Turning on Frontside AA causes Black screen
By
Atomic_Avenger,
Posted on: 2012-03-20 15:45 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
Quote:
That depends on what else you have set to what.|
Originally Posted by Atomic_Avenger
This is with an Aspire 7750-G laptop with a AMD Radeon HD 6850M graphics chip so it should be able to handle the AA request without issue.
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AA tends to have a bit of trouble with occlusion, or occlusion with AA, for one. Those settings also increase the load on your graphics quite a lot, which can cause a graphics driver crash and reset(black screen) if your system is already pushing graphical load very high.
This tends to happen most often when your graphics card is overheating.
Get a temperature monitor for it if you can and try to keep it below 70 degrees Celsius.
If you must have AA on, try turning off occlusion or lowering out of ultra mode, or lowering other settings even.
Turning off shadows will likely help a lot.
Quote:
The game continues to run just fine (no crash) however the gamescreen is black with only the UI still visible and accessible. If I slide the AA setting back to zero the game becomes visible again.|
Originally Posted by T_Immortalus
That depends on what else you have set to what.
AA tends to have a bit of trouble with occlusion, or occlusion with AA, for one. Those settings also increase the load on your graphics quite a lot, which can cause a graphics driver crash and reset(black screen) if your system is already pushing graphical load very high. This tends to happen most often when your graphics card is overheating. Get a temperature monitor for it if you can and try to keep it below 70 degrees Celsius. If you must have AA on, try turning off occlusion or lowering out of ultra mode, or lowering other settings even. Turning off shadows will likely help a lot. |
My video card is ~way~ below the break point for it (48-54 Celsius) so the chipset itself isn't overheating at all.
Quote:
Oh, so it seems to be another of those "quirks" AMD/ATI cards have then.|
Originally Posted by Atomic_Avenger
The game continues to run just fine (no crash) however the gamescreen is black with only the UI still visible and accessible. If I slide the AA setting back to zero the game becomes visible again.
My video card is ~way~ below the break point for it (48-54 Celsius) so the chipset itself isn't overheating at all. |
I have never seen weird bugs like this with any Nvidia card.
You'll have to see the AMD/ATI graphics card stickies for ideas and get help from the resident gurus in figuring out how to make them work here.
Yes, it's a game issue, but it usually is an issue with only AMD/ATI graphics cards.
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I'll have to say that this is exactly what my laptop does (nVidia GeForce Go 7600) when I do something silly like run two instances on anything other than safe mode. I've figured out that (for my aging system atleast) this is simply the result of pushing the GPU beyond its capacity. I think it has something to do with the limited 256Mb of VRAM as a slightly newer model laptop with a slightly newer GPU (and 256Mb + 1.75Gb shared?) could run things at the compatibility level.|
Originally Posted by Atomic_Avenger
The game continues to run just fine (no crash) however the gamescreen is black with only the UI still visible and accessible. If I slide the AA setting back to zero the game becomes visible again.
My video card is ~way~ below the break point for it (48-54 Celsius) so the chipset itself isn't overheating at all. |
Both setups worked fine with one instance, but the moment the second instance loaded fully I got black screen on both. At first I thought this was a heating issue (being nVidia and in a laptop), but my numbers are within the safe zone. Long story short, I'd drop the settings to basic and tweak until you get to where the system doesn't throw a fit.
List your COH Helper/HiJack This files and I'm sure that Tex will show his mug soon enough. ;-)
[QUOTE=T_Immortalus;4162947]Oh, so it seems to be another of those "quirks" AMD/ATI cards have then.
I have never seen weird bugs like this with any Nvidia card.
QUOTE]
Have seen this on an 8800 GTS - It was caused by NVidias bugged drivers setting a cooling profile that slowed the fan down the higher the load.
Took about 3 driver releases before they got fixed. Fortunately I was able to update the fan profile before it burned out the card.
AMD haven't made that mistake but it is likely that system cooling isn't up to the task - always a risk with laptops.
Mind of Gaia lvl 50 Defiant's first Mind/Storm 'troller.
Deadly Doc 50 Dark/Dark Corr
and lots more on Pinnacle,Union and Defiant
[QUOTE=Gaia;4163714]
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AGAIN... The issue isn't overheating. |
Originally Posted by T_Immortalus
Oh, so it seems to be another of those "quirks" AMD/ATI cards have then.
