BFA 6800 GT and "checkerboard" lockup after 5-10 minutes

[jmoyles]

After about 5-10 minutes of having civ loaded, the machine locks up with a strange checkerboard pattern:



I have to turn my machine off before it will boot again.

I decided to do some testing to see if I could track down the issue.

I turned the graphics from high (all)/4x over sample to medium (all)/0x over sample. Same lockup, same time frame.

I thought there might be a temperature issue, so I decided to hammer the GPU with futuremark and auqamark to see if I could cause the card to fail. I ran each programs for 4 hours straight without issues. The highest temperature I could get the card to was 79 C (from a start point of 45 C)

Next, I let the game idle (i.e., not playing it) and the lockup still occurred after 5 minutes, so I don't believe it's any kind of "auto save" bug for me (this was mentioned on another thread).

My next test involved hooking in a second monitor to the video card, and keeping all the temp displays (video, cpu, ram, etc) on this monitor while I loaded the game onto the first (original) monitor. As with the previous test, I didn’t play the game, but left it idling at the end of a turn. It locked up in the normal time frame, dropping the checkerboard on both monitors. The video card temp at lockup was 74 C. The CPU, RAM, etc, were within their normal range.

My next test was to open the case and bring in a floor fan. I then ran the floor fan at high speed (from a safe distance), pointed at a 45 degree angle to the case. I then repeated the test above. Failure occurred in the same time frame, this time at 69 C.

I’m not sure what’s causing this problem, but I’m reasonably sure it’s not an overheat issue with my machine. If anyone has a similar issue, post up – let’s see if we can help Firaxis get this one solved.

Some interesting side notes:
[1] The game eats between 48-52 percent of my available CPU, even when at the end of a turn. This is regardless of how much “action” is on the screen, i.e., over a city full of activity, or looking over an unexplored (completely black) part of the map.

[2] Some people are reporting a memory leak. I can confirm that the memory used by the game goes up each turn, but I’m not sure if it’s a leak, or if the game is just pulling needed memory. At “idle”, the games memory usage on my machine did not change.

[3] As a final test, I ran the game, but moved the view area over an unexplored part of the world (everything on the view area of the screen was black). Same lockup time, same normal video/cpu/ram temps.

[4] Like other reports, I also get the weird mini map graphics (banded horizontal lines) at certain zoom levels.

[5] I can play every other modern game out there - BF2, Doom 3, WOW, EQ2, etc with the graphics turned up to max settings without issues.

[6] I installed the game onto an older computer with GeForce 4 card. To date, no issues on the older machine. It’s just dog slow.

Machine Specs:
Asus A8V Deluxe
AMD Athlon 64 FX-55
BFA 6800 GT Video Card (using nvidia 81.85 driver)
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Plat Pro (latest driver from creative)
480W Power Supply
Two Sticks of 512 PC-3200 DDR
Windows XP SP2
DirectX 9.0c (also let the CIV4 installer do it’s install of DX9.0c as well).
Scanned all logical volumes before starting any testing
Defragged all logical volumes before starting any testing

[jmoyles]

I'm beating up my machine with an 8 hour memtest (prime95) now. After that, I'll try yanking my sound card and playing.

Not really sure where to go after that...

[kmedlinnc]

Things we know...

Nvidia\'s latest forceware driver isn\'t 100% compatible.
SUPPOSEDLY the 77.xx series drivers ARE compatible.

There is most definitely a memory leak somewhere in the code.

The newer graphics cards seem to have more issues than older ones, but there is a performance issue....


Best suggestion I can provide is to try out the 77.xx version drivers. Keep in mind though that you should never just install old drivers over newer ones...You\'ll need to get an app that will completely remove the current drivers first.

[archermoo]

I am using the 81.85 nVidia driver and am having no problems with it at all. I must have missed where people were talking about it being problematical. What issues are other people having with it?

[flubin]

ATI 9700pro "checkerboard" too

Jmoyles

I'm having the same exact problem with a machine that couldn't be more different. I'm running a 2.4ghz p4 with 1gig ram and an ATI 9700 pro. I do have the same sound card tho, the audigy 2 zs plat pro. It really seems like a graphics issue because ATI cards have this thing (i forget the name atm) that will restart the graphics accelerator when it stops responding. This occurs about 75% of the time without crashing the game or the computer. The other 25% of the time its just as you describe, with the same exact checkerboard pattern. Let me know if you figure out the fix, i'm gonna try to disconnect the sound card when I get home to see if that's fixes the problem. So frustrating, I can only get through a few turns at a time before I have to restart.

[jmoyles]

Flubin,

Thanks for posting. It's good to know that this isn't a 6800GT only issue.

