Crashing in Praetoria

Hey guys, if you've seen my previous thread you'll notice I upgraded my PSU as well as my GPU last week.

I've been having a fantastic time as all of my issues had ceased since replacing those components. However, I have come across a different issue.

I can play for hours on end blue side or red side, without so much as even a hiccup. But as soon as I go into Praetoria with any of my toons, it's only a matter of minutes before the video card driver crashes and I have to end task on the game.

Windows was freshly installed last week prior to buying the new video card. So obviously, the drivers for the video card are freshly installed as well and they are the only drivers that have ever been installed since formatting. Here's a CoH Helper log to show you my settings. If anyone has any suggestions, they'd be greatly appreciated!


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

DxDiag gathered at March 11, 2011 21:55 (-05:00)
Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_rtm.101119-1850)
System Manufacturer: To Be Filled By O.E.M.
System Model: To Be Filled By O.E.M.
BIOS: Default System BIOS
Central Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q8200 @ 2.33GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.3GHz
Memory: 4096MB
.Net Memory Report: 2383MB out of 3327MB available
Page File: 5247MB (1405MB currently in use)
C Drive: (ST3750640AS ATA Device) 84120MB out of 111899MB (75%) free
D Drive: (Hitachi HDS721050CLA362 ATA Device) 62243MB out of 476936MB (13%) free
G Drive: (ST3750640AS ATA Device) 600906MB out of 603400MB (99%) free
E Drive: (HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-4163B ATA Device) zero-size drive
F Drive: (ELBY CLONEDRIVE SCSI CdRom Device) zero-size drive
Windows directory location: C:\Windows
DirectX: DirectX 11
DirectX Diag version: 6.01.7601.17514 (64-bit version)

Display Notes: No problems found.

No problems found.
Sound Notes: No problems found.
Input Notes: No problems found.

Monitor:
Monitor's Max Resolution: (blank)
Video Device Name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460
Manufacturer / Chip: NVIDIA / GeForce GTX 460
Video Memory: 2401 MB
Driver Version: 8.17.12.6658
Driver Date: 01/07/2011 10:27:00 PM
Driver Language: English

Monitor:
Monitor's Max Resolution: (blank)
Video Device Name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460
Manufacturer / Chip: NVIDIA / GeForce GTX 460
Video Memory: 2401 MB
Driver Version: 8.17.12.6658
Driver Date: 01/07/2011 10:27:00 PM
Driver Language: English

Sound Device Description: Speakers (High Definition Audio Device)
Driver File: HdAudio.sys
Driver Version: 6.01.7601.17514
Driver Date: 01/01/0001 12:00:00 AM


WMI Information
Motherboard Manufacturer: ASRock
Motherboard Model: (empty)
Motherboard Product: G31M-S.
Motherboard Version:
BIOS Manufacturer: American Megatrends Inc.
BIOS Name: Default System BIOS
BIOS Version: DELL - 20090708
BIOS Release: 20090708000000.000000+000


Registry Information for Current User
Resolution: 1920x1058
3D Resolution: 1920x1058 (Not using renderscale)
Full Screen: No
Maximized: Yes
Screen Position: 0, 0
Refresh Rate: 60Hz
Vertical Sync Enabled: No


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


Anti-aliasing: 4x
Anisotropic Filtering: 4x
Texture LOD Bias: Smooth
Water Effects: Ultra quality
Bloom: 1.000 (turned off)
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: Unknown (5)
Shadow Map Shader: High quality
Environmental Reflections: Medium quality
Advanced Occlusion Settings: Yes
Ambient Occlusion: Off
Occlusion Strength: Medium
Blur: Fast
Ambient Resolution: High quality


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: 0.008
Music Sound Volume: 0.015

Show Advanced Graphics Options: Yes
Overall Graphics Quality: 0.500
Reverse Mouse Buttons: No
Save Login Username: Yes
Transfer Rate: 622070 bytes/second
Current Game Version: 1950.201102230015.1
Installation Directory: D:\Program Files (x86)\City of Heroes

Mod files in the Data directory
.\texture_library\GUI\Icons\Powers has 96 files
.\texture_library\MAPS\city has 1 file
.\texture_library\MAPS\Safeguard has 9 files
.\texture_library\MAPS\sewers has 44 files
.\texture_library\MAPS\static has 34 files
.\texture_library\V_MAPS\Outdoor_Missions has 9 files
.\texture_library\V_MAPS\Static has 16 files

We'll see....

Little update:

The card I have is factory overclocked. I ran some stress tests and they all came back perfect. I suspect there's something CoH is doing to cause the issue. In the meantime, I've done a little bit of tweaking. My temps were a little on the high side, but nowhere near bad but I knew I had room to play. The first thing I did was renamed the piggs folder so a fresh batch could be downloaded (I've been playing since 2005, and always moved the files over to any new installs etc). Fired the game up and it looked to be running fine, then bang out of nowhere GPU drivers crash.

So I went ahead and installed EVGA Precision. I know that drivers crashing can be caused by overclocking (factory or after market) so I decided to try that. First I lowered myself from core clock of 765MHz to 705MHz. Opened up the game, ran through multiple mobs in Praetoria and not a single blip. Everything was perfect. Yay!

I got ballsy and decided to burn the candle at both ends. I upped the clock to 755MHz (10 below it's default clock) and low and behold, no crashing. Temps stable at 53 degrees under 100% load.

I'll play some more and see if it crashes again, and I'll update if it does. But as it stands it looks like it's finally stabilized. Thought I'd share my experience

We'll see....