I'm not sure. Give it a try, and if it works for you, please report back, it can help others, as well as give the devs some ideas on how to fix crashing problems.Originally Posted by Fahrbot
I have read that some problems can occurr due to graphics/driver issues. Have you confirmed that you have the latest drivers from here?
I'm using Catalyst 10.9 at the moment and that's the latest stable driver.
I'll try and delete all my save games and play a bit and see if it crashes or not, I'll report back here later.
Well that didn't work, started a new game and was at turn 92. Just founded city number three, pushed Next turn and the game crashed.
Odd.Well that didn't work, started a new game and was at turn 92. Just founded city number three, pushed Next turn and the game crashed.
I have heard of quite a few instability problems with this game, but most of them can be traced back to overheating, old video card drivers or the 70 city bug.
I don't have a clue about yours
Nah, me neither. I just hope that they'll release a fix soon (for what, I don't know).
I'm going to do a memtest to night to check that there's nothing wrong with my RAM.
For my PC and 9800gx2, all my drivers had been uninstalled then installed new updated versions, still had crappy video in Dx10-11 and crashes in Dx9. Most drivers were reloaded more than 3 times. Then I added one gig of ram to give me 3g total, this did help speed up the game some and a bit better graphics in Dx10-11. My temps were still barely hitting high 60s though, no real problems like others hitting 100c. I was concerned that one of my gpu's was handeling over 90% of the load with the other only getting 2-6%.
This PC had vista 64bit home loaded on it 2 years ago and I was planning on a new hard drive with fresh install of vista sometime soon. When BF2 came out I had wiped a druve and set it up with only that game to minimize crashes, so did it for Civ 4 this time. This past weekend I got a new 1T hd and was looking for a fresh start with vista and only one game loaded.
After loading vista(SP1-SP2-other updates), card drivers, chrome then evga precision I then loaded Civ 5 with no errors. There was a hugh change from the start, the startup video was flickering like some others have said but that was only at the start. Under the SETUP MENU my presets were at High-Mid instead of low like before, with 1920x1200, 2xMSAA, V-Sync On. And with evga precision I saw that both my gpu's were finally equally sharing about the same load. Also noticed vid card mem was each about half used at 223mb. I had set my auto fan speed to max out if 68c was hit, climbing from 50% at 55c. During the first scene of start up temps were ok at 44c. Then as soon as it got to the first play the gpu temps jumped to 65c, and for the whole weekend fluxuated between 62c to 73c all weekend. The game stayed loaded and the pc was never shut down nor did it crash, it did go into sleep mode for several hours each day. On monday I did power down and restart the game and it still looked great.
With several other games loaded on the old hd, I'm not surprised if it was conflicting drivers causing my problems. You see it with audio drivers trying to dominate all the time.
I'm on my second new card GeForce GTS 250 1gb GDDR3 brand new super clean system, CIV V causes artifacting at 61 degrees.
I'm having issues with Civ V as well I cant seem to find the error or problem, I'm on my second video card. First one was the Geforce GTX+ 9800, Civ V fried it!!! it went all artifact on me. yes it was clean with an additional cooling fan on it!
I bought a quick replacement GeForce GTS 250 1gb
this card after about 10-20 mins of hard play on low with a few medium settings would start to artifact a QUICK hit of windows button would take me out and I could click back in, the image would refresh and a could play a few more turns then same thing if I was quick it would never hard lock. I did this for 1 day and downloaded EVGA PRECISION this allows you to quickly modify your fan speed. I focred the fan speed to 85% and was able to run the game for about 1-2 hrs prior to another initial artifact. seems the game causes artifacting at low temps about 61 degrees for me I have to keep it at this temp or lower to play without errors.
so in a nutshell, try EVGA PRECISION, its a free download that controls fan and GPU speeds/levels easy to use... seeif you get more game time if so it may be a heat issue
HOWEVER, I think its a heat, memory leak, and device driver issue rolled into one with CIV V
NOTE: Day one of release the game worked FLAWLESS, is was not untill about 1-2 weeks ago after an update that my errors started....
Last edited by Bloodyaxe; 10-13-2010 at 04:54 AM.
Well I thought I had found my problem after running memtest the first night, got several errors on test 8.
But I swapped memory channel, increased the voltage and my memory problem was gone. Sadly though, I still can't really play Civ V.
Before: http://imgur.com/8796T.jpg
After: http://imgur.com/6AgYc.jpg
Edit: I've finally solved my Civ problems! Just deleted my cache and I could play the game normal again, I could even finish my 370 turns save that instantly crashed upon loading earlier.