I have never seen weird bugs like this with any Nvidia card. QUOTE] Have seen this on an 8800 GTS - It was caused by NVidias bugged drivers setting a cooling profile that slowed the fan down the higher the load. Took about 3 driver releases before they got fixed. Fortunately I was able to update the fan profile before it burned out the card. AMD haven't made that mistake but it is likely that system cooling isn't up to the task - always a risk with laptops. |
The Temp monitor is ~way~ below the critical range for the chipset and since the blackscreen appears the instant that AA is turned on and goes back to normal immediately once the slider is set back to zero frankly it wouldn't have time to overheat/cool off that fast.
It's some sort of problem I think with the shader code in CoH and the AMD driver because if I set the shadows to zero then the problem goes away however at that point setting AA even up to the max does nothing to reduce the jagged appearance of everything in the game.
[QUOTE=Gaia;4163714]
Quote:
That's simple overheating which tends to reset the graphics driver and make the whole screen black.|
Originally Posted by T_Immortalus
Oh, so it seems to be another of those "quirks" AMD/ATI cards have then.
I have never seen weird bugs like this with any Nvidia card. QUOTE] Have seen this on an 8800 GTS - It was caused by NVidias bugged drivers setting a cooling profile that slowed the fan down the higher the load. |
His is just specific graphical stuff going black, not the entire screen.
That's not normal for overheating.
He also says the temperatures are fine, so it isn't overheating.
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I thought it was something to do with shadows and possibly occlusion.|
Originally Posted by Atomic_Avenger
It's some sort of problem I think with the shader code in CoH and the AMD driver because if I set the shadows to zero then the problem goes away however at that point setting AA even up to the max does nothing to reduce the jagged appearance of everything in the game.
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Try turning off "ambient occlusion", with shadows still off and try with them on, and change your FSAA settings then.
Does that help?
After playing with the settings and the game a bit I suspect I may understand the problem better now.
The Aspire 7750g series laptops come with two graphics processors, an Intel chipset for basic usage and a higher end graphics processor (with dedicated memory) for gaming applications. In the case of my model, a Radeon 6650m.
The problem lies in that the laptop is supposed to auto-detect when a program calls for the higher end chipset to be used however in the case of CoX I suspect that is is not recognizing the older program as one that requires the Radeon and is in fact running the game using the Intel chip and the I7 processor.
This explains the rather terrible graphics I am seeing as well as the problems running any of the more advanced graphics features. CoX sees the Radeon drivers on the system and therefore gives me menu options to select features that the actual chipset driving the game cannot enable.
Oh, you have one of those hybrid systems.
I don't really know how to fix that, but I have an idea.
You're probably going to have to disable that hybrid mode, setting the Radeon chip as the default graphics processor.
You may be able to do that through the power management settings.
I'm not sure though.
Maybe "newchemicals" from the forums here can better help you with that. He/she is the author of quite a few AMD/ATI graphics card help threads here.
Well I was right. The game was trying to run with Ultra settings on basically an Intel 3000 chipset and ignoring the Radeon processor and dedicated memory.
Once I figured out the issue I downloaded the latest bios from Acer (which claimed to address issues such as these) and after flashing that and wiping and reloading my video drivers...
... CoH boots up cleanly and now the game looks and runs perfectly with all the bells and whistles.
Shadows, reflections, no jaggies....
Much better now.
Congratulations!
Maybe they should put that in a sticky here because setups like that are only going to get more common as mobile gaming gets even more common and power saving and cooling are still important.
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Oh wow, yeah that'd do it for sure and it's good to see they atleast know there's a problem. Since nobody else with this chipset has let us know, can you check your bios/settings to see if there's a spot to disable the GPU switch? If there is, then it's highly possible that it could solve many problems users (of this chipset) have posted about.
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Originally Posted by Atomic_Avenger
Well I was right. The game was trying to run with Ultra settings on basically an Intel 3000 chipset and ignoring the Radeon processor and dedicated memory.
Once I figured out the issue I downloaded the latest bios from Acer (which claimed to address issues such as these) and after flashing that and wiping and reloading my video drivers... ... CoH boots up cleanly and now the game looks and runs perfectly with all the bells and whistles. Shadows, reflections, no jaggies.... Much better now. |
Trying to play on my laptop now and turning on frontside AA to any degree other than zero causes the game screen to go black (however the game continues playing).
This is with an Aspire 7750-G laptop with a AMD Radeon HD 6850M graphics chip so it should be able to handle the AA request without issue.