nVidia - Fix for Crash to Desktop possibly found

[cbeecham]

I reverted back to the original driver (ver 61.93) for my Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 (128MB) and it apparently cleared up the hanging and crashing issues I was having. I don't know if this helped, but after the driver install I left the color quality at 16 bit, changed my resoultion back to 1024X768, and (from the Nvidia control panel) changed the Image settings to High Performance, and left Antialiasing and Anisotropic settings set to application controlled. I played my first full game with 5 civs on a huge map without crashing, and with little noticable game lag. I did play the game with graphics set to HIGH. I do believe I need to set graphics to medium to improve performance, but this was a test run and it passed in my book. For those of you guys/gals running budget Nvidia cards like me (who desperately want to run the game) it is worth a try. I don't know what reverting your driver back will do for some of your other games and apps, so you might want to consider that first. I, like a few others, still believe a patch is needed to fix some of these issues. There is a similar thread where those running ATI cards with similar issues are reverting drivers to fix the crashes as well.

Thanks WarX

Pentium 4 2.8
1GB RAM
XP Pro SP 2
GeForce FX 5200 128MB

 

[WarX]

Good stuff cbeecham, I can also confirm that the 71.89 driver will run on the FX 5200 as I just tested it on my neighbours PC. He was running it on LOW graphics though, but it played smoother and without any crashes. Though you seem to have had much better results with the 61.93 one!

 

[Ex Mudder]

I recently picked up a 6200 so I could see the graphics, and I've been having all sorts of weird problems. I tried the fix suggested in this thread, but it didn't support my 6200. Anyone recommend an intermediate driver that works on the 6200?

I'm getting Hanging, CTDs, BSODs and it keep interrupting my internet connection for some wierd reason. Not to mention movie stutters. The error message I get from Microsoft is that they are "Working on the problem" - fist time I've ever seen that.

The game ran fine under my 96 meg oboard intel, I played for hours and hours w/o a crash, even though the screen was dark and the cheshire cat faces. The problems I'm having with the 6200 are so bad I'm considering going back - better no graphics than slow suttering system crashes.

 

[munky]

i will never tear my pc apart trying to fix a 1.0 game.

not for battlefield series or any of them... been building/playing since early 80s so this is pure experience talking.

until the first patch, why bother...

now for me the real point having bought every single CIV title and being born to the series from the actual Avalon Hill Advanced Civilization boardgame (still the best single board strategy game ever created, one that requires no dice to play and gave Sid the idea) is the fact that for CIV 4 the franchise is stressing graphics. I guess for the new school out there this is like Age of Empires...

To me, whose last game played before installing CIV 4 was Alien Crossfire (imho the best game ever made for PC especially in the strategy realm) this all graphics and sound emphasis alienates the old school in me.

CIV is all about strategy and AI. I already miss CIV 3 which made me miss CIV 2... and all of which make me play Alien Crossfire.

Activision came out with a CIV clone after Avalon Hill went under and the CIV name became common usage. I will blend my memory of that rip-off game with my first impressions of CIV 4.

Oh, CIV 4 will be a good game after the first one or two patches no doubt just like the Battlefield series from EA.

That is the nature of these eye candy games...

I am still playing CIV 4 and not getting any creative AI vibes at all so far...

The idea of needing the latest PC hardware to play a CIV game would be a first, any opinions to the side. CIV 4 gives me the fear of being visual and not cranial. Look at all the issues for CIV 4 compared to the others...

And if you think CIV 3 was a graphics first game, play it right after CIV 4 and see. Now, to start another 24 hours session into CIV 4...

well, when I said I was hooked on the series you didn't think a couple hundred technical issues would stop me??

But I keep the Alien Crossfire in my other DVD drive just in case in need a masterful blast of AI...

peace,

munky

(kills me to see people spanking others for not having a 7800 card on a $3k system to run CIV, it makes me feel sooooooooooooo old school).

CIV 4 makes me think of buying Rise of Nations from Reynolds, since that seems to be what this is heading into being...