Last edited by Fahrbot; 10-14-2010 at 01:39 PM.
Awesome Troubleshooting Fahrbot, that issue is by FAR the hardest to track down, and correct.
I just wanted to throw my 2 cents in. I started out playing the game with an 8800 GTS 512 on DX10 with all medium settings with no problems. Upgraded to a GTX460 and all high settings and after about 30 minutes I started to see a lot of artifacts and then after about an hour the game crashed on me. I snooped around the forums and saw a lot of people talking about heat so I downloaded SpeedFan which showed my GPU fan speed at 49%. I manually upped it to 70% which is what others recommended and my GPU temp never went above 59 Celsius and the game worked flawlessly.
Hi, I was following this thread, and registered to join in. I have been having
the overheating and freezing too. I have an 9800GTX with high end cooling,
a i5-750 cpu at 2.8 ghz (mild overclock) with 4 gig ram, in a custom built
case with a 200 MM top fan, and multiple 120 MM fans. The big Antec case.
Windows XP 64 bit directx 9 for civ 5.
I can run small to standard maps for quite a while (several hours before a freeze). But trying large or huge (and the mod to go gigantic) the game will
freeze after just a short while. I have run the furmark hot as hell edition
overnight as suggested, and my card kept running with no crash, temps got up
to 89 and 90 C, kept running for 9 hours. So, is it really a problem with civ 5?
maybe tesselation that directx 9 doesnt have? is the game having to do emulation of tesselation with directx 9 causing heavy loading compared to hardware DX11 support for tesselation? or just general not having directx11
support in hardware? I can get windows 7 but since my card is only direct10
capable will it help? I also get texture popping quite bad.
sorry forgot, also tried speedfan to monitor temps, and have now set my gpu
fan to 80 percent, will try civ 5 again to see if it helps.
My laptop has overheated a couple times running civ5... heres the details, its an acer 3820tg...
cpu - i5 450m
gpu - ati 5470m
Both the cpu and gpu have seperate heatsinks and fans - its a well ventilated laptop for something 13.3 inches in size.
Im currently playing a gigantic game, with 16 civs and 28 city states on my 9800GTX, and I am at turn 323 and gpu temps between 68 and 71 C. This
is with my cards fan turned up to run 80 percent. I am not having any
freezing or stopping now, and not seeing any checkerboarding(I was seeing
some checkerboarding before upping my gpu fan speed). So It does seem that my 9800GTX was getting too hot with the fan set to low. Hope this helps.
Which cache did you clear?
What I am about to tell you is something you have probably been hearing a lot the last weeks:
My computer, Q6600, 4 Gb Ram, DFI Lanparty X-38, 550W Seasonic and EVGA 8800GTS 512 KO has been running without any problems for 2 years. Until I started playing Civ V.
After around 15 hours the game froze on me for the first time. The screen turned all dull and small blue lines appeared everywhere. It stayed that way for 10 seconds, then I got a bluescreen. I rebooted and everything was normal again. I googled a bit and heared about temp problems. So I set my GPU fan to 70 % and watched the temps while playing. They weren't over 55 when the same thing happened again. When I rebooted everything was still fine. So I tried again with fan on 100%. Temps were around 45 when it happened again, this time after playing for only 5 minutes. That was the end of my 8800GTS, my computer wouldn't even do anything when I tried to turn it on. So just to get my computer working again I got an old 8800GS from a friend. Now I'm scared ☺☺☺☺less what will happen if I touch the game again.
Same as dis2pair my card is dead.
I have Win7 x64, Core2Quad Q6600, 4Gig Ram and I did have an 8800GT (now it is Intel Integrated!). System has been fine for 2 years, played all sorts of games many of which were alot more graphically demanding.
10 minutes into Civilization 5 and my system locks up and crashes. At reboot there's artifacts and verticals lines on my BIOS screen. I did manage to get into windows again after cooling it down but from that point even a flash video was enough to knock the machine over, 2 hours after that and it was totally dead.
Last time I'm buying a game from 2K/Firaxis until it's been out at least 6 months, its bad enough being a Microsoft beta tester, but at least their buggy OS doesn't destroy hardware and cost me time and money.
Again, this can't be blamed on Firaxis.
If it was a G92 based chip (most 8xxx and 9xxx and some 2xx based Geforce boards) it was only a matter of time before this happened.
