Funky "shards" over cities?

[Neil81]

In addition to my frequent CTD and reboots I've now seen maybe 5 times what I can only describe as black or gray "shards" emanating from my cities. Everything will be going along normally and then suddenly this black or gray mass of "shards" will appear to emanate from one of my cities. These "shards" tend to fill the entire screen and causes the game to crash if you scroll around overtop one for very long. If you scroll away from the city in question everything will return to normal but as soon as you scroll back to the city the shards will reappear. Has anyone seen anything like this yet?

 

[GIDustin]

What you are experiencing is the bug known as "visual tearing" I get it too, and not just Civ4, but many games including World of Warcraft.

Cause: Video card overheats, or video card is over-used (turn down graphics)

Current Fix: Restart the game

 

[BleckLord]

Dude, that sucks. Why does the video card overheat? I've never had any temp problems on my video card, does this happen often to many cards?

 

[GIDustin]

Several reasons for card overheating. Many due to things other than the card.

Do you have the latest drivers for your video card? The latest drivers allow the video card to due its job BETTER and FASTER than before, illeviating strain on the card.

Do you have a off-board sound card? (Sound card? What? Sounds weird I know). If you have an on-board sound card then your processor and RAM have to handle all of the sound mixing in the game as well as video and general logic. Since the processor has one more job, it can't focus on video as much as it could. Purchasing a sound card (even a $20 POS) illeviates strain on the Processor, which in turn helps with video. If the sound card does all the mixing and overlaying for the processor, the processor can do other things.

Finally, the most obvious, do you have enough fans? Are they cluttered with dust? My computer sounds like a jet when I turn it on due to the number of fans, but it performs like one too.

- GIDustin

 

[vodkamattvt]

This is not related (as far as I can tell) to video card overheating. It is true, this kind of thing *can* be caused by such things as failed fans or overheating, but Im fairly certain its not the case with Civ4.

I experienced the same kind of thing today (when I tried playing in windowed mode after experiencing many CTD's and reboots). It happened at 1024x768 at different portions of the map (moving the view to another portion of the map "fixed" the tears, but moving back to that exact spot produced them again). I have logging enabled, per the dev's instructions, but Im not sure what Im looking for. I got a much of errors here, I dont know whats routine and not.

I know its not overheating because I can play WoW for 8 hours at a time, highly taxing my system, with higher settings than Civ4. Also, this problem does not appear in any other game that I have or play. WoW, HL2 (and its mods), FEAR, Quake4, AOE3, etc, etc all work perfectly. Also, my comp is on the average a lot hotter after long sessions of WoW than it while playing Civ4.

The CTD's produce totally unkown errors in the Event Viewer in XP. The first day I got Civ I played for 2.5 hours and had a hard crash that rebooted my computer. I played another 1 hour and it happened again. After playing another 2 hours, it CTD's and I quit for the night. The next day I got many CTD's and finally a reboot. I started with the Cat 5.7's because I heard Civ had problems with the 5.10s. I followed proper procedure and cleaned my comp of drivers and installed 5.10s after I experienced this. The problem persists. Going back to 5.7's did not fix it either.

Maybe they let this one out of the gates too quickly when they saw the stock prices tumbling?

Im fresh out of ideas, anyone else?

AMD Athlon 64 3000+
ATI Radeon All in Wonder 9700 Pro
1 gig Corsair ram

 

[GIDustin]

I agree that this can be caused by other problems as well, but I still think it is tearing.

In WoW, several times I will be walking through Undercity and all of a sudden the floor juts up the the ceiling and the nearest NPC's ear stretches all the way to the other side of the city. It occurs, and I accept that it is video related. When the same thing happens to me in Civ4, I also blame the video card.

Basically I pushed blame onto the video card itself and not the game because this game isn't the only one in which I have seen the problem. In counter-strike source I get the same errors, but they happen very rarely and only with player models.

Maybe they let this one out of the gates too quickly when they saw the stock prices tumbling?

I wouldn't doubt it, but remember that the group of people who set release dates and market and fund the game (2k games) have nothing to do with those who made it (Sid and the team). I doubt Sid would knowingly release his game with bugs, and I fear that they were rushed by the publisher, but then again I took no part in making the game so what do I know?

- GIDustin

 

[Neil81]

I don't believe this is related to my video card overheating. I've played Doom 3, FEAR Demo, Thief 3, HL2, Far Cry with no problems at all. Only when I play Civ IV. Here's my specs:

3GHz P4
1 GB RAM
Radeon 9800 Pro (updated to latest drivers yesterday, no difference)
Audigy 2 ZS Sound Card
Asus P4T800-E MB

 

[Neil81]

Also, I just happened to replace my heat/sink CPU fan because my processor had started to get hotter lately and I heard the telltale sound of a dying fan. Well it turns out that it was the one of the power supply fans so I ended up replacing it. The other fans in the system are working and are not clogged with dust, just checked on Friday.