Civ IV fried my video card!!!

[spyder77777]

I've had the usual problems with Civ IV since its release. Various crashes, choppy animations (the opening one worked fine though), and so on. After the patch, things really seemed to get worse, although animations would play about 80% of the time flawlessly. However, I still got system crashes every so often.

After my most recent crash however, I booted back up and started the game to something like this:

In game it looks like this:

If it matters, those little lines everywhere are flickering, so it's awful. To top it off, it happens in all my games now, like Doom 3, Battefield 2, and so on. I play games quite often and this system has been incredibly stable on every game until this one apparently destroyed my card!

I reinstalled my video driver, installed Directx 9.0c again (I don't think you can uninstall Directx first ), and of course have tried uninstalling and reinstalling Civ several times.

So, it looks like Civ fried my card, a geForce 6600 GT 128 MB. That makes no sense to me...but I am forced to hard boot when it crashes, which may have damaged my card. Obviously, I'm more than agitated.

In case it matters, I'm running:

Athlon 64 3000+ 1.8 GHz on an ASUS nforce4 board
1 GB RAM
6600 GT 128 MB

If anyone has any ideas before I write Firaxis a bunch of threatening e-mails and/or try to exchange my 9-month old card, they'd be much appreciated!!! Thanks in advance...

 

[Rodatam]

cant you RMA it???
tough loss if you cant =\\\\

ps: wont play until they fix the reboot thing, the 9800´s ones are well know for frying....

 

[Nightfang]

Try other games that use 3D before you go off and blame Firaxis. Also, look to see if your video card's fan is still working. What temperatures are you running at? Are you overclocked on the video card?

 

[spyder77777]

Yes, I may be able to RMA it...hopefully...

"Try other games that use 3D before you go off and blame Firaxis. Also, look to see if your video card's fan is still working. What temperatures are you running at? Are you overclocked on the video card?"

As I mentioned in my post, I've tried several 3D games, they are all doing the same thing now...I'm not blaming Firaxis yet, but the evidence is incriminating at this point. Fan is working, temps were great, never have overclocked the card. I have good circulation in my case and temp has never been an issue. I've played games like Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Battlefield 2, Unreal Tournament 2004 2004, and World of Warcraft for hours on end. No problems like this.

It could easily be a bum card that just happened to freak out ever since the very day I installed Civ IV, despite the fact that I was 3D gaming up until that point without a hitch. Gee, that's not sarcastic...

 

[Divide Overflow]

I don't buy your story. Your video card may have started to die while you were playing Civ4, but it is very unlikely that the game is the cause.

 

[spyder77777]

"I don't buy your story. Your video card may have started to die while you were playing Civ4, but it is very unlikely that the game is the cause."

You don't buy my story? Well, I'm not making it up, that's what happened. Very unlikely, yes, I already said that. But, with the game freezing so I have to hard boot, the video card may have been the recipient of some sort of abnormal power surge or something...Isn't it at least possible?

I don't care whether you believe it happened, you're not the one that needs a new video card now, nor am I asking YOU to pay for it. I was hoping somebody may have an idea of what actually did happen, but otherwise I am writing Firaxis a nasty e-mail or several to let them defend themselves.

 

[Zethris]

Some cards just run hot, it may not seem like that, but it actually is. Minute defects can come up with prolonged use too. It just happens when you are playing 3d games. Eventually it may even show up on the desktop like that. I have had a few cards do the exact same thing. But there is nothing in programing of a game that would raise the heat of a card on purspose

 

[gunnergoz]

I've never heard of software destroying a video card; that's a new one on me. If you are "hard booting" the system a lot and your power supply is a bit anemic to begin with, there could be a set of circumstances where the power supply itself fails to run stably and perhaps could send a spike to your video card...but even that is stretching reason IMHO. The simplest answer is usually the correct one, and that may just be that your video card was defective to begin with and the hard-booting was more than it could take.

 

[yoonohoo]

See whats happened to me http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=143435 and it might make some sense

 

[DreamTheaterSFG]

Jesus, this is just sad...and the staff still doesnt respond to any of it. Im afraid to even install the game again at this point. So like firaxis, when are you going to try and save some face and at lest give us some type of refund? Its going on what now...5 weeks? I have all my stuff in perfect condition...i can send it back with a smile. Maybe then your image wont be as tainted...but as it stands now wilber will sprut wings and fly out of the pen before i deal with you again...ever.

 

[Fiontar]

The only crash error I get with the game causes a spontaneous hard reboot, with the fan speed of my power supply reving up much, much higher than I have ever heard it. On maybe the sixth such reboot after installing the game, my power supply was totally fried. Now, it was the very questionable quality stock Compaq power supply, I had one go on a previous Compaq after about a year of use, so I'm willing to accept that the hard reboots just put strain on a weak component that couildn't handle any stress beyond steady, common day use. Still not a nice thing that this game could fry any piece of hardware, but if any PS was going to get fried, it was probably mine.

I replaced the burned out PS with a new Antec 400 Smart Power PS, which includes a number of surge protection circuits. It has survived the hard reboots, but it also revs up extremely high when the reboots occur, which has me feeling like I'm playing Russian Roulet with my system everytime I play Civ4.

It seems I'm not the only one who has lost a PS to this game. Another user here that has a fused power supply cord has also had the reboots for the game burn out the fuse a number of times. The OP isn't the first to have a video card get fried either.

I will agree that some components are going to be much more vulnerable to stressors than others, either because of poor quality or manufacturing flaws that haven't faulted under normal use. However, that this game is building a reputation for causing reboots that DO put a serious strain on people's hardware is a legitimate area of concern.