The G92 chip has a well published heat cycle problem that eventually kills it, and it happens based on the number of hot/cold cycles, so the more it is used, the sooner it fails.
Read more about it here.
Civ 5 may - due to its high graphics load - have speeded up the failures, but the game can not kill a video card that is functioning properly.
Luckily enough since it was an 8800 that failed it was practically obsolete anyway. If you want the same board you can get one used on eBay for $15.
$130 to $180 will buy you either a GTS450 or a 768mb GTX460, low to mid range boards from the current generation that will perfom much better both stability, and speed wise in this game. (and I might add, have no thermal cycling problems)
Last edited by mattlach; 10-18-2010 at 03:09 AM.
Oh, sorry probably should have specified that. I deleted all content in "C:\Users\Fahrbot\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\cache\".
I dont even think its worth debating whos to blame for all this as there are clearly multiple companies who's code is involved in any such crash. That being said I had the exact same issue acejimmy described on my Phenom II X4 with a HD4870 X2. So it probably isnt the problem you describe. From reading about some of the dll related card crashes I've heard about I am guessing the game is corrupting sensitive libraries.
You also mentioned before that you thought some of these card failures were not heat related and I second that as my game crashed in the 2d menu screen after the system had been running for only 3 min. Anyway, chalk me up as a another civ 5 related dead GPU.
Funny enough I have 2 computers of that kind which I bought at the same time since I live at 2 different places. The only difference is the other computer has a 700w power supply and a 680i mainboard. I have been playing far more games on the other computer so it had heaps more hot/cold cycles but I havent been playing Civ there and it is still working.
But anyway, my card is dead and even tough I want it badly, I am not going to take risks by playing Civ 5 again until someone really finds a solution, which doesn't suggest my hardware is already failing and Civ is only speeding it up, since there is clearly something else wrong.
Last edited by dis2pair; 10-18-2010 at 05:12 PM.
Hi, I had been playing a gigantic game as I mentioned. Well, around turn 380 started getting checkerboarding again, and the game froze around turn 400, but my GPU temps were still fine. So the checkerboarding must be some other issue with texturing? Dont know why it still froze. anyway, I heard a patch will be coming out soon that may help with crashing issues.
With respect, this is arguing a semantic point. And so your flaw is one of rhetoric and not just logic. Even if your point were logically valid, its soundness would be called into question by several rhetorical fallacies dealing with how you've phrased your premises and then drawn your conclusion.
Let me be more specific.
Premise 1: Civ V has a "high graphics load"
Premise 2: Civ V may have "speeded up the failures" of GPUs
Premise 3: Civ V can't "kill a video card that is functioning properly"
The first premise is a rhetorical fallacy of tapinosis, which diminishes the importance or significance of a thing by means of understatement. Civ V does not require a "high graphics load"; it requires "the very highest graphics load among exigent games". It makes full use of tesselations, shadows, and other demands of Direct X which require not just a heavy, but an enormous graphics load.
The second premise contains a more general meiosis, a rhetorical device designed often as a euphemism. This may even be an actual fallacy of logic: a non sequitur, which actually contradicts the next premise you state. On the rhetorical side, "speeding up the failures" is a euphemism for "causing premature failures". If they fail at a threshold before they were designed to fail, then their failure is premature.
Which brings us to the fact that a card functioning properly will do exactly that — function properly. If it is not designed to handle extremely complex tesselations and shadows, then failing is its exact proper thing to do. This contradicts the notion that a failure can be rushed. A failure occurs the instant a card has been fed more than it can bear.
As I've said on a couple of occasions, I don't blame Firaxis for burning up people's cards. People should have tested their cards first, with a temperature and voltage reading tool. Then, like me, they would have discovered that their card — despite meeting or exceeding the minimum or recommended specs — just won't cut it.
No. What I fault Firaxis for is publishing a set of minimum and recommended specs that are a load of crap. The power supply (as it turns out, a critical component of this whole equation) is not even mentioned. What keeps being ignored is the fact that people bought or upgraded systems that they believed in good faith would run the game, based on how they read the recommended specs.
They did this only to find that they were underpowered and could not play. Those who irresponsibly played for hours on end, ultimately burning up their cards (and possibly other innards, given sufficient ambient heat) are either foolish or have been duped.
Now, you can say that gamers know these things, and that therefore gamers should have known what was required irrespective of the pubished specs. But that contradicts the spirit of a recent interview in which Firaxis said it wanted to open up the market to Civ Rev type players — not just hardcore gamers.
