Civ IV fried my video card!!!

[narsil]

syder sorry to hear your loss , let me refer you to my thread earlier

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=145293

anyway after uninstalling civ4 and returning it i decided to check other games to make sure they were working as they should.

then the fun begins.....all i was getting in q4, hl2, rometw was gfx artifacts and lockups/crashes. dam maybe all this playing with drivers messed with my system so i decide i will reinstall xp and start from scratch

this all done i still had same probs so dled atitool and do an artifact test on my 9800pro , results being too horrendous to print

WTH... so i decide to look in my case and find my gpu fan has ceased working!!!

maybe just coincidence granted but one HELL of a one if it is. everyhting was working fine until i installed this game and had all the relevant crashes/hard booting/playing issues

luckily i have 2 weeks left on the warranty LOL so if my card WAS on the way out maybe this game killed it....

guess i'l never know the real cause but it sure makes one think

ps. hoping i get sent a non r350 chipset in new card so can mod it =)

 

[Jimcnj]

My Fan died too! Coincidence?

 

[Natronomonas]

I think a fan would be co-incidence, but I think that Civ4 causing hard resets as it does (for me also, as well as all the other posters here) is definitely not conducive to hardware longevity.
Bring on the next patch/fix/ anything for me to keep my sanity and hardware!

 

[t0mme]

Funny this....

My videocard was fried as well after I played CivIV. I believe the heating problem, especially since I have a laptop and cooling isn't perfect. Point is, I had to send my laptop back to the manufacturer, because I can't mess with laptop videocards... Too bad, it's gonna cost me at least €75, even if they can't fix it :S
If this is really caused by CivIV, and I'm not yet 100% convinced, I'll dump it in the nearest wastebin.

For the record, it was NVidia GeforceFX Go5200 and it ran CivIV quite nicely. too bad it fried before the official patch so now I don't know if the perfomance on my has become any better.

 

[Zydor]

I agree with Fiontar in post 36. It is extremely rare - almost to the point in believing the Second Coming has occured - that software on release will fry hardware as a direct result of a software action. It is however increasing common for consequential damage to occur when software problems put excessive strain on the hardware as a result of boots etc.

I have a feeling that the testing for Civ IV was completed - not unreasonably - on what we consider to be "older" drivers (cant Beta test if you change drivers continually during the test programme). It does take a fair old time to Beta test games of this complexity, and the old days of Beta testing producing 100 % reliable results have gone because of this. It takes so long that by the time the software is released, new kit and drivers are out there. Of course once the baseline is established, it usually doesnot take much to then catch up with drivers etc release since Beta - and its that process which is the real indicator of a good / bad software Company.

Many people have succeeded in rolling back to old drivers, and are up and running. That in itself has problems because the surrounding software supporting other functions is often "up to date" therefore clashes still occur even with this tactic.

What annoys me most is the fact that they have not released what the platform standard for testing was, driver versions etc etc. We could then make a judgement as to what to do. Now we have support staff working with a baseline of up to date drivers trying to get the software up to that baseline, but meanwhile desparate gamers are rolling back versions - so we end up on a different baseline to the fix (!)

I am not defending Firaxis, I am just as angry as most over this silly situation, but I do understand the problems they are facing. However, that is no different to other software games companys, and other 3D games have been released with much fewer hassles than this. The problems and issues in Release Management for 3D games are not new, they are well known. The real test will be how fast they respond to this - so far its not looking good.

Regards
Zy

 

[Natronomonas]

While I agree that maybe older drivers did help the beta testers, modern games should not be so dependent on a specific video driver to actually function properly. Other games aren't having these issues, so presumably Civ4 does something funny with the calls to the VGA card that other programs don't do (just guessing, I'm no programmer).
It has to be said that such dependency on -everything- being just so to make the program work is unusual.

 

[Zydor]

Its a difficult commercial decision as to when you go for a Release - its a fact of life that its all driven by the bottom line revenue needs, they are not in it for a charity. The links between each "technology" are incredibly complex now, the penalty for all the functionality we as gamers demand. Each of these "technologies" are - basicly - developed by different Companies, each with their own Agenda. All that adds up to a developer's nightmare as they try to get get it all to work together with what seems to be an ever changing baseline, and it will get worse in the future as other new software gizmos come out.

Meanwhile they will get to a stage where commercial reality forces a release,they have to get revenue flowing. In my view - commercial needs or not - they released too early with the pressure to get pre xmas Sales included in this year's figures for the Annual Personal Bonus round. I suspect there are some angry developers at Fireaxis fuming over this as they take the Flak for a decision made at Excutive level in the Company.

