Radeon 9800 graphic corruption !!!

[kakupacal]

Hello

Am frequently running into a problem where my game becomes graphically corrupted and eventually becomes unplayable as the visuals decay.

Here are 2 screenshots of the corruption in its initial stages:

http://www.kakupacal.com/Civ4ScreenShot0000.JPG

http://www.kakupacal.com/Civ4ScreenShot0001.JPG

Any suggestions? I'm using a Radeon 9800 Pro with the latest drivers/directX, 128 megs

Thanks!

[EPhillips]

Thats pretty freaking weird, I get artifacts and then a crash 30 seconds later, but nothing like that

[thorndike112]

I also got 9800 Pro. Here are the tips I got from a earilier topic:

1) Turn off fast write
2) Turn off VPU recover
3) Change from 8x to 4x

I was stubborn for a while to leave at 8X. But my game still crashed quite often. So I switched to 4x finally last week. And the game is just very very stable, havn't crashed once except when start second time in one session (multiple loads are fine).

[kakupacal]

Thanks, I'll give that a whirl.

Were you getting any of the same kind of video corruption that I was having?

[thorndike112]

Not that often, but about twice and those were even worse than your screen shots. And my machine either just rebooted or VPU recover kicked in (of course it never recovered and I had to reboot manually)

[thewoozle]

Setting my AGP from 8X to 4X solved the problem for my 6800 GT card.

[morten795]

Hi,

I also have the problem described in the original post (looks slightly worse, though):

http://www.3dcoder.com/Misc/Civ4ScreenShot0000.JPG

I tried thorndike112's suggestion, but that didn't help (the screenshot was taken after I had changed my card settings as suggested by thorndike112).

Any other ideas? - has this problem been submitted to Firaxis/Take2 as bug and/or is it being worked on?

It's very annoying having to restart the PC every 10 mins or so just to play CIV4 (it's good, but it ain't that good )

[thorndike112]

Actually I was using the reboot/loading time to do my homework. Now I haven't done any homework since my PC is running fine.

I read couple other threads suggesting:

1) tune down 8x all way to 4x, 2x or even 0x
2) go back to driver 4.12

[Neil81]

I have a 9800 Pro and had problems that looks quite similar to morten's. I also experienced tons of CTDs and computer reboots. After I turned off anti-aliasing that seems to have taken care of most of the problems. So far I've only had one reboot after several hours of play.

[avanti]

I have exactly the same problem with Radeon 9550 128MB. At first it happend once or twice so I decided to update the drivers to ver8.18 (just the drivers alone, not the whole 5.14 catalyst set). And now....it's even worse! Actually I don't have any problems with launching the game, but when I leave to desktop (completely leaving the game, not just changing the window) then I'm screwed. Even when "rebooting comp&trying to run again" a few times in a row it looks like it doesn't help, deleted cache folder, and so on... It's weird, but it looks like I have to wait - say - an hour or so to launch again successfully...well, I know it sounds stupid, but it behaves like that.
And finally found sth new, this kakupacal's post...however, I'm not that tachnical guy, so can you please explain briefly what thorndike112 means?
How to turn off write fast?
How to turn off VPU recover? What is that?!?
And how to change from 8x to 4x?
Basically, do these changes relate to BIOS or just gfx card settings? If so, I suppose I need the soft for my gfx card installed (I have just drivers alone and simple control panel, uninstalled the rest with alll those options)?
Please reply like for a dummy, not complete one, but almost;-) Thanks in advance.

[morten795]

To do what thorndike112 suggests, you need to open display properties (from control panel or right click on desktop) and press the settings tab. From there you press the advanced button. Now you go to the "smartgart" tab (I think that's what it's called) and there you can turn fastwrite off and play aroung with the AGP speed. The final VPU recover option is turned off on the VPU Recover tab...

Hope that helps - it didn't work for me, but it might be worth trying...

[avanti]

thanks morten795! I'm a loser, I've forgot completely about these options, 'cause haven't used them for looong time. However, I can't see the options you are describing, is it possible that I need also new version of control panel or any add-ons? All I can see similar are "OpenGL" & "Direct3D" tabs - both of them have two options (tick boxes) under Smoothvision 2.1 field: "Antyaliasing" & "Anizotrop filtering".
I've checked other tabs of course, but couldn't find anything like "fastwrite" or "VPU recover"...am I missing sth...or, as mentioned before, maybe I have to install sth more? Please help & thanks for your patience;-)
By the way, do you guys think this corruption error will be fixed by the patch? Or is it some kind of error relating to hardware and then we have to upgrade hardware to get rid of such problems?

[morten795]

Hmm... you might be using the "ATI Catalyst control center" in which case I can't really help you, since I never install that...

[Stumple]

Originally posted by avanti
thanks morten795! I'm a loser, I've forgot completely about these options, 'cause haven't used them for looong time. However, I can't see the options you are describing, is it possible that I need also new version of control panel or any add-ons? All I can see similar are "OpenGL" & "Direct3D" tabs - both of them have two options (tick boxes) under Smoothvision 2.1 field: "Antyaliasing" & "Anizotrop filtering".
I've checked other tabs of course, but couldn't find anything like "fastwrite" or "VPU recover"...am I missing sth...or, as mentioned before, maybe I have to install sth more? Please help & thanks for your patience;-)
By the way, do you guys think this corruption error will be fixed by the patch? Or is it some kind of error relating to hardware and then we have to upgrade hardware to get rid of such problems?

I've got a 9600 & on reading through thought I'd see about changing my settings. Couldn't find them until I changed to 'Advanced' on the VIEW button whilst in Control Centre.

[kakupacal]

Ah well... many options tried and I'm done experimenting with the card settings just to try and play this danged game. I'm waiting for the patch and if that doesn't clear things up, this frigging game is going straight to eBay - I've wasted enough time trying to get it running properly.

Bleah.