 

[TheBarnacle]

While this may be true, its no excuse. The number of units and the number of tiles on a large map (perhaps a few 1000 at most) are paltry compared to the speed of moden CPUs - which can do billions of operations per second.

Sure the graphics are fancy now, so that eats some CPU and a lot of GPU, but the general slugishness of Civ4 is inexcusable.

Oh well, as I'm sure they said, its fast enough - and a great game, but as a developer, I have to shake my head. (I'm running an AMD 64x2 3800+.)

-KL

yah, and the point (previous poster?) about larger maps/more civs = slow gameplay is true...with respect to the TURN TIME. but i think what you, me, and many others are referring to is the choppy video that comes with bigger maps.

and if you get to that point where you're machine seems to be choking, check your performance. i know my CPU is only at 33% (civ iv) when i'm getting 1-3 fps. so it seems more a memory issue. whether it's leakage, card, system...who knows.

either way, i'm with you. the laggy gameplay makes it unplayable for me....cruddy pos....

 

[Broholm]

The 71.89 nVidia drivers worked for me too. And now I don't have to use sd4hide.exe anymore.

2.6 Ghz Pentium 4
512 MB RAMBUS
GeForce4 Ti4200

 

[MetHimPikeHoses]

WARX, did the new (old) drivers have any effect on the late-game slowdown?

I can get through till 1700AD or so on Standard, but then the bog down makes it painfully slow.

I've noticed no difference in performance using windowed mode, nor is there much difference by changing the graphics options.

...off topic... but does anyone know why I wouldn't be able to download XP Service Pack 2? The Windows utility site doesn't mention it when I look for updates.

---------

Celeron D (POS) 2.4GHz
1 GB RAM
GeForce 5200FX -new drivers-
Win XP Home
Playing on small maps... some CTD, Wonders movies work, late game lag

 

[DoubleT]

As I wrote in another topic I also have problems....

Will the first patch help anything for me? (Nvidia 66 GT)

The 6600 are fnew, but had the same problem, after alittle time the program crash..

Can anyone "in Human", tell me whats wrong.. and what will fix it?

Sorry I dont understand this computer talk...

 

[sweitzen]

I am very frustrated... Civ 4 crashes very frequently, exiting to desktop, and sometimes crashes the computer, causing reboot.

My system:

P4 1.90 GHz
512 MB RAM
Win XP Pro SP2
nVidia GeForce 3 64 MB (driver 5.2.1.6, released 10/6/03)

I realise i am on the low end of machines here. Willing to upgrade memory to 1.0 GB, and perhaps get a newer graphics card.

Do I have any options (other than waiting for patch or upgrading hardware)?

The problem seems to occur exclusively when Wonder animations begin to play. I have not seen an in-game way to toggle them on/off. Is there a way to turn wonder animations off?

 

[MetHimPikeHoses]

Turn off Wonder movies in the civ.ini file under documents and settings/owner/my games/application data/civ4. <this path might not be totally correct... there are some other posts that describe this>

Upgrading the gpu at least would help... there are many better for less than $100.

 

[WarX]

@MetHimPikeHoses:

For me it has, it is much faster now, although from your system specs I see you have a Celeron, which is crippled out of the box because of its lack of L2 Cache (the later Celerons have half L2 caches, which is still crappy). That slows down your PC considerably, as Celerons are not meant to be game rigs, but rather basic low end PCs.

My neighbour has the same graphics card you do, the FX5200, he used to suffer from laggy and choppy animation, but that was alleviated after using the 71.89 driver.

@sweitzen:

Your driver is very very old, from 2003. I would suggest you upgrade to 71.89 and see how it goes. If you still have stuttering video, then do as MetHimPikeHoses said and disable the wonder movies. Although your current driver version does support DirectX 9 (not sure if it supports the C version) it does not support XP SP2.

 

[sweitzen]

OK, just ran out to Best Buy, and bought:

PNY Verto GeForce 6200 (Driver version 8.1.8.5)

Installed, and running smoothly so far... haven't yet tried to run Civ 4.

