Vista 64-bit w/ ATI GPU crashing; go figure!


Hy-Beams

 

Posted

So, it's probably the worst combination in the world for playing CoX, but it's what I've got. I used to play a year ago with the same machine, and no problems. The only thing different is that I had a different GPU, an nVidia. Unfortunately I had issues with the fan going out on the nVidia card, and I'm afraid that may have overheated it, regardless I have since reformatted the drive and put in an ATI Radeon HD 4670. It's not high end, but its been able to run other games fine.

The issue I'm having is that the game will run for about half an hour, then randomly freeze. The sound continues for a moment, then begins to glitch and loop and go crazy. Sometimes the screen will go gray, but in all instances I am forced to hard boot the system; alt+tab, ctrl+alt+del, alt+F4, nothing would make the program respond. FSAA is off, as I've heard this is an issue with ATI cards, I have tried with video settings at "Performance", "Recommended", and "Quality." All settings experience the same issue under no specific circumstances. I have crashed mid-combat, just sitting in PocketD, and even in the middle of editing a costume.

Windows is up-to-date, running in SP2, I have done a clean uninstall/reinstall of the latest ATI graphics driver and CCC suite. I have tried using the RegEdit - TdrDelay fix. The game and the updater are both set to run as Administrator, and both have crashed regardless of whether they run in compatibility mode or not. If anyone could take a look and see if there's anything I'm missing, it would be greatly appreciated. I ran the CoHHelper, info included below:


---System information gathered by CoH Helper version 0.2.0.2---

DxDiag gathered at July 14, 2010 20:44 (-05:00)
Operating System: Windows Vista™ Home Premium (6.0, Build 6002) Service Pack 2 (6002.vistasp2_gdr.100218-0019)
System Manufacturer: HP-Pavilion
System Model: NC686AA-ABA a6700y
BIOS: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG
Central Processor: AMD Phenom(tm) 9150e Quad-Core Processor (4 CPUs), ~1.8GHz
Memory: 4094MB
.Net Memory Report: 2500MB out of 4093MB available
Page File: 6547MB (1864MB currently in use)
C Drive: (ST350062 0AS SCSI Disk Device) 238859MB out of 463460MB (51%) free
D Drive: (ST350062 0AS SCSI Disk Device) 1837MB out of 13476MB (13%) free
E Drive: (HL-DT-ST DVD-RAM GH15L SCSI CdRom Device) zero-size drive
K Drive: (ELBY CLONEDRIVE SCSI CdRom Device) zero-size drive
Windows directory location: C:\Windows
DirectX: DirectX 11
DirectX Diag version: 7.00.6002.18107 (64-bit version)

Display Notes: No problems found.
Sound Notes: No problems found.

No problems found.
Input Notes: No problems found.

Monitor: Acer X203H
Monitor's Max Resolution: (blank)
Video Device Name: ATI Radeon HD 4600 Series
Manufacturer / Chip: ATI Technologies Inc. / ATI display adapter (0x9490)
Video Memory: 2808 MB
Driver Version: 8.17.0010.0029
Driver Date: 5/27/2010 12:02:04 PM
Driver Language: English

Sound Device Description: Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio)
Driver File: RTKVHD64.sys
Driver Version: 6.00.0001.5789
Driver Date: 2/11/2009 12:39:24 PM

Sound Device Description: Realtek Digital Output (Realtek High Definition Audio)
Driver File: RTKVHD64.sys
Driver Version: 6.00.0001.5789
Driver Date: 2/11/2009 12:39:24 PM


WMI Information
Motherboard Manufacturer: ECS
Motherboard Model: (empty)
Motherboard Product: Nettle3
Motherboard Version: 2.2
BIOS Manufacturer: Phoenix Technologies, LTD
BIOS Name: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG
BIOS Version: HPQOEM - 42302e31
BIOS Release: 20081008000000.000000+000


Registry Information for Current User
Resolution: 1600x900
3D Resolution: 1600x900 (Not using renderscale)
Full Screen: Yes
Maximized: No
Screen Position: 0, 0
Refresh Rate: 60Hz
Vertical Sync Enabled: Yes


Physics Quality: High
Maximum Particles: 50000
Max Particle Fill? 10.000
Physics Card Enabled: No