If they respond quickly to this - weeell, alls well that ends well at the end of the day - albeit there will be a few 'bodies' lying in the road after all this carnage. What is for certain is that the Trust element in the Civ Series has been destroyed forever. That will rebound on release 5 - whenever that is - because fewer will buy it early, many will now wait until its certain its stable, if I'm still playing it then I certainly will (!). That will hit their Revenue flow.

The latter is all part of the great equation of Release Management. None the less, in my view, with all that considered, I still believe they released too early, basicly because they believe we have short memories and by V5 we are all pals again (!). The latter assumption will be proved fatal in my view - but by V5 the guys who made the dosh on V4 will be in pastures new.

Such is commercial life

Regards
Zy

 

[Natronomonas]

What is for certain is that the Trust element in the Civ Series has been destroyed forever. That will rebound on release 5 - whenever that is - because fewer will buy it early, many will now wait until its certain its stable, if I'm still playing it then I certainly will (!). That will hit their Revenue flow.

My thoughts too. Civ5 will not be on my pre-order/purchase ASAP after release list. I don't want to buy a lemon again.

Managed to play about 2 hours tonight without crash though : )

 

[Zydor]

You managed 2 hours !

Geeez, by current standards you are a mega experienced Civ IV Player

I cant get the damn thing to even start - it dont have a vertual searchlight to penetrate the dark gloom and penetrate the Tracer lines of all that anti-aircraft flak flying over head. As to the random geometric shapes flying around, even ET would run for home in the middle of that lot !

The scene looks more like a WW2 bombing raid than a software game - but gotta keep smiling, dawn will still break tomorrow, well maybe .....

Regards
Zy

 

[vanguardian1]

Would you guys mind listing your hardware configs and driver versions?

By the way, computer hardware (electronics) doesn't have an abundantly long life-span, two video cards produced on the same line of the same day can easily have very different lengths in their life span. Such is the importance of a warranty for most people.

Btw, consider heat for electronics like smoking for people. Other factors aside, it'll cut down your life-span no question. Btw, despite what the companies say, try to keep your processor under 50c if you want to keep the thought of an overheating processor out of the possible causes of problems.

 

[Natronomonas]

Would you guys mind listing your hardware configs and driver versions?

Btw, consider heat for electronics like smoking for people. Other factors aside, it'll cut down your life-span no question. Btw, despite what the companies say, try to keep your processor under 50c if you want to keep the thought of an overheating processor out of the possible causes of problems.

I don't think it's heat causing most people's problems. If you can ctrl-alt-del to reset your computer, rogue software can do it too (you are, after all, making a software call to initiate a reset).

I run a A64 3200+ with zalman CNPS7000AlCu, 6600GT Extreme with Thermalright V1 cooler, 1 gig of PC3200 2-2-2-8 RAM and 200gig hard drive with plenty of space and allocated swap space.

Drivers are all the latest you can get (eg 80.95 nvidia, latest bios etc).

An overheating processor would cause problems in other applications too - same with overheated graphics card.

For everyone here that I have come across, Civ4 is the -only- game/software to cause problems. I think that's a lot of empirical evidence to suggest a common cause.

 

[Zydor]

Hi vanguardian1

Here is my specs - one ommission is the Bios, I checked it tonight and it is out of date (BIOS: Award Software, Inc. ASUS P4T533-C ACPI BIOS Revision 1009 12/25/2002), so I am working on that - but many with newer systems, and defacto newer bios, are still having issues, so I doubt my updating it will solve all the ills.

It was purchased September 2003
Poweroid P4 3.06Ghz Hyperthreading 512MB RAM (RIMM 2x256mb modules)
(Poweroid is a bespoke market niche UK manufacturer)
PCI Bus, 4X AGP
200Gb Drive & 200Gb external drive
1xNEC DVD_RW ND-1300A
1xSONY CD-RW CRX220E1
ASUS P4T533-C motherboard 133 mhz Bus
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (128Mb Ram)
Cooler Master case and associated cooling gizmo's inside - airflow / proper cooling not an issue
Creative Labs Auditgy 2 Sound setup
CRT Monitors: 1x19" Viewsonic P95f and 1 x Viewsonic PT775 (I have tried it with both monitors stand alone, and as my normal setup of dual monitor)
1.5Gb swap file (min=max), disc fully defragged, swapfile in one piece no fragmentation

Sound Driver: Creative Labs 5.12.3.381 02/04/2003
ATI Driver: Tried the Catalyst V5.11 & V4.12 (as such, pretty much the same hassles evident with both)
Windows: XP SP2
Civ 4: Patch 1.09 and their version of Directx 9.0c
Monitors: Viewsonic's own drivers Windows certified versions
.NET loaded fully updated
Windows fully updated
I have also checked out the peripherals - scanner, laser printer, etc by unloading them & drivers in case something really wierd was going on, but nothing there.

