1.52 causes "out of video memory" error

[snafuc4]

Originally posted by rabel
I'm having this same error - cannot get Civ4 to run very long before I get the "out of video memory" error.

Radeon 9600 128MB 4X AGP
Latest ATI drivers (can't get the 4.12 drivers to work)
Latest Civ4 Patch

2x AA in Catalyst - Zero AA in game
all graphic settings set to "LOW"
3GB Page File

I'm trying all sorts of .ini settings:
SyncInput=1
D3D9Query=1
DynamicAnimPaging=0
FrameRateClamp=30

OK, I'm quoting (replying) to this message rather than others because it's the closest to my m/c spec., but my reply applies to all in this thread

My m/c: Athlon 3000+, 1Gb RAM, Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe m/b (using onboard sound), ATI Radeon 9600 256Mb AGP graphics running latest (Catalyst 512) drivers.

The OS is W2KSP4, patched to the limit with everything. I have 2 physical IDE drives, partitioned, with plenty of space (we're talking gigabytes) for expansion. Yes the assorted %TEMP% stuff has plenty of space

Patches: BIOS, vulns, sound, etc you name it (as of writing) is up to date AFAICT

Background: before the 1.09 patch I had regular CTDs. I could sometimes use Task Manager to kill the process, but most times I'd (have to) reboot

After the 1.09 patch these occurrences became less frequent, but were still there.

The 1.52 patch has decreased the occurrence of CTDs dramatically; instead I get hangs on loading a save (due to corrupt save file, due to lack of cache integrity WRT ensuring the save is, in fact, saved), or an 'Out of video memory' error - I can't believe that! Anyway, clicking the 'OK' dialog led to a system freeze requiring BRS (repeatedly), so that was /another/ 5 minutes while the system comes up..

However, http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilitie...sExplorer.html enabled me to 'kill process tree' rather than 'kill process' & means you don't need to reboot between sessions. Oh, it has some other benefits as well..

I've not changed any graphic game settings (everything set to highest) throughout this. I'm not complaining about that. What I'm trying to call attention to is the (seeming) inconsistency of the problem. One moment it's a system error; the next it's graphics..

Sorry, I'm rambling.. too much to drink, not enough analasysusus..

Seriously

[TK-421]

I'm having the same problem. Uninstalled and reloaded with only 1.09 patch and it is better (not great) but can't play multi-player. When I get home I'm going to try to copy the game to another drive and then apply the 1.52 patch to only one of them so I can play multiplayer on one and single player on the other. I'll let everyone know how it turns out.

[TK-421]

Didn't work. hopefully some one will come up with a fix for this.

[snafuc4]

There's yet another Catalyst driver out for ATI users - v5.13. Maybe this will help..

[Urban Ranger]

Perhaps the video memory gets filled up with texture maps. Have you tried setting the "low details texture" option?

[TK-421]

Thanks to snafuc4. found catalyst and installed it. Everything (seems to) work great know.

[snafuc4]

Originally posted by TK-421
Thanks to snafuc4. found catalyst and installed it. Everything (seems to) work great know.

Glad it works for you; FWIW I'm still getting 'Out of Video Memory' errors on Huge maps (the only thing I'll play to test this) at 16bit colour.. but they seem to have decreased in frequency so far..

[Urban Ranger]

It is said that you can fix the problem by setting your graphics to "low."

[blisk]

I get the same error but i'm on a much higher end system then the rest of you it seems. Still... my monitor supports 1900x1200 natively so thats what i run the game at. One game for me.. on large sized map around the 1700 A.D. 's + when most of the map was reveiled i first had it crash to desktop with the "FATAL ERROR" popup telling me i ran out of video memory... which i have 256MB of!!!!

Anyway its not too annoying.. for me it only happens every half hour- hour once things get pretty graphically intense.. and then just reopening the program seems to work fine. If you're able to get it to run for a good hour straight i'd say just make sure you quick save alot cause there no telling when it happens.

For me... my guess is that my problem is running the game at high everything at such a large resolution.. still it seems like even though the patch is making better use of video memory.. CIV4 doesn't allocate memory very well and might even still have a few memory leaks.

Oh well.. at least the game runs better..... heres to hopeing that the new patch comes out soon.

[Akaoz]

Same problem.

x800 with 256mb video RAM. 1GB system RAM.

It crashes in the late game on Large maps.

6.2 Cat drivers btw... Should I try the 5.10 or 5.13's instead?

[Darg]

I'm getting this same problem.

My specs are:

WinXP SP2
Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb
P4 3Ghz
1Gb RAM


Seeing as I had played a large map with no problems up into around the mid ages with 1.52 I decided to try a new game on Huge map. I'm getting a lot less crashes then I did when I played my first game with v1.0 on Huge. However I have gotten the "Out of Memory" crash that brought me back to the desktop.

