Civ4 and Omega driver

[Laramon]

Okay... I play Everquest 2 and Civ4 mainly on my new machine. Due to EQ2 causing VPU crashes on my Sapphire Radeon x550 every few minutes on any drivers newer than 5.02, I did the only thing I could to rectify the situation and rolled back to 5.02 ATI drivers... which cut my performance drastically... so I decided to finally try the Omega drivers I've heard everyone talking about. So I got whichever ones correspond to the 5.02 ATI ones.

Today I loaded up Civ4, clicked on multiplayer, clicked on internet game, signed in, then the game hung for about 2 minutes, finally got into the lobby, and never loaded up any games in the window (showed user names). My mouse moved, but I could not click anything, not even to exit.

So I alt-F4'd it, which eventually closed Civ4, then restarted my computer. Then I went to play Civ4... only to get really messed up graphics every time I try to load it now... I thought I'd take a screenshot, only when I do, it looks normal on the screenshot! Basically it's almost black, with the little lights on the planet, and some of the colors are distorted (green bands, etc.).

Only 2 things I did since yesterday (when I played a 6 hour multiplayer game fine) was roll back my ATI driver, uninstall that driver and put in the Omega driver, and change the resolution from 1024x768 to 1280x768. And yes, I've tried setting the resolution back... no dice...

There's no way I'm upgrading my video driver back to where it was, because I can't play EQ2 until the issue is resolved (I've heard it's going on a year now unresolved). But if you tell me that the Omega driver is to blame, I'll try going back to ATI's 5.02...

 

[Zydor]

If you have not yet loaded Patch V1.52 please load it, if there are still issues post again with your Dxdiag

V1.52, overall, was a successfull patch, it resolved a lot of graphics issues, its a must have Patch as it restructured memory management in Civ IV. Not using it will only succeed in masking any remaining issues with the smoke of pre-V1.52.

One possible issue in V1.52 is multiplayer, the jury is still out on that one. The fact remains many do play multiplayer with it - however there are certainly a significant number who appear to have issues with it - more water to go under the bridge on that connected with how the Servers are performing.

Regards
Zy

 

[Laramon]

Yes... I patched to 1.52 long before many of my friends even knew it was out... I don't think I've ever not patched when a game tells me there's one out...

DXDiag coming up...

 

[Zydor]

Its a high pagefile use - was Civ IV running when it was taken? if so could you do one with Civ IV closed ?

Regards
Zy

 

[Laramon]

Reason the large page file is because I'm playing EQ2 right now.

Unloading now...

DXDiagging now...

Posting now...

 

[Laramon]

If this helps, when I did the "Test Direct3D" and it does the spinning cubes, it has the same problem as I described above...

Only difference is that when it is switching from full screen to windows mode I can see the correct image for that split second... Happens in DX7, DX8, and DX9 modes.

Anyone have an idea what's going on?

 

[Zydor]

This is kind of a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but easy to do,and eliminates much quickly if you not already done it - its picked up a few memory contentions

Run Msconfig
click services tab
tick the "Hide all Microsoft services " box
click the disable all button
click the startup tab
click disable all button
reboot

That will get to a minimum all background services (apart from a few like Nortons that lurk in the Services section of the Manage Computer screen. If Civ IV runs ok, then there is a memory contention somewhere with a stopped serve / app, and need to restart one at a time until the rogue is spotted.

Obviously doit off line as that will stop auto load of Anti-V and Firewall. To reverse it just untick the box, and click on "enable button" on both those tabs

Regards
Zy

 

[Zydor]

Well picked up-if that shows in the tests, it will show in the game.

Have you tried re-installing DirectX ?

EDIT: could be a video card driver issue of course not just DirectX - but I understand your thoughts on that one

Regards
Zy

 

[Laramon]

Only thing in there that wasn't hidden when I clicked on "hide all microsoft serives" was my antivirus, ATI stuff (modified by Omega), my Voice Modem, and Spybot's on access spyware filter.

Would this really help all that much?