I know if I burn my new Power Supply out in the next 30 days, I can return it for a new one. However I can't really afford the risk of burning out my video card at the moment, so I'm not going to be playing Civ4 again until I see that a patch has come along that has fixed almost all reboot errors.

It's not unheard of for a game to fry hardware. There is a second tier MMORPG that has a documented history of doing just that. I do understand the possibility of coincidence being responsible for a trend, rather than anything in the software itself. However, I have never, ever had a program cause reboots that where accompanied by such an incredible spike in fan speed prior to this. The game is causing errors that are putting strange and excessive strain on my system and that is extremely unacceptable.

 

[gunnergoz]

I've thought about this a little more and now concur that there could be circumstances under which software could challenge hardware into failing, given that the hardware was probably straining to begin with. If you have so much heat buildup in a case from CPU cycles and HD accessing and if your power supply was anemic and case cooling insufficient, one conceivably could develop a tendency to crash due to heat build-up in either CPU or video card. Heat build up will kill any circuitry if it continues unabated. And constant cycling of a weak or faulty power supply could also stress it to the point of failure.
So yes, I now agree that, under certain circumstances, Civ 4 or other demanding (and perhaps faulty) software could lead to eventual system hardware failures.

 

[gunnergoz]

PS I take system cooling so seriously that I have a total of 6 internal fans and one external fan operating in or on my PC at all times...even when I'm away from it for long periods (I almost never shut it off.)

 

[Mr.No]

Ok try to reinstall your Windows (I think that that happends only in games) because the output signal of tha graphic card is the same if you are looking at 2d or 3d.
Some drivers(if you run it with omega drivers) or some software can cause wierd stuff because there is an incompitability with some other software.
Before you bury your card,bury your Windows instalation(format the partition on which the Windows is installed.

I have several expiriences with simmilar problems---like if you have Darkstar Alienware desktop skin (it's provided by alienware) and have some sort of messenger (yahoo,Gtalk....) than your sistem will become unstable and crashes,also it will provide starnge stuff in other programes...everything is possible.

Reinstall it and then write me pm or write on this threat-I'm curious to know what happend---I'm 99% sure that it will be sucessfull.

 

[lightnng]

I would try removing the existing page file.

 

[spyder77777]

Thank you to everyone for the responses. Fiontar, I appreciate that story, since it sounds very similar. I totally agree with your final assessment as well. All of this is completely unacceptable. At least reply to our e-mails Firaxis!

Just to further update and clarify my story though:

My computer is a custom built one, and needless to say I spent plenty of time researching (and subsequently good money) on procuring my power supply. It's a Zalman ZM400B (400W), which is more than enough juice for my video card/CPU. It also has a great track record. I do not overclock anything, ever. Cooling has always been excellent and I've never had any issues, nor did I notice anything extreme while Civ 4 was running. I wish I had monitored voltages while the game was running, but I have no record of those.

I was finally able to RMA my 6600 GT by spending $20 total on shipping to and from eVGA. The $20 is not a huge deal, but I'm basically out a computer for a good two weeks, which is no fun.

I did spend about four-six hours reinstalling everything, head to toe. Reformatted the system drive, fresh Windows install, updated the BIOS, installed all the latest chipset drivers, fresh Directx/video drivers install, and so on... The 3D video was still doing the same thing (see screenshots above). So, the video card is obviously shot.

I will post again to let everyone know what happens when I get a new card in the machine and if Civ4 runs with any more stability. I am worried at this point however and would prefer some sort of response from Firaxis before inadvertently wrecking more hardware.

Good luck to everyone else as well.

 

[markh]

I also have a 6600GT 128MB and it gets really hot playing civ 4. I can play the game for about 1.5 - 2 hours then the game begins to crash. The CPU and mainboard are well within limits regarding temperature. Just the graphics card gets very hot. I also have an extra fan for cooling and this has never been an issue playing other games.

 

[MrSevoe]

Spyder --

Sorry this happend to you. And all I can really do is agree with your point and disagree with the others that are saying its "coincidence". You pointed out a very good and accurate fact which people are just calling "coincidence". The fact that you've been playing way more graphically intensive games on your computer without a hitch tells me just how messed up Civ 4 really is.

I didn't fry any hardware components, but I stopped playing the game completely after the first wave of hard reboots, because of fear of frying something. This isn't a freak occurance, and it isn't coincidence. And from seeing what you've done JUST to get Civ 4 to run, you obviously really want to get this game to work.

Truth of the matter is, no one should have to completely rip down their system and build it back up by re-installing things, when trying to get a game to work thats out in stores. A beta build or even an alpha build of the game I would expect this from. But I guess its just clear that they didn't optimize anything, and expected the community to fix the game for them after we all paid for it.

At this point it will be Civ 4 version 5.0 before we even see the optimizations in the code that are needed to run this game properly, and safely.

 

[Lahdoz]

My x800 got fried while playing HALO, but not because of HALO... It was because there wasn't good enough air circulation in the computer case. 2 days after I got the card at that. PC cooling affects performance as much as the parts do (when pushing the hardware), they both need to be taken on simultaneously.

I do feel for you because I went through similar problems. I had to RMA the card eventually.

 

[Stagh]

As mentioned by MrSevoe and Spyder, Civ4 uses a lot of ressources. Here is my computer :
AMD 1.7 GHz
1 GB RAM
Nvidia 6600 GT (AGP8) 128 MB

It works well with HL2, Doom3 and BF2, with reasonable settings. Only with Civ4 does it work pathetically slow. Also, since patch 1.09, I have given up any idea of watching wonder movies, because it is far too slow, with distorted sound.

Finally, Civ4 is the only application that forces me to do hard reboots of my computer. After one of these reboots, I had to reinstall my antivirus (Kaspersky 5), whose files had been damaged.

Civ4 is still a beta. I am waiting for a patch to make it final.