CivIV Warlords Stalls or Computer Restarts!

[mr. poopyhead]

A "SORT OF" FIX:

so here's the deal... i have a GeForce 6800GS which has 12 pixel pipelines and 5 vertex shaders.... ever since i got it, i unlocked 4 pipleines and 1 shader, effectively making my card a 6800GT. i've never had any problems with this.

ever since warlords started crashing, i returned my video card back to stock settings, 12 pipes and 5 shaders. voila. crashes solved. however, i can't tell what solved the problem... disabling the extra pipes and shader? or just the drop in temp?

CRASHES:
16 pipelines, 6 vertex shaders @ 85-90 degrees celsius

FIXED
12 pipelines, 5 vertex shaders @ 70-75 degrees celsius

so as you can see, 2 variables have changed here. so i can't tell which one fixed the problem. the confusing thing is, i've been running the unlocked setup for months now with no problem. i've run 3dmark06 with the GPU reaching temps a shade over 90 celsius withouy any graphical artifacts... so it's a complete mystery why it would CRASH without showing any minor glitches first in warlords. i've run the GPU under hotter temps before with no problems... i dunno why it only does this in warlords.

any answers would be nice... maybe we should also consolidate all the threads about this... it seems like there are 3 or 4 other threads with the same symptoms.

 

[Carch]

OK, see, here's the problem I have with your problem.

There is a *reason* why those chips are sold as 6800GS rather than 6800GT. The chips are tested and found to have defects during some combintation of operations exclusive to some on-chip GT rendering setup. Thus, they are not certified to work with all the pipelines & shaders enabled.

My card is a 6800GT, which should *supposedly* work no matter what you throw at it. I even run it at stock speeds, even though it is sold as overclockable. Regardless, I get the kind of crash you showed in your previous picture.

Just because you have run your hacked up chip with no problems doesn't mean it will always perform the same as a 6800 GT. It's likely that something in the latest version of Civ IV/Warlords pushes the rendering pipeline a bit too hard and causes the chip to malfunction.

But my question is... why is that happening on an actual 6800 GT?

I'm beginning to lose faith in BFG. This is actually the second 6800 GT board I've had from them that shows these kinds of problems. Cooling and power are *not* an issue in my case. I have an Antec 480W PSU, 120MM intake and exhaust fans in addition to the PSU fan, a dedicated CPU cooler and a PCI slot cooler for extra cooling on the graphics card.

So... what's up with that?

 

[shibby80]

Well I got a pci-e radeon x600xt 128mb card and I can't get the game to work.

I'm so desperate to get it working. Its the only game I want to play single player and multiplayer, so last night I,

- Deleted partition.
- Created new partition.
- Reinstalled Windows XP.
- Downloaded all Windows updates.
- Downloaded and updated all latest software drivers for all my hardware.

This took me about 4 or 5 hours on my half mbit connection.

My computer is now running like a dream!

So was Civ4 till it crashed in the usual way.

Its up to you but I wouldn't bother trying that it didn't help me.

edit: crash applies to both civ4 161 & civ4 warlords. Turned auto save off. Single units, quick moves, quick battle offense/defense, low quality textures, no movies. All set for multiplayer basically.

 

[crunch]

Damn, shib, that sucks! What is the average time, how long can you usually play? Is there any correlation between map size / era and crashes (i.e., crashes are more common and come earlier on larger maps/later eras)?

Have you tried the magic option: SetMaxFrameRate = 60 or less (40...)

Do you have enough virtual memory? I.e., civ would crash as soon as it consumes your gig of ram.

You do not mention DirectX in your anabasis. But I presume you've got it updated.

 

[shibby80]

Yeah i've tried all that

I have directx9.0c.

I've capped frames at 30, no difference.

Tried setting huge ammount of virtual memory likes a few gigs, from a post I read, no difference.

It seems to crash on any size map doesn't really seem to contribute, appears random.