Been through all the suggested fix lists on this site and on 2K's no joy so far.

Symptoms are:
- Permanently black background to the game
- I can see the resource markings, everything else on the map is not visible, its allblack.
- Leader photos & the opening pictureof a Warrior have random geometric shapes - usually elongated triangles (2 x long sides, 1x vertical short side) appearing overlaying changing random parts of the photo
- The main play screen has very large elogated triangles shooting in and around the play area, and at the same time a large number of straight lines usually white & vertical or horizontal flickering around mainly in bottom right of the screen. A series of lines usually appears from the top right and converge at a 45 degree angle onto the settler in the cetre of the screen in the opening play area, tends to drift around a bit after that
- The background to a city appears to be grey if I zoom out far enough, and some strange moving video under it, looks like some form of terrain detail but in shades of grey, moves left to right
- The opening pre-play screens all have mega numbers of geomatric shapes flying about and individual lines appearing at all angles - quite pretty in a funny sort of way

If anything the 1.09 Patch appeared to make it worse

Sound seems fine, and all 2D related detail like the surround detail on the Play screen is fine (when you can see it amongst the flying shapes!). All 2D screens for Techs, city boards, etc etc are ok - allbeit overlaid with the by now infamous flying triangles and shooting white lines every where.

Never got past 'Turn 4' - no point, cant see anything to do anything ....

Other than that I'm doing good

Regards
Zy

 

[vanguardian1]

Zydor -
1) When you switched video drivers, did you uninstall the previous ones? (ATI has an uninstall utility that has a pretty good track record)
2) Have you installed/updated your motherboard chipset drivers? (Ide isn't necessary, but other drivers for the chipset/agp/pcix occasionally do fix problems that Microsoft's default drivers or older ones don't address)
3) Check your My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\CivilizationIV.ini for a "D3D9Query" and make sure it's set to "0" as in Zero, because I had white lines and breaking when I tried to use it on my 9500 Pro (older/slower version, but same features of your card).
4) If you can get into the menu of Civ4, try turning off all possible graphical options and see if you can notice any differences (or less?) in the glitches.

Natronomonas -
Give me a bit to find your posts/problems.

My only real problem is that I live in straw-band land.

 

[Sarvi]

After reading these comments I'm giving up Civ4 until its fixed! Too dangerous! I also have a Nvidia 6600GT card, almost new. When I play the game it works for a while, then graphics start to go bad. I exit to desktop before it crashes the PC. If you play other games after this happens the graphics are chopped up, but a computer restart fixes this. I read somewhere (on this forum) that going back to an older driver fixes the problem....

 

[Roach]

After reading these comments I'm giving up Civ4 until its fixed! Too dangerous! I also have a Nvidia 6600GT card, almost new. When I play the game it works for a while, then graphics start to go bad. I exit to desktop before it crashes the PC. If you play other games after this happens the graphics are chopped up, but a computer restart fixes this. I read somewhere (on this forum) that going back to an older driver fixes the problem....

Probably a good idea, I think my video card and/or CPU may be on its way out. The CPU hit 60 degrees C (civ 4) the other day, audible warning came on (first time ever). I shut down immediately and waited for it to cool down. Used a monitoring program to check out the temp and it goes from 34 to 56 once Civ 4 is started up. Will have to check out other programs next.

I am now getting hard crashes outside of Civ 4.

 

[markh]

An overheating processor would cause problems in other applications too - same with overheated graphics card.

For everyone here that I have come across, Civ4 is the -only- game/software to cause problems. I think that's a lot of empirical evidence to suggest a common cause.

After playing CIV 4 other games also crash. If I do not play CIV 4 first no other game crashes. At this stage I am forced to get my PC cooler to be able to play CIV 4 safely. I am quite sure that CIV 4 is causing heat issues for my PC. Other programmers are capable to publish games that run on normal ventilated PCs, so WTH have they done there ?.
I think this piece of crap is badly written. They have thrown this thing together as they got a deadline which they could not meet and their support is rubbish. If I will ever buy a game from them again I will definitely wait until the price dropped. BTW at amazon.de the price for CIV 4 dropped to EUR 37,90 just 1 month after release. Most likely these are the copies they got back from people that cannot run it.