Any known issues with this card or driver?

 

[Nick82]

Thanks WarX, I reverted to the 71.89 drivers, and now I've played for several hours without a single crash.

 

[RogueNine]

I checked the readme file for the 71.89 drivers, and it supports all the way up to the 6800GT (my card). Anyone below that card will work fine, including your new Verto Geforce 6200, sweitzen. My recommendation would be to try these drivers if you run into any crash problems with Civ 4.

I think its important for many people to remember that Civ 4 crashing your computer is NOT a result of your computer not being good enough. My computer ran every other game/benchmark program without a hitch, at really high levels, for hours on end. Civ 4 came in and re-introduced me to lockups and crashes. There's no reason not to try and mess around with drivers so we can play it, but ultimately we need to remember that we deserve a game that will work with the latest drivers. I'm going to try these 71.89's, but if my CS:Source and other games run slower its not all that great a solution, is it?

(Which isn't to say I don't really appreciate the effort WarX has put in here. Huge props to you dude. I'm just pissed that it's needed at all.)

 

[nm+]

Doesn't solve the issue here. Still crashes to dekstop/freezes with those drivers, latest drivers, and the drivers I was useing intially (67.20)
I've also re-installed every driver, tried windowed and fullscreen, turned down every graphical setting, and re-installed the game multiple times. This is pretty rediculous. Besides this program by box is a rock.
axp 3200+
6800gt 256MB
nforce2 ultra 400 with soundstorm (tried a variety of drivers)
1GB PC-3200 (memtested)
xp pro (sp2 all updates)
the worst part is the damn thing worked for a solid day before these errors occured so I'm hooked but can't play.
I'm open to any suggestions short of nuking the damn thing.
Well back to civ2 until the patch. Last time I buy a sid meier/fireaxis game pre-order.

 

[MetHimPikeHoses]

WarX, thanks, I can confirm that rolling back to the 71.89 driver on the fx5200 does vastly improve performance... though I am now playing on low detail levels for larger maps. I'm actually not convinced that changing the graphics settings in-game has had a large effect on overall performance. I changed performance and quality settings in the nVidian menu for results. No crashes either, but I never had a lot of trouble with those.

Tell me about being crippled with the Celery D... but my whole rig did only cost $200 plus $60 for 512 more Ram! But it runs Civ4 pretty well now on the modest maps, and that is good enough for me till I get the coin to build a gaming rig.

Still seems odd that my machine will run Half-Life 2, Far Cry, and RomeTW better than Civ4 though...

 

[nm+]

Just went to 76.44 and had a few hours long session.
So hopefully that fixed somethings.

 

[RogueNine]

Also wanted to confirm that these drivers did the trick. Played for about 4 hours straight without a crash.

However, I went from a 4993 to a 4683 in 3DMark2005, so it certainly isn't a solution that I want to stick with longterm. I tried a bit of CS: Source and my fps dropped from ~50 to ~40, a much bigger drop then I was expecting.

Still, glad I can play my new fav game. Thanks for doing the research on this WarX.

 

[1eyecyblog]

Hi,
Like gunnergoz described, changing my Nvidia setting from "Quality" to "Performance" caused my crash to end.
It would crash and lock-up my PC when I exited the game.
Thanks for pointing that out, gunnergoz
Paul 1eyecyblog

PC is:
Athlon FX57
Asus EN7800GTX TOP- 89.94-pure & simple
DFI LP UT(NF4-SLI)
2G RAM(DDR400)
Big Typhoon cooler
(nessessary)
P.S> I'm also a newbie to this stradigy game, and will follow the tutorial plus manual as I hopefully grow into a creator of everlasting empires!

 

[lejonO]

My civ4 has crashed alot, and it got worse with the 1.09 patch. But when I switched to old nvidia drivers it all worked out!

edit, my PC:
AMD64 3700+
MSI Neo4 (Nforce4)
Leadtek GeForce6600GT
1 GB RAM
WinXP