The game runs perfectly before it crashes. Usually 200bc-1000ad anywhere in between there. Maybe i've gone a bit later like 1500ad I can't remember now.

Random things seem to set it off like converting religion or discovering a technology or sometimes just ending a turn.

I think i've covered just about everything I myself can to try to get it to work.

I hope a patch comes out soon and magically fixes it.

But its odd because I was even playing a fair bit of 161 for a good month or two before it started happening, then I didn't play it very often. Warlords came out and I thought it would stop playing that but it didn't.

Thats when I got concerned something was wrong with my hardware. But it runs other games so well with no over heating or lag issues.

Its a strange one, but from other threads i've been looking through. Its not uncommon with this game.

I still keep an eye here incase someone finds a solution but its not looking good lol I've tried far too much now, beyond a joke to get a game to work that should already work.

edit: I just had a thought. I run nod32 antivirus and sygate personal firewall pro. I don't think these are the problem though. But any link? probly not.

 

[crunch]

Sounds like a hardware problem, then. I don't have any first-hand experience, but memtest was mentioned somewhere, try checking your memory. Dig out some obsolete GPU from somewhere and try that.

 

[shibby80]

No its definately software problems. The game is buggy. Its the only one I have any problems with.

I can run far more graphic intense games with no problems or errors for hours on end. Plus I have tried a couple of applications testing hardware with no problems.

I can't find a obsolute pci-e card to test with

 

[BirraImperial]

Tried Memtest 86+. After 5 passes there were no errors found. I really don´t think its a memory error, but I really have no experience checking for faulty RAM sticks.
It has something to do with the 1.61 patch. After playing for maybe 5-10 minutes, my laptop crashes hard and takes several attempts to reboot correctly. I'm going to try reinstalling and playing civ 4 with the previous patch. And I hope when they realease an update in warlords these problems will be solved.

 

[shibby80]

*** FIX ***

I got mine working perfectly. You will love me for this. I hope it works on other cards as well. Mine is ati radeon.

Download a program called "powerstrip" from http://entechtaiwan.net/util/ps.shtm

Don't worry its free. Install it then you will need to reboot. After reboot, open powerstrip.

It will detect your video card and settings etc. Click ok if it is your primary video card that it has detected.

Once the program is running goto "performace profiles --> configure" then create a new profile with your card slightly "underclocked".

I reduced my engine and memory clock by a few mhz with no noticable difference to performance and Civ4 runs like a dream. Not even a single graphics glitch let alone a stall!

Give it a go and post here how it went. Would be interesting to know.

 

[col]

Made no difference to my problem.

 

[lionheart]

What I was wondering if anyone has contacted Firaxis about this or whether anyone knows if Firaxis is aware of this problem..

Because I can imagine that this ruins the game for quite a few people and I'm sure that's not what they had in mind for their customers..

At the moment all I can do is sit around playing other games while I hope and wait for a new CivIV patch..

 

[shibby80]

I just played a Warlords custom game - large map, continents, raging barbs, noble, 10civs, and it ran perfectly through till 1950AD when I retired because I have to sleep.

This fix as I stated above worked great for me and I think its worth a try, espeically if you have a radeon graphics card.

I found the information on another forum where someone with a radeon card was having stall/reboot issues with a different game.

Hopefully it works for a few of yas.

I still don't think you should have to go through all this to get the game working but atleast its working now (for me anyway).

 

[mr. poopyhead]

OK, see, here's the problem I have with your problem.

There is a *reason* why those chips are sold as 6800GS rather than 6800GT. The chips are tested and found to have defects during some combintation of operations exclusive to some on-chip GT rendering setup. Thus, they are not certified to work with all the pipelines & shaders enabled.

My card is a 6800GT, which should *supposedly* work no matter what you throw at it. I even run it at stock speeds, even though it is sold as overclockable. Regardless, I get the kind of crash you showed in your previous picture.

