell, are exclusively interested in Profit and interested in Quality only as far as it will enhance/retain the Profit margin. Some Mom & Pop operations actually produce higher quality systems than Dell or other big box makers and will usually advertise this fact to differentiate themselves from Dell et al (and similar big operations), but they still need to make a Profit. Most Mom & Pop operations will build a system with your list of high quality components for an additional fee and most will at least upgrade one component like the PS for the difference in price of the upgraded component.

Don't forget System Memory:

Be sure your system has the maximum System Memory that your operating system supports. For example, every system with Vista should support at least 3MB of System Memory (Vista Ultimate supports much more, but I can't comment on it as I don't have it).

Sun Tzu Wu
 
Well...I just had a game crash that I intend to finish. I will be testing the new crash policy tonight...wish me luck.
 
It wasn't meant to be a comment on an individual game. It was just a comment that I was attempting to submit a crash recovery using the newly updated rules that we are discussing in this thread. I had previously stated several times that I had stopped bothering to continue crashed games. Several other users have made comments about their experiences with the new rules.

I am happy to report that my first experience with the new crash recovery rules was positive. I had a Diety Cultural victory accepted after the game crashed and I properly followed the rules. I hope this is encouraging to others.
 
When I load my game, the graphic driver crashed and I have to restart my computer. I didnt make any changes in that session. Should I continue playing it (from the last save)?
 
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