[Grizpin]

I had the same issue with my 6800GT. It started happening to me in the AOE3 demo. I dismissed it as a software issue since it was a demo. It then happened to me in the FEAR demo. I was running at 1600x1200 and began getting worried it may be an overheating issue. I lowered my resolution to 1280x1024, lowered my AF and AA. The demo then ran fine. Everything was ok until it happened to me again in my retail version of HL2

I lowered my HL2 settings and monitored the temp of the card. I moved my rear exhaust fan down a few slots since it was sitting in the slot just below the card. I was playing HL2 and monitoring the temp... not once did it go over 78 celcius (sp?). The problem did not return. I called BFG and the tech told me that the temp reading was normal and as long as I wasn't OC'ing the board then he thought overheating wasn't the issue.

Since moving my exhaust fan down 2 slots I have been able to raise my HL2 settings back to 1600x1200 with AF and AA maxxed out. I have not had the problem again yet (knocks wood) while playing HL2 for several hours. I'm not exactly sure that was the fix but it may have been an overheating issue until I moved that fan down. The hot air may not have been exhausted properly since it was sitting so close to the card.

Well, I hope that's the problem. I have not experienced it with Civ4. I hope I never experience it again. If I do then at least the card has a lifetime warranty with BFG if anything is wrong with it. So, why does this same problem exist across AOE3, FEAR and HL2 for me and in Civ4 for you??? Is it overheating, driver, hardware or application specific?

[Vyshka]

Hit the same thing with a BFG 6800GT on an AMD64 system.
Audigy 2 ZS sound as well. I had a problem similar to this, but with funky noises in the mix when playing AoE3 and BiA, which were fixed with updates to my sound card drivers, and seemed to be related hardware acceleration for sound. I think in that case the pretty screens were just a side effect of the system getting hosed.

[Grizpin]

Yah, audio can have strange effects on a system too. Glad you brought that up. I have onboard Realtek AC 97 and I'm sure it's not the best in audio solutions. The problems I explained above could have been caused by it. Perhaps it was a combination of audio and video causing a problem. I'll have to see if there are any updated drivers.

[Runmymouth]

yea same type of thread problems i have had, the only machine that runs it is my labtop with the x300, slower and not as pretty but i cant run it with nvidia 6800

[Vyshka]

I am able to play the game about an hour at a time before I hit the problem. I thought I had solved it by moving back to the 71.89 drivers mentioned as working somewhere else on here, then it hit after about an hour. I tried installing some beta drivers for the Audigy and again it went about an hour before hitting the problem. At least the auto-save is working so I can pick up almost exactly where I left off. I will probably go back to the 81.85 drivers for nvidia since changing them don't seem to help.

[KennethLove]

It's good to know that I'm not the only one, at least!

After about 5-10 minutes of having civ loaded, the machine locks up with a strange checkerboard pattern:

I am getting the same checkerboard pattern followed by a complete lockup as mentioned above. It isn't as frequent or as consistent, but I cannot make it through the tutorial without a crash. The farthest I have gotten is "go find another civ" and then kaboom! After 5 attempts and no apparent way to save the tutorial's state, I'm about ready to go back to watching TiVo until a patch comes out.

[4] Like other reports, I also get the weird mini map graphics (banded horizontal lines) at certain zoom levels.

I am also getting this.

[5] I can play every other modern game out there - BF2, Doom 3, WOW, EQ2, etc with the graphics turned up to max settings without issues.

I had problems with WoW producing the same pattern. Hasn't happened recently, but then I haven't been playing much either. Other games I have played without the problem occurring: DS2, EQ1, EQ2, and Bejeweled 2.

Machine Specs:
Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe
AMD Athlon XP 3000+ (not overclocked)
BFG 6800 GT OC Video Card (using nvidia 81.85 driver)
nForce2 built-in sound
400-something W Power Supply
Two Sticks of 512 PC-3200 DDR
Windows 2000 SP4
DirectX 9.0c (let Civ4 install again -- mistake?).

nVidia 71.89 drivers exhibited the same problem.

I also updated the Marvell Yukon driver to latest (found mentioned on another site). Reran the nForce all-in-one driver set.

I may not have the latest audio driver. I need to verify that.

Any help is appreciated.

[flubin]

Well, my problem went away and it appears it was caused by overheating. Civ4 must put a lot of stress on the graphics card because I playlots of different games and this is the first time it's happened. My problem was that the sound card was too close to the graphics card and not giving the fan on the graphics card enough space to disipate the heat from the chip. I moved all the cards as far from the graphics card as possible and now I'm running with no crashes. I also blew off all the dust from the graphics card heat sink tho I can't imagine that did very much. This is the first time I've had an overheating problem not related to overclocking. It might be that the sound card puts out a lot of heat too and raises the overall temperature in the box. Whatever it is, i'm back to playing.

Hope all your problems are as easy (and cheap) to fix as mine was. Happy conquering.