The first time this happened was just after I shared maps with another civ that revealed almost the entire map to me. This took about 10 seconds of a frozen diplomacy screen to finally come through. After that scare I decided to look around. It seemed that the more places I looked at the sluggier it got until when I'd looked over almost everywhere I could see it crashed with the "Out of Memory" crash.

I lowered settings from all High down to all Medium. This seemed to help a little bit but from then on I've been getting a lot of graphical artefacts including flickering screens and text, jarbled text for several seconds, a quarter of the map flickering various colours for a few seconds and many many other smaller bugs.

I was just playing again and am now up around half way through the future age at 1900ad and the bugs have of course been getting worse and worse. As long as the game doesnt crash though I can live with those. But while loading a marine onto a transport my computer suddenly decided to turn off. The only thing I know of that can cause this is overheating.

Since I started getting the graphical bugs I already knew they were most likely caused by some overheating so I took out a modem PCI card I never use to give my graphics card some more breathing room and a nice hole out the back for airflow. Even so it overheated so badly that it had to turn off the computer.

When it gets to that point it could result in serious damage to your processor, motherboard or graphics card. Civ4 is the only game I have ever played to have that effect on my system. Even the more modern FPSs I can usually play around medium settings. My computer is by no means a slouch when it comes to graphical punch. The Radeon 9800 Pro is getting a bit dated I'll admit but it is still the best pre-X series cards.

I would like to spare Firaxis some blame by saying that they were trying to use an engine that was never designed for such strenous work but it's becoming obvious that they could have produced a much better game if they felt that way. The design is fantastic but the implementation is appalling.

I have played many many bad games in my time but Civ4 is by far the buggiest most unreliable game yet and the most potentially damaging to my system. Firaxis should be ashamed of the programming behind one of their best games in years.

[blisk]

Originally posted by Akaoz
Same problem.

x800 with 256mb video RAM. 1GB system RAM.

It crashes in the late game on Large maps.

6.2 Cat drivers btw... Should I try the 5.10 or 5.13's instead?

It doesn't matter.. my comptuer is still on the 5.11 or something drivers and i even used driver cleaner pro when upgrading to them. my guess if its happening on your drivers then going back isn't going to help at all.

[blisk]

Originally posted by Darg
I was just playing again and am now up around half way through the future age at 1900ad and the bugs have of course been getting worse and worse. As long as the game doesnt crash though I can live with those. But while loading a marine onto a transport my computer suddenly decided to turn off. The only thing I know of that can cause this is overheating.

Since I started getting the graphical bugs I already knew they were most likely caused by some overheating so I took out a modem PCI card I never use to give my graphics card some more breathing room and a nice hole out the back for airflow. Even so it overheated so badly that it had to turn off the computer.

When it gets to that point it could result in serious damage to your processor, motherboard or graphics card. Civ4 is the only game I have ever played to have that effect on my system. Even the more modern FPSs I can usually play around medium settings. My computer is by no means a slouch when it comes to graphical punch. The Radeon 9800 Pro is getting a bit dated I'll admit but it is still the best pre-X series cards.

I would like to spare Firaxis some blame by saying that they were trying to use an engine that was never designed for such strenous work but it's becoming obvious that they could have produced a much better game if they felt that way. The design is fantastic but the implementation is appalling.

I have played many many bad games in my time but Civ4 is by far the buggiest most unreliable game yet and the most potentially damaging to my system. Firaxis should be ashamed of the programming behind one of their best games in years.

You really need to check that fan out.. make sure its still spinning... on the video card. You shouldn't get corrupt textures with any game if you're not overclocking it. If you are overclocking it (the video card) you definately should get some better cooling on there or lower it down to stock cause you're going to ruin your video card. The other computer in my house has a radeon 9700 and has not had the problems you're having. Its not CIV 4... theres something wrong with your computer.... maybe cause you're playing civ4 for so long its showing that you really don't have a stable overclock and need to tweak your bios (if you oc'ed your cpu/memory) or for the video card set it back down to stock.

[Darg]

No I have not overclocked either by processor or gfx card. I have a dell and both settings are locked. I know there is a way around that but I can't be bothered researching that.

I can play BF2 for hours on end with no more then a slight stuttering when in the middle of a big firefight.

The fan is spinning perfectly fine. I have changed the power cord to it's own dedicated cable instead of where it was sharing with my hard drives. That seemed to help slightly but there were still some graphical glitches up until the end of that game.

My computer can handle the latest first person shooters. It should be able to handle Civ4. It is most certainly not that graphically advanced a game. The problem lies with Civ4s code and the use of an engine not adequate for the task they set it.

I will say it again. Civ 4 is the only game my computer has ever had such serious bugs playing. That includes F.E.A.R., COD2, Quake4, Doom3, RoN, BF2, AoE3 and many many other games that theoretically should take up more system resources then Civ4.

Therefore the problem obviously lies with Civ4 and not my computer.

[blisk]

aright.. well maybe your description screwed me up.. could you post a screenshot of whatever screen artifacts you happen to see in the game and post em here? when you said that i instantly thought texture corruption = pushing too hard on an overclock.