Just because you have run your hacked up chip with no problems doesn't mean it will always perform the same as a 6800 GT. It's likely that something in the latest version of Civ IV/Warlords pushes the rendering pipeline a bit too hard and causes the chip to malfunction.

But my question is... why is that happening on an actual 6800 GT?

I'm beginning to lose faith in BFG. This is actually the second 6800 GT board I've had from them that shows these kinds of problems. Cooling and power are *not* an issue in my case. I have an Antec 480W PSU, 120MM intake and exhaust fans in addition to the PSU fan, a dedicated CPU cooler and a PCI slot cooler for extra cooling on the graphics card.

So... what's up with that?

well the thing is, my pseudo-6800GT has worked fine for a long time, which suggests that there was nothing wrong with the shaders and pipelines that were disabled. manufacturing processes being as advanced as they are, many times you'll find that chips are binned into a lower model even if they work perfectly. the 6800GS is based on leftover NV40 chips (6800GT, 6800 Ultra) and i'm willing to bet a lot of them could've been 6800GT/Ultras had those lines not been discontinued.

either way, seeing as we're BOTH having the same problem, it would suggest to me that it has nothing to do with me enabling the masked shaders and pipelines. plus, i've played other games that have pushed my card harder... TES4 oblivion ran just fine, and that game probably had my gpu firing on all cylinders. i even ran 3dmark06 on loop all night a few days ago, which is probably more punishing that civ4. it should also be noted that for most of us (i'm assuming here) this problem started on warlords. i played civ4 for many months before this with no problems. so really, i'm thinking it has nothing to do with ANY of our video cards at all.

 

[BirraImperial]

I reinstalled Civ 4 last night, patched it with 1.52 and it worked fine. So it's definetly a patch issue. Before that, I tried to run the 1.61 version with Powestrip, underclocking my card, but this only made the game run for like 2-3 more turns. So I think the patch somehow makes the video card run so hot that my laptop crashes and reboots. I guess I'm stuck with vanilla Civ 4, at least for a while.

 

[lionheart]

I was attempting another game of Warlords today, just to see if I could play it with a few tweaks.. So I adjusted the frame rate a bit and the game actually played pretty nicely.. In fact, I managed to play the game the longest I have up to this point..

One of the more interesting things I noticed is that (while playing as Caesar Augustus) I was contacted by Ramesses II and the game crashed. This happened to me before.. I get contacted by him and as the next turn loads, the game crashes.. This has seriously made me wonder if Ramesses might be causing some problems as others have reported with the Ottomans.. Now, in all fairness, I have also had moments where being contacted by him had no ill effects, but I find it interesting that this exact same incident happened twice.. (in seperate games)

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll just go play some Call of Duty 2 to wait for the patch for Civ IV: Warlords to come up.. I've given up on this damned expansion pack (for now)..

 

[shibby80]

yeah don't bother with that powerstrip fix. It worked great underclocking my card running warlords. But then one game it crashed.

Now I can't even underclock my card with that program anymore without desktop crashing, let alone starting a game of civilization. Not sure how this happened. Even reinstalling powerstrip doesn't help.

Atleast I had a few good games and got some civs to capitulate lol that was fun.

Not much else to do now except wait for a patch. I don't think theres any way to fix it. If the new patch whenever its released doesn't address and fix these crashing problems then screw civ4.

 

[Triarch]

I just updated Warlords to 2.13 (had to reinstall DX9 afterward, whoops) and started a new game. Played until 1530 when the Incas stumble across me and the Huayna Capac leader dialog pops up. I can do whatever I want to within the dialog, but as soon as it's dismissed the game crashes.

Attempts to load the autosaved game fail; the game starts with the Huayna Capac leader dialog open (?!), and, as before, whenever I finally end the dialog the game crashes again. If I load from the previous autosave all is well until the next turn, when the Incas show up again and it's the same ol' crashing story.

Has anybody else run across this sort of behavior?