[Solved] DX10/DX11 Graphics Issues - partially gray and other glitches -> turn of AA!

[McLMan]

Everything was fine for me until the .20 patch. After then I began experiencing some graphical glitches in DX10/DX11 version.

Weird tiles that would disappear when I zoomed in close and reappear after zooming back out.

This would happen not as often.

I tried adjusting all the settings down to low, didn't help. Ran stress tests on my GFX card with FurMark and everything checked out ok. Was playing the game fine in DX9 while I was trying to figure out what was going on in DX10/DX11.

I loaded the game this evening and went into the video settings and realized I hadn't messed with AA at all. Turned off AA and just played 201 turns (a little better than 3 hours) in DX10/DX11 without any issues what so ever.

Right now I'm not certain if I had AA off before the .20 patch and I just happened to turn it on around the same time it was released. It's possible my AA problem was a pre-existing condition.

My Specs:
Intel Q6600 (Overclocked to 3.0GHz)
512MB 8800 GTS (g92) (with a 10% overclock)
Windows Vista Home Premium 64 Bit
8GB Ram

 

[McLMan]

Continued to play through the weekend without any problems at all. UNTIL Sunday evening. I then figured out what (else) makes these glitches appear. After reading some of the discussion about CPU usage I thought I'd check out what my quad core was doing. Started Task Manager then started the game. Played for a bit and then Alt-Tabbed to bring up the Task Manager. Alt-Tabbed back out and very soon after the glitches happened again. I exited the game to make sure I still had AA off in both the game and the nVidia control panel. They were still off so I re-started the game. Played for a good while and then I got a reminder from Windows Calendar which brought a window up into the game. Closed it and then a short time later the glitches reappeared. "Now I'm on to something!" So then testing was in order.

I found I can make the glitches appear by:

• Bringing a window up over the Full Screen display such as Task Manger.
• I set another reminder in Windows Calendar and shortly after the notification pop-up the glitch happened.
• Bringing up RivaTuner Statistics Server's on screen display.
• Running the 24 hour clock mod.

All of these things caused the glitches to appear in DX10/DX11. I'd play for a while and then trigger one of the events. The glitches always appear shortly after. After enabling the clock mod the glitches happened almost immediately after getting into the map. With limited DX9 testing the events do not seem to affect DX9 but I haven't had any problems with DX9 at all.

After these tests I resumed playing in DX10/DX11 without any issues for a couple of hours by making sure none of the above events happened. Somebody smarter than me will have to explain why these events trigger the glitches. In the meantime hopefully these findings will help others get to the bottom of what's causing their problems.

 

[VenomSeed]

McLMan, just posting to say thank you for this thread. I had a long running 2 week problem with dx11 mode and a crazy graphics artifact, which I finally resolved by turning "tessellation" to low. The moment I did that the graphics artifact was fixed, but I ended up with the grey tile/red tile/bad texture problems that are part of your thread. If I hadn't seen your thread, I'd have given up. But by turning of AA, this second layer of graphics problems also got fixed.

So basically, thank you!

I'm now leaving Civ until nearer Christmas in the hope that by then they might have a version that is patched well enough to be considered worthy of "release".

 

[McLMan]

Glad it helped someone. I was wondering if anybody tried it with any success or failures.

I'm having lots of fun with the game although it could stand some changes. I hope you get what you want from Civ 5 when you come back to it.

Update: I've now played 3 days (about 8 total hours) without issue with AA off and avoiding the triggers described in the 2nd post.