Anti-aliasing: Off
Anisotropic Filtering: 4x
Texture LOD Bias: Smooth
Water Effects: High quality
Bloom: 1.000 (turned on)
Depth of Field Enabled: Yes
Desaturation Effects (Sepia) Enabled: Yes
Shader Detail: High


World Texture Level: Very High
Character Texture Level: Very High
World Detail Level (Vis_Scale): 1.000
Entity Detail Level: 1.000
Shadows Enabled: No
Shadow Mode: Shadow maps
Shadow Map Shader: Low quality
Environmental Reflections: Low quality
Advanced Occlusion Settings: No
Ambient Occlusion: High performance
Occlusion Strength: Slight
Blur: Fast
Ambient Resolution: High performance


Gamma Correction: 1.000
Geometry Buffers (VBOs) Enabled: Yes
Suppression of FX When Camera Close Enabled: No
Close Suppression Range: 3.000
Show Advertisements: Yes

Audio Mode: Performance
3D Audio: No
FX Sound Volume: 1.000
Music Sound Volume: 0.600

Show Advanced Graphics Options: No
Overall Graphics Quality: 0.750
Reverse Mouse Buttons: No
Save Login Username: Yes
Transfer Rate: Unknown bytes/second
Current Game Version: 1800.201006040036.5Tr
Installation Directory: C:\Program Files (x86)\City of Heroes

Mod files in the Data directory
No modifications found


 

Posted

No one?


 

Posted

Not really sure. Some things I'd check would be to run a full virus & malware scan, monitor your GPU & processor's temperatures while in game to see if they get abnormally high, and running memtest86 to ensure that your RAM is fine. All of those seem a bit like long shots, but with nothing else, they're worth a shot.


Quote:
Originally Posted by ShadowNate
;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lurid_Dawn View Post
No one?
well... the only thing that seems out of place is your sound drivers. They are out of date.

The rest of the behavior... well... it doesn't add up. The system reports a 4600 series graphics cards... and they aren't exactly known to run hot... nor do they require much power. So this doesn't sound like the graphics card is over-heating.

What it honestly sounds like is a dying power supply, or your motherboard might be going as a result of the previous card overheating.

Quickest way to check this would be to try another power supply and see if the problem continues...

Also: for reference. Anti-Aliasing works on ATi graphics cards.

What is broken right now is Anti-Aliasing + Ambient Occlusion on RadeonHD 5000 series cards. AA+AO on 4000 series cards has been fixed.


 

Posted

I delurked because I wanted to say that I have the same issue. PC is brand new with Windows 7 and the ATI 5870. I have done a lot of Googling on this and it looks like the issue is relatively common and imply it's a driver issue but suggestions for solutions seem all over the map. One suggestion that helped me somewhat was changing my power scheme from balanced to performance. To date, this changed it from my entire PC crashing into vertical lines or a grey screen to just the card resetting (which crashes COH but at least the PC does not go down). I am hoping it is indeed a driver issue but I have found references to the problem that are a year old which makes me a bit nervous.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hy-Beams View Post
I delurked because I wanted to say that I have the same issue. PC is brand new with Windows 7 and the ATI 5870. I have done a lot of Googling on this and it looks like the issue is relatively common and imply it's a driver issue but suggestions for solutions seem all over the map. One suggestion that helped me somewhat was changing my power scheme from balanced to performance. To date, this changed it from my entire PC crashing into vertical lines or a grey screen to just the card resetting (which crashes COH but at least the PC does not go down). I am hoping it is indeed a driver issue but I have found references to the problem that are a year old which makes me a bit nervous.
vertical lines or grey screen is a memory issue with DDR5 timings. You need to contact your vendor and replace the 5870.

http://www.ngohq.com/news/17176-work...pes-issue.html

The driver problem that generated this issue was fixed last year in the Catalyst 9.10 series. If you were getting the problem after that, AMD was looking to get those cards back and was offering free replacements for a while. My guess is that your card was likely a launch model that has been sitting on somebody's shelf.


 

Posted

The original specs were for my Desktop. So thanks, Hy-Beams, but she's already running on Performance settings.

I've spent the day running the game on my laptop and have experienced no crashes. The laptop is running an on-board Radeon HD 3200, but the drivers are out of date, running Catalyst 9.9 w/ Driver package 8.65

The Desktop is running Catalyst 10.6 and Driver package 8.741. Maybe I could try an older version of Catalyst, but I don't know.

I'd like to try a different power supply and see if that's the issue, but I'm afraid I don't have a spare one around.