NVIDA card problem

[AoA]

Yes, Geo, I think I'm in the same boat. nVidia, Toshiba and Windows Update have no better driver for me than the one from 2002. My graphics card is not on anyone's list. I tried to do it through laptop2go, crashed my system and walked away. I just don't have the knowhow to experiment anymore than what I've already done.

[andyp1964]

Originally posted by Runmymouth
does anyone know where i can obtain older drivers to attempt this.... i wish the beta testers had tested with nvidia cards and sid had expanded his beta testers so taht these issues could have been known and fixed already.

Hi Run,

Look here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp-2k_archive.html

I tried both the 71.x and 61.76 drivers. Better than the latest, at least for me, still crashes, graphical glithches, etc, but that is CIV causeing that, not the drivers. I am on the 61.76 now, it his or miss whether game will run more that 30 minutes before crash, leader heads hit or miss, etc. Give one of them a try though.

ap

[Runmymouth]

sigh, please devs comment and say your looking into this at least.

[Raion]

I have 78.01 drivers and last night I went through the Tutorial. Today, I started a game and it seems it will not let me change resolutions, always go back to 1152 x 864 and won't change to 1280 x 960 in an Epic game start. I find I have no files in that art0.fpk in the My Documents/My Games part, and I do not know if I need files, but the game seems buggy. It plays and everything, and still getting use to it, but it seems as if some menu items only work at the beginning and not during the game -- ?????.

I only have a FX5200 Geforce, and used 53.01 drivers before, and that played Pirates! and other games, but I think I lost those drivers (crashed the harddisk partition with Partition Magic and in the process of re-installing games like Pirates) but had the 78.01 drivers installed anyway, and really do not know if everything was working with those drivers, since they are said to support other things now.

I seem to have no problems with Direct X 9.0c and everything looks fine, but no ingame music, just sounds, and I just wonder if the game is working correctly!

The game seem to install okay and all of that and the Tutorial ran okay last night, but a regular game, I am not sure, but it is running.

I suggest that scrolling stop on the map, and the ThemeParseLog.txt file said it did not load some files like -- perhaps arrows, well here it is:

[Oct 29, 2005 - 15:25:54] Messages while processing 'Resource/Themes/Civ4.thm'

Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4910, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'
Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4918, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'
Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4926, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'
Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4983, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'
Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4991, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'
Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4999, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'


Oh, I see the Art0.fpk is big and in the regular game's folder on the partition where I installed it -- about 338 whatever mB. So I guess that is okay!

I not sure some menu items work during the game, and I know that the Tutorial only starts by going all the way to the Desktop and starting there, but then that ran okay. The game seems to head back to the desktop when that started to initialize some startup files.

However, it seems I can not stop the main screen map from scrolling or stopping where I want it to.

I suppose reading the manual will help on some parts, but still last night I could change resolutions while in the game with the Tutorial, but now, in the Epic game I started I could not, although the game is slow on my computer, it seem to not allow enough time to click the mouse to -- keep the new resolution and reverted back to the old resolution I was using. The screen actually just showed the mouse cursor and black screen and really did not set the new resolution whereas last night with the Tutorial there was no problem with that.

Otherwise on my computer, the game is laggy, and takes a second or two to show pop-up messages.

Running only a 1.8gH Celeron, but still when I installed Prirates!, that game had no such problems with it when I played it.

Otherwise, 512mB memory, and Windows 2K Professional, Geforce FX 5200 and what I have of other games especially like Pirates! before ran fine, but then I was using the 53.01 drivers and since I have not had time to install the game and play with the 78.01 Nvidia drivers.

I should install Pirates! and see how it runs, but still everthing else is working, just need a better computer it seems for Civ IV, because it is just slow, slow, slow, but not sure if everything is working in Civ IV as of yet especially changing the resolution, but then again, the game last night seem to always want to start over when doing anything like I said from the Desktop to re-init the game, so perhaps that has to be set (the resolution) before loading or starting up the game.

I will check that now, from the Options menu when first starting the game, but then why would I need the Options menu while playing the game if it does not work there, but only when first starting the game!
???????

[Vyshka]

I have tried the following and still get the graphics checkerboard freeze:

1. nvidia drivers 71.89, 77.72, 81.85, 81.87
2. latest audigy 2 zs drivers
3. Running the DirectX 9.0c installer on the Civ disc, to update any components that needed it.
4. Installed the latest version of DirectX that is made available for developers to ship to customers (newer than what is on the Civ4 disc).
5. Turned off hardware acceleration for DirectSound.

At the moment it still happens, but the checkerboard ends up going away and I am left with a black screen.

[Runmymouth]

hmm if it doesnt solve the problem of crashes im not gonna take the time to try to fix it.

[Yossi]

I've tried everything suggestes here, and for example moving to older drivers made those crashes even more frequent, upgrading gfx cooling unit didn't help either.

[Iron Jackson]

Updated my drivers too, but my problem then wasn´t the graphics but my mouse
Suffered several crashes when it suddenly freezed and I was n´t able to do anything else then to reset. Posted that prob also in my local german forum and I wasn´t the only one suffering from that.

[Runmymouth]

hmm so in other words NVIDA 6800 cards and many other cards are having a problem 2.

[timmy42]

I'm running a Geforce4 MX integrated card, and was running the game o.k. with old drivers (ver4 i think; old). I updated to ver. 71.89, and the game is now unplayable!! I'll try the 81.85 drivers, but I doubt it will change anything. Am I supposed to roll back to old an driver just to play this game? This is unreal!!

[Iron Jackson]

Managed to solve my problem with the 77.72 driver.

[Vyshka]

Saturday night, I switched to high to medium settings and was able to play for about 2 hours with no problems. I had to go to sleep so I didn't get to continue and see if it would crash, but I will try that tonight. I find it odd that a 6800 GT would have problems with high settings.

[PJNagrom]

I had luck on a Dell Laptop with a nVidia card when I went with the Omega drivers. I haven't had time to fully test for crashes but it started well and no black map finally.

[Runmymouth]

Originally posted by Vyshka
Saturday night, I switched to high to medium settings and was able to play for about 2 hours with no problems. I had to go to sleep so I didn't get to continue and see if it would crash, but I will try that tonight. I find it odd that a 6800 GT would have problems with high settings.

Yea my 6800 GT has problems as well, i think there is a memory leak and i hope that it is fixed soon, i still havent found any developers posting info on this subject yet.

[Vyshka]

My latest thing was to add more fans to my system, including a pci slot fan to go under my 6800 GT. I was able to finish the game I was playing Saturday on high settings, going from ~1890 until 2020 without the system getting the checkerboard and locking up. I still get the funky graphics when I zoom out and a messed up mini-map, but hopefully that will be resolved soon.