BTS causes intermittent PC hangs

[Lambert Simnel]

Hi.

Any advice on a bit of a funny one ?

My Windows 7 PC (8Gb, Quad core 2.50GHz, GEForce GT 220) has started to hang on an annoyingly frequent basis when playing BTS multiplayer over my Wireless LAN.

It's fine running single player, any world size & number of Civs that I can bother to try. Will happily carry on for as long as I'm allowed to play.

And it used to be quite happy running BTS multiplayer over a LAN, until the last 2-3 weeks. I added a Buffalo NAS, and configured a Creative Soundblaster Alpha headphones + mic over the Xmas period - that's the only changes I can think of that I've made to the system since it worked happily.

Now, playing BTS MP over the wireless LAN, after about half an hour the screen goes into power saving mode (presumably no signal coming from the PC), keyboard shows no response to pressing Caps Lock, but PC whirrs on as if normal. Only way out is to restart the PC.

Only happens with Civ 4 BtS (though we don't really do any other multiplayer LAN games), happens even if I have switched the NAS off, and I can't see anything useful in Event Viewer (though I appreciate I may not be looking in the right place).

I need to get some more info - any suggestions on what I can run for diagnostics, or where I can look in Event Viewer ?

Thanks
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I originally posted this in the Fix-It list, but thought I'd seek out help in a separate thread.

Further to the above, I have had this happen now (once) while playing single player, but it happens like every 10 minutes playing LAN multi-player. Tried it with a fresh user on the Win 7 PC, e.g. no widgets, nothing else running, and same problem.

I need some suggestions on where to look for diagnostic info, please.

 

[Lambert Simnel]

Cool, I got to 50 views of the above post without anyone attempting an answer.

Just in case anyone is interested, I think the issue is overheating of the GPU. Windows Event Viewer was useless (other than telling me that the system had been shut down improperly - well, duh...). The problem has started becoming more frequent, and occurred repeatedly last night when running single player - which in turn was after we had given up on multi-player (after three enforced restarts).

Using SpeedFan, it appears my crappy NVidia GT220 is sitting "happily" at 50-60 C when using the computer on, say, web browsing, but quickly rises to over 90C when running BTS - and drops down again as soon as Alt-Tab out of it. CPU temperatures all rise with BTS, but appear to keep themselves under 60C.

At the weekend, I'll take the side off the PC case and I expect to find that either the graphics card is covered with dust & dog hairs, or that its fan is failing or disconnected. If it's bust, or needs a new cooler say, then I'm tempted to just buy a AMD 5700 series or similar as a replacement, rather than try to continue with this thing.

Will update the thread with any progress, just in case anyone else ever experiences the same (or indeed if anyone out there has a view on replacements for the GT220).

 

[Lambert Simnel]

Hmm. GT220 fan is working, I've used some canned air to blow the cobwebs away (in the PC, that is), run BTS for 10 minutes and.... GPU temperature reaches 105C.

Sounds a bit high to me.

Alt-tab to this screen (ie Chrome & Civfanatics) and the temperature is back donw to 60-70C within 2 or 3 minutes - so I think the GPU fan is probably doing as good a job as it can.

I did some playing around with reducing screen resolution (to 1280x800 from 1920x1080) and setting anti-aliasing to 0 (normally have it at the default of 2), but didn't see much improvement. And besides, two months ago I could run BTS for hours at a time at these settings, and didn't have a problem.

So, I think the GPU is getting too hot, and I'm guessing it's significantly hotter, more quickly, than it used to get. I'll check for replacement graphics card in the £100 range, and see whether a new card with a bit more power to it can handle things better.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

That is quite hot for a graphics card. Do you have any extra fans in your case? I haven't been much of an Nvidia girl for the past few years, but I don't think that your card is especially noted for it's "coolness" under load. Mine runs around 45C while playing Civ.

Also, there were driver issues with Soundblaster cards and Windows 7 for a while. Make sure that your sound driver is Win 7 compatible. I have read that some Soundblaster cards can cause Win 7 to do some very strange things if the correct drivers aren't installed.

It's probably the graphics card, but it wouldn't hurt to check.

 

[tokala]

90°C is okay for a GPU, 105°C is not

If Civ4 is your most demanding game, almost anything would do for a video card, though the stuff below £50 usually makes no sense if you do any gaming AT ALL.

That one is a pretty good deal for £75, it has a high quality cooling solution and would be even capable of handling Civ5.

 

[zeroblackstar]

Check youve got good airflow over your GPU, and make sure youve got a good positive pressure system going, thats is air in one way, out the other.

If youve got fans pointing in random directions all over the show it isnt going to help much..

Ive seen some people just remove the side panel of their pc expecting this to help cool the hardware..