 

[Laramon]

This system was fully reinstalled 4 days ago, when I put in my new SATA drive.

I didn't get any errors when installing DX. Also, of the 2 games installed, EQ2 runs fine (except for the lower performace from the older drivers) and Civ4 I can't even get past the menus because it's so dark and discolored...

 

[Zydor]

The idea is to disable as above and reboot, its easy to reverse as shown

What it does is minimise the background apps and services loaded into memory, the beastie will still run - probably a little faster as that lot is not in memory. It can happen that a clash can occur Civ IV / another program or utility in memory - particularlya badly behaved utility. Various Anti-V's can be the ultimate problem - albeit rarely.

By disabling like this you check the lot in one go - if Civ IV runs ok - you know its one of the ones disabled. Its then a case of painful detective work loading one by one until you find the rougue.

Its in the long shot catagory, but it does happen

She who must be obeyed just called dinner - bak later I will have a think re ini file as well meantime

Regards
Zy

 

[Laramon]

I turned them off, nothing better.

I tried changing settings in the RadLinker, no luck.

Then I tried loading Neverwinter Nights... YAY, another game that works!

So why is it that I have 2 programs that work, 2 that don't? (DXDiag + Civ4, Vs. NWN = EQ2)

 

[Zydor]

The glass is always half full never half empty

Thinking about possible ini changes back soon

Regards
Zy

 

[Laramon]

One change that fixes it: turn off full screen mode

So in other words, I can only play it in windowed mode to make it work.

The second it goes into full screen, POOF! Odd coloration is back.

I was going to take a picture of it, but due to how fast the scenry changes, my digital camera fails to take pictures (it's hardware designed to synch with flourescent lighting, as well as wait for a scene to be still before taking a pic. Since the screen never stops, it never takes a pic, and corrupts the JPG...)

Was thinking about webcamming it to video. Maybe a short clip I can get out of it.

 

[Zydor]

Well spotted - a variation on that change as you will be running in windowed mode

set the desktop to the same resolution as the game, and set the vertical refresh to 60Hz in windows desktop. The reason is that it minimises the work the graphics card has to do to interpolate between resolutions - even if desktop is "covered" by a stretched window. The 60Hz is because vertually all games will switch to 60Hz inside the game box, if its different outside it, again the card has more workto do.

Was working on an ini list for you - will tailor it now to what you have found and post it - meanwhile - nice one & happy world domination

Regards
Zy

 

[Laramon]

I always keep my games set to desktop resolution. No, as for refresh rates, I'll check on that now.

Seems either it defaulted to 85hz, or Omega set it to 85Hz for me. Either way I set it back to 60 just now.

Checked Civ4, still ugly in full screen.

 

[Zydor]

Well spotted re the full screen / windowed mode

- Any non-Firaxis Mods loaded ? uninstall them if you have and repair the standard Civ installation

; Disable PAK memory mapping (May affect performance)
DisablePAKMemoryMapping = 1

; Don't skip frames if falling behind (refers to the movies)
BinkNoSkip = 1

; Copy entire image each frame, not just dirty pixels
BinkCopyAll = 0
; Show movies using hi-color, not true-color (may be faster)
Bink16Bit = 0

; Specify whether to play in fullscreen mode 0/1/ask
FullScreen = 0 (This is the one you found)

; Sync input to smooth interface (may run slower)
SyncInput = 0

; Allows some memory savings *** ALT-TAB WILL NO LONGER FUNCTION *** (0 stops the memsaver, 1 enables it. But set to 1 will load graphics card more. If you have graphics processing / capacity issues set it to 0 so that the card (or onboard graphics chip) has less load
MemSaver = 0


Regards
Zy

 

[Laramon]

I've always wondered what that PAKMemoryMapping was. It's the only thing that's different in my options.

As for mods, only thing running is Blue Marble, which was working yesterday before I installed the Omega drivers. Well, still works, except in Full Screen...

 

[Zydor]

good news re marble - its an excellent mod - the author deserves lots of kudos for that one

Regards
Zy