Crashes that nothing seems to fix

[EPhillips]

I'm currently running civ 4 on this machine:

AMD64 3500+
1024mb DDR
300gb HD
Radeon X700 (PCI-E)
XP Home

I continue to get terrible graphics crashes where my monitor actually loses input and goes black (with the no input text that you get if you unplug the monitor cable) - sometimes VPU recover kicks in, sometimes it doesn't. Artifacts often appear before the crash, but the card never gets too hot, and isn't OC'd or anything.

The crashes happen roughly every 3 minutes of in game play, and always require a forced reboot.

The game crashes regardless of whether I use hi or low graphics settings (including resolution changes)

I've tried 5.11, 5.0 and 4.12 catalyst drivers aswell as the latest omega ones and disabled fastwrites.

I've also tried clearing the cache.

Any ideas?

Make no mistake, if this was any other game it would be back at the shop by now.

[JohnUghrin]

I have similar issues with a different configuration. I believe firmly that it is simply a matter of poor craftsmanship on the part of the programmers.

Hopefully, the patch will address this issue.

[EPhillips]

What is your configuration out of curiosity?

[JohnUghrin]

Originally posted by EPhillips
What is your configuration out of curiosity?

AMD Sempron 2600 (1.8GHz)
ATI Radeon 9550-based 128MB graphics card
1 Gig RAM
MSI KM4M-V mb
~50 gig free on HD
Creative CDRW and Samsung CDrom

I've tried every update and whatnot I can think of.

I have noticed that when it won't run, a process called "~e5.0001" is also running. Apparently this is some kind of copy-protection function. However, since I'm doing everything perfectly legally with retail copies and have no software installed that should inspire this kind of interference.

If it is, though. !

I've already contacted 2kgames about a refund and returning the game until they write one that works...no response yet.

[nauris]

Open ati control panel. Go to Smartgart tab. Change your AGP speed from 8x to 4x and disable fast writes. Should help with VPU recovery crashes. At least with 9700 / 9800 series.

[EPhillips]

I dont have a Smartgart option - is it available on the x700?

[nauris]

Hm. You're using a pci-e card. Of course there isn't an agp speed option. Stupid me.

Maybe the card is overheating?

[seebs]

The crashes seem, to me, to be unrelated to card speed or heat or anything. Since my crashes are mostly tied to very specific in-game activities, I assume I'm seeing actual in-game bugs.

I'm thinking of going out and picking up another 2G of physical RAM to see whether that helps.

[JohnUghrin]

Originally posted by nauris
Open ati control panel. Go to Smartgart tab. Change your AGP speed from 8x to 4x and disable fast writes. Should help with VPU recovery crashes. At least with 9700 / 9800 series.

I already did that in my BIOS and in the ATI drivers...no dice
.

[JohnUghrin]

Originally posted by seebs
The crashes seem, to me, to be unrelated to card speed or heat or anything. Since my crashes are mostly tied to very specific in-game activities, I assume I'm seeing actual in-game bugs.

I'm thinking of going out and picking up another 2G of physical RAM to see whether that helps.

I doubt that will help. The best suggestion I've seen is to try and update your CPU to AGP drivers, perhaps even try the scary BIOS flash. (little help to the PCIE folks)

Of couse, I updated my AGP drivers and now the game won't play past that mutlilanguage "loading" splash screen.

[EPhillips]

I've fixed it, I'm gonna post my solution in another thread