Bizarre "rainbow crash"

[TobyTheRobot]

First of all, my specs:

AMD athlon XP 2700+
Geforce 4 6800 GT w/new drivers (8.1.8.5)
1.5 Gigs RAM
Windows XP w/SP2 and all "critical updates"
DirectX 9.0c

The game runs perfectly for about 20-40 minutes, then the system locks up COMPLETELY, and the display on the monitor turns to randomly colored nonsense. It's completely irretrievable; I have to do a "hard power off" by holding the power button for 5 seconds. Does anyone else have this problem? Does anyone know how to fix it?

Some additional information:

I thought it may be heat, so a few times after powering back on I went to the BIOS setup and checked the die temp. It was around 150 degrees F (crappy air cooler), which is a little high, so I UNDERCLOCKED the CPU to 2100+ speeds to see if that would help. It didn't; after the ensuing crash my die temp was around 120 degrees F.

In short: please help.

EDIT: Added direct X version, and I have noticed that other people HAVE apparently had this problem. Has anything been discovered that helps this? Is there any offical word/acknowledgement of this problem from Firaxis?

[Runmymouth]

Same problem, playing it on my labtop till they fix the problem.

[mbelembe]

same problem....

amd64 3500+
gf 6800gt
1gb ram

[hatzinger]

same problem.

[TobyTheRobot]

UPDATE:

I think I may have figured out the issue:

I noticed that this problem seems to MOSTLY (but not always) affect users of the NVIDIA 6800GT. I think it's a cooling/overheating issue. As an experiment, I UNDERclocked the GPU by around 33%, and the game seems to work fine (Admitedly, through only ~2 hours of play). I've had this problem with some other graphically intense games, and usually turning down the settings helped. My theory is that the stock cooling on the 6800GT is inadequate, and this may also happen to other people with inadequate cooling on their GPU. Anyway, I'll post later today with an update.

--Toby

[camos1313]

Hey guys, I had the same problem. I realized that when my comp was turned off for 5 min, I could play about 30 min before it crashed. All I did was open my side panel and put a house fan directly toward my gpu, and now I can play hours without a single crash. between, my card is a 9800pro.

Hope this may help some of u out there...

[hatzinger]

i got a 6800 gt, too.

BUT i was able to play 4 subsequent hours without a crash yesterday. So i don't think that it is an overheating problem.

I think we have to wait for the patch.

[A.J. Caesar]

Originally posted by camos1313
Hey guys, I had the same problem. I realized that when my comp was turned off for 5 min, I could play about 30 min before it crashed. All I did was open my side panel and put a house fan directly toward my gpu, and now I can play hours without a single crash. between, my card is a 9800pro.

Hope this may help some of u out there...

as I wrote in another thread a lot of cards are installed improperly upside down...open the case is the extreme solution; be carefull because an house fan is really noisy (from an Elettromagnetic point of view) and may cause HW malfunctions...(although very rare!)

[ozirambler]

I am having the same problem, very frustrating

System
Laptop Pentium M
ATI 9600 pro turbo card
512 ram

Wait for the game for sooo long and now only get to play in pieces of between 30-90mins at a time

[Lost1]

same problem, but I have an ICE-Q Radeon 9800 Pro, I don't think the ICE-Q should overheat... but you never know. CPU and MoBo temperatures are fine all the time.
Game freeze completely after about 30 - 60 mins of playing.

L1

[andytimm]

Same problem.

Very annoying I must say. I have an Ati9800 pro

EDIT -- I've also tried re-installing three times but it keeps happening.

[TobyTheRobot]

UPDATE AGAIN (From thread starter, see first post):

I can safely say that overheating was MY problem. If i underclock the 6800GT by ~33% I NEVER EVER GET THE CRASH EVER. This is after a 9 hour play-fest yesterday (relieving a lot of pent-up CIV-frustration. ) I also ran a housefan inside my open case, and that fixed the problem with the GT's clock speeds set to factory defaults.

I'm not sure if this type of crash can be caused by any other underlying problem, but I reccomend everyone turn thier cards down to see if heat is the problem (Also, for those wondering, the game runs perfectly at 1024*768 w/all the graphical nicities turned on at ~270 vcore and ~680 memclock, down from the defaults of 370/1000.)

[andytimm]

How would one go about underclocking a graphics card?

[TobyTheRobot]

To underclock your video card, download the .reg file here..

Run the file to incorporate it into your registry, then:

1. Right-click your desktop and click on "properties."

2. Click on the "settings" tab (far right).

3. Click the "advanced" button.

There should be a "clock speed" option or something similar on the left-hand corner of the box (I'm at work now, so I can't check.) You'll have sliders that change the GPU and graphics memory clocks. Move them down (for both 2d AND 3d -- it'll make sense when you see it, hopefully.) You'll need to "test" them before you can apply the changes, which basically just means that your computer will set the card at the new speed for a few seconds to make sure it won't crash. Then apply the changes.

Note that unless you click the box that says "apply these changes at startup" the changes won't be permanent, so you can wipe them out with a simple restart. Hope this helps.

--Toby

[TobyTheRobot]

Just wanted to see if the above method helped anyone deal with this crash. Far be it from me to bump my own post but, um... I...

(/me Runs away briskly)