 

[Zydor]

Zydor -
1) When you switched video drivers, did you uninstall the previous ones? (ATI has an uninstall utility that has a pretty good track record)
2) Have you installed/updated your motherboard chipset drivers? (Ide isn't necessary, but other drivers for the chipset/agp/pcix occasionally do fix problems that Microsoft's default drivers or older ones don't address)
3) Check your My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\CivilizationIV.ini for a "D3D9Query" and make sure it's set to "0" as in Zero, because I had white lines and breaking when I tried to use it on my 9500 Pro (older/slower version, but same features of your card).
4) If you can get into the menu of Civ4, try turning off all possible graphical options and see if you can notice any differences (or less?) in the glitches.

1. Yep zapped the lot - used that Utility, also - went into the Registry for the Local & Current Keys, checked the directory tree, zapped temp totally
2. Not done the motherboard drivers will get onto that tonight - I have got hold of the updated Bios, the latter will be delivered by Friday
3. D3D9 is set to zero
4. No real difference

My DX log and a couple of screen shots attached in a Zip in the 'Post your DX Logs' thread at the top of this Forum, did it just now. Screen shots show the issue but dont do justice to its intensity, depth and frequency of the 'pyrotechnic' display. 3DMark05 score is an abysmal 1636, and frame rates during the 3DMark05 test were an appauling 1-6 fps, so I definitely have a 3D support issue lurking. Bios is suspect for that, but even that,I doubt, will explain all ills - DX 3D tests were fine, and Fortune tests were ok, although the geometric shapes showed in places particularly on the 'Complex Test'. I will know more by Saturday when the new Bios turns up.
Zy

 

[Zydor]

Bios & motherboard chipset (Intel 850E) updated - no change from before, still the same issues. 3DMark05 test was better, not great but a bit better - nothing to shout home about tho. Run out of things to check, update and change - I think - so looks like the well known post-V1 waiting game. I think I have some remaining 3D setup issues, not absolutely sure, but its looking that way, however that will not explain all the ills by far. Should have learnt my lesson from the past I suppose:

"never buy a 'V1' because it wont work and your paying for 'V1.1 development' - ie usually what 'V1' should have been"

Such is life

Regards
Zy

 

[Natronomonas]

After playing CIV 4 other games also crash. If I do not play CIV 4 first no other game crashes. At this stage I am forced to get my PC cooler to be able to play CIV 4 safely. I am quite sure that CIV 4 is causing heat issues for my PC. Other programmers are capable to publish games that run on normal ventilated PCs, so WTH have they done there ?.
I think this piece of crap is badly written. They have thrown this thing together as they got a deadline which they could not meet and their support is rubbish. If I will ever buy a game from them again I will definitely wait until the price dropped. BTW at amazon.de the price for CIV 4 dropped to EUR 37,90 just 1 month after release. Most likely these are the copies they got back from people that cannot run it.

Your computer may not be running properly after playing Civ4 because if it's causing reboots etc you may be slowly corrupting data on your drive. Also, if it's not exiting properly there may be stuff left in memory or whatever that's causing issues for the other programs.
My computer starts getting a bit flaky if I run Civ4 a few times in a row with CTDs... have to reboot every now and then. Never had to do this before Civ4.

 

[Neon Deon]

Bios & motherboard chipset (Intel 850E) updated - no change from before, still the same issues. 3DMark05 test was better, not great but a bit better - nothing to shout home about tho. Run out of things to check, update and change - I think - so looks like the well known post-V1 waiting game. I think I have some remaining 3D setup issues, not absolutely sure, but its looking that way, however that will not explain all the ills by far. Should have learnt my lesson from the past I suppose:

"never buy a 'V1' because it wont work and your paying for 'V1.1 development' - ie usually what 'V1' should have been"

Such is life

Regards
Zy

I took a look at you dxdiag.

When you ran dxdiag was that with or without the game running?

If was without, try turning off all the that stuff you have running in the background.

Start/run/

Type MSconfig

Startup tab: disable all

Services tab: check the box marked hide all ms services.

Make sure ms-services are hidden(if you dont bad things could happen) then disable all

apply

Re-start computer and try running the game.