Geforce 6800XT Card?

[trythis]

Does anyone have this card and not have a problem running this game?

I have this card and am having a issue with my screen just going blank randomly and must cycle power on my pc. I enjoy CIV so much but am getting very frustrated.

I have tried everything I can think of including different video drivers, numerous changes to the civ.ini file, trying a different power supply, different RAM, reapplying heat sink compound to the CPU/fan, ensured all fans are running fine, ensuring no applications are loading upon restart, amd several other things over teh past several months in attempt to get this game to work.

I have read a thread concerning a issue with commercial anti-virus causing a issue but that does not apply to me. I have several other games that run fine including a few racing games, the sims 2 and roller coaster tycoon 3 with exp packs and have no issues with these games.

I really don't want to by a new computer just to run civ so I am getting despirate for a answer to this. Any help wouold be appreciated. Note that I have added my dxdiag.

 

[reclaimer122]

Do you know how hot the card gets while you're playing? The card may very well be overheating. If you know enough to try a new PSU and to reapply thermal compound, then what is the need for a new computer? You could just get a new video card if that is what's causing problems.

 

[trythis]

reclaimer 122

Yea, I know a little about pc's and highly doubt it is the video card. The reason I say this is that I would also have issues running roller coaster tycoon 3 as it is also a highly intense video driven game if you read their boards. I can run that game hours upon hours and still have no issues.

Does anyone out there know a highly intense video loop test that I can run to test for a heat issue?

 

[reclaimer122]

3dMark 06 is pretty intense. It's a benchmarking program, runs 4 very GPU-intensive scenes and 2 CPU-intensive scenes, then gives you a score based on performance. You could run Rivatuner or some other program to monitor temps on a graph and check them out after 3dMark is done testing.

 

[trythis]

I downloaded the 3d mark program and it ran fine and gave a benchmark of 2455. Next I downloaded the rivatuner 2.02 program but have yet to figure out how to monitor temps with it. Any input into this would be great.

 

[reclaimer122]

Open up Rivatuner, and go to the area where it shows you your video card specs. There should be a little arrow that says "Customize..." next to it. Hit that arrow and go to the picture of like a memory chip with a magnifying glass over it, and click. A few graphs will show up, and the bottom one should be your GPU temperature. I suggest you leave these graphs and Rivatuner open and run 3DMark, and post the highest temp you see on the graph when 3Dmark is done. You should probably stretch the graph window wide too, to be sure it gets the whole test on the graph.

PS: I wouldn't modify anything with Rivatuner unless you know what you're doing It's given me a few problems in the past, lol.

 

[trythis]

reclaimer122

Thanks for the instructions and did as you stated. I opened up rivatuner and then ran 3dmark. I only have 3 graphs that list when I opened Rivatuner. The top graph was the core clock MGZ which registered 324. The middle graph was the memory clock which registered at 702. The bottom graph was the core VID and only registered 0.

I take from this either I did something wrong or I can't record my temp for some reason.

 

[LordRahl]

First thing you need to do is narrow it down to a specific piece of hardware. Get a video card from another computer plug it in, and see if the problem goes away.

 

[trythis]

Lordrahl,

Maybe if you read my original post you would realize that I have been trying to narrow down my problem considering I already tried different power suppy and RAM.

Now logicaly you would deduce that IF I had another working video card that was supported by this game I would have tried it!

 

[reclaimer122]

lol

It looks like your video card maybe doesn't have a temp sensor on it. That's weird, as my Dell OEM GeForce 6800 had the sensor. Do you know what brand your card is?

 

[trythis]

I have a biostar egate 6800XT. I don't think mine does have a thermo sensor.

I hate to say this but I think I am making progress on resolving this. I only have changed 2 things lately. One was running the rivatuner program and the other was from take2 support as I contacted them about this and they had me set the refresh rate for my monitor and also the direct draw refresh rate in the dxdiag to 60hz. I was able to play for about 1 hr before quitting and this was the longest I have gone without a problem in a long time.

I am somewhat skeptical if this resolved the issue but will let you know.

 

[reclaimer122]

It's odd that your 6800XT doesn't have a sensor, but I'm glad to hear that Firaxis may have fixed things for you. I never would have guessed refresh rate could actually crash the game. Maybe too much stress was on the card at higher rates? Oh well, glad to hear it may be fixed, good luck

 

[jeepxj33]

i am having the same problem and i have a 6800gt video card. i tried the refresh rate and no help. any other ideas

 

[trythis]

Just when I thought things were solved my screen went blank after about 1 or so hours of playing. What a letdown.

At thins point I am out of ideas. I did email take2 back and am awaiting another response.

jeepxj33, if you find a soution let me know. Just wondering what driver you are running, I am on the 9371. I did try upgradind with worse results, once the screen went blank I also have a terrible hiss out of my speakers.