Let me start by saying I did manage to play Civ5 in the past without issues, and there is a number of things that could have happened in between to cause this, however I'd like some second opinions before I start making posts on hardware manufacturers forums.
Essentially the problem is as follows: I reinstalled the game in the last 2 weeks, any gaming session that lasts more than an hour or two pretty much always ends in a blue screen and system restart. Considering I didn't have these issues a few months ago, the things that have happened in between that could have affected stability of the system during gameplay are:
1. New Civ5 patch (it had graphical engine changes, correct me if I'm wrong)
2. I updated my vid card drivers (grrr AMD)
3. My system became more unstable. This is unlikely since I didn't touch the configuration since and I don't overclock
4. A combination of the above
I spent some time trying to find out what exactly could be the source of this instability. My CPU on idle runs on about 35C, it doesn't go above 60 during a Prime95 stress test. It doesn't get anywhere close to that during Civ5 gaming (it hovers around 45C then). My graphic card, same deal and after I forced the fan to spin at a higher level rather than auto (which kept it to 30% of speed at all times for some reason), the temperatures on it don't exceed 50C ever. At first I did have my reservations to the stability of the RAM, but P95 RAM stress test running for an hour after I upped the voltage a little bit came up with no errors.
The bluescreens themselves tend to reference dxgmms1.sys, atikmpag.sys, etc. generally AMD driver things. My personal bet is that the new Catalyst drivers are being dodgy. I don't get this problem in any other game I play, including some quite a bit more graphic intensive than Civ5. Does anyone else have this problem with the new drivers? Or maybe any ideas regarding what I could possibly have missed?
Essentially the problem is as follows: I reinstalled the game in the last 2 weeks, any gaming session that lasts more than an hour or two pretty much always ends in a blue screen and system restart. Considering I didn't have these issues a few months ago, the things that have happened in between that could have affected stability of the system during gameplay are:
1. New Civ5 patch (it had graphical engine changes, correct me if I'm wrong)
2. I updated my vid card drivers (grrr AMD)
3. My system became more unstable. This is unlikely since I didn't touch the configuration since and I don't overclock
4. A combination of the above
I spent some time trying to find out what exactly could be the source of this instability. My CPU on idle runs on about 35C, it doesn't go above 60 during a Prime95 stress test. It doesn't get anywhere close to that during Civ5 gaming (it hovers around 45C then). My graphic card, same deal and after I forced the fan to spin at a higher level rather than auto (which kept it to 30% of speed at all times for some reason), the temperatures on it don't exceed 50C ever. At first I did have my reservations to the stability of the RAM, but P95 RAM stress test running for an hour after I upped the voltage a little bit came up with no errors.
The bluescreens themselves tend to reference dxgmms1.sys, atikmpag.sys, etc. generally AMD driver things. My personal bet is that the new Catalyst drivers are being dodgy. I don't get this problem in any other game I play, including some quite a bit more graphic intensive than Civ5. Does anyone else have this problem with the new drivers? Or maybe any ideas regarding what I could possibly have missed?