Well, somebody's misinforming somone. Either the specs are woefully understated or else it is a game intended for computer hardware nerds who know better than to believe the box specs.
I bought my 9800GT because it was recommended. And yet, it could not run the game at minimal settings for more than ten minutes before climbing to the high 80s and low 90s. Luckily, I came out each time before permanent damage was done, since I was monitoring these data.
So I did some research and bought a GTX460, universally acclaimed as being more than capable of handling the kind of graphical demands made by Civ V — only to discover upon receiving and installing it that I did not have enough power. My Okia 450 watt PSU was not capable of running the GTX460.
And so now I am waiting on the arrival of a new Corsair 600 watt PSU.
These are things Firaxis should have made clear, especially if, as it claims, its intended audience is not comprised solely of computer builders. That, for me, is the problem with the whole thing. Firaxis should have told people that they would need powerful gaming computers and that the risk of overheating GPUs was high. The onus was upon them to do this because they had to know, or else they lied about extensive field testing.
Simple as that.
Didn't TK-Gregs GPU blow up or overheat during the live play stream of the gameplay Before it was released?
Didn't know about that. If it's so, then I mean Jesus. Mary. Mother of God.
Now you are really just arguing semantics.
First, lets discuss the failures (which we seem to agree on, yet you still want to argue the point for some reason)
Load cycles are a well understood area of statistical analysis in reliability engineering. It's not my particular area of expertise, so forgive me for not giving an exact lecture on the statistics, but essentially, typical products - in addition to having a plain shelf life that can be used to predict failure - also use load cycles as a predictor of failure.
These load cycles can be of many different types. They can be stress/strain loads, on/off cycles, etc. etc. In this particular case Nvidia had an issue with hot/cold cycles.
Load cycles will eventually lead to failure on almost all products. Typically - however - when you design a product you model typical use of the product, and its expected life span, and design the product robustly enough that the predicted point of failure is beyond the expected useful life of the product. There is alsways going to be part-to-part variation in processes and materials, as well in how each part is used, which is why cycles are a predictor of failure, and not an absolute (part fails after cycle 2347). This explains why typical well designed parts last a long time, but still have occasional early failures. Your statistical analysis of the heat cycles is designed to minimize the risk of early failures, but can never completely eliminate this risk.
This is where Nvidia failed. They demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding of heat cycling, and specified a specific substrate in the manufacturing of their chips that caused the predicted failure point to occurr while the product was still within its useable life.
Instead of - lets say - 100,000 predicted hot/cold cycles (bogus number I just made up) they wound up with 10,000.
Civilization - being a hardware intensive game - likely caused more hot/cold cycles more quickly than a video card would experience with most games. On most video cards, this would not be a problem, as their predicted hot cold cycles extend well beyond the useful life of the product anyway, so the product would function as designed. THis behavior is to be expected from producs in the market. On Nvidia G84, G86, G92 and G94 chips - however - this proved to be fatal, as they had a very limited number of hot/cold cycles to begin with.
Keep in mind that this is not a problem limited to Civilization. Every time there is a brand new graphics intensive game launched, a number of people inevitably wind up complaining that "the game killed my video card" for this very reason.
Now, you can go ahead and use your lecturers knowledge of logic to pick apart my argument on semantics if that's what gets you satisfaction, but that doesn't lessen the fact that this is a factual descriptioin of what went wrong and why we are seing video card failures.
Now, returning to the system specifications, I don't think they failed here either. I would have structured the recommended and minimum differently knowing what I know about the game today, but all in all, the game should run OK on a system with the performance of an Nvidia 8800 series video card. It even runs OK on much lowert system specifications It's not their fault that the video card isn't functioning the way it was designed. They likely did do quite a bit testing with these boards. My best guess why this issue was missed was because they went to the likes of Newegg or some site like that and bought unused 8800 boards off the shelves with no useage cycles on them. They probably noted high temperatures, but nothing that caused stability issues, as the boards were still young, and didn't have very many hot/cold cycles on them.
As far as your power supply goes, this is not a function of Civilization's requirements. The Power supply requirements will vary based on the board manufacturers design and specifications. Unfortunally, board manufacturers typically do a very poor job of documenting exactly what their power needs are, often expressing "you must have at least X wattage power supply" when this isn't even very relevant, as the power supply supports the whole system and not just the video card. It will vary greatly depending on what other components are in your system.
That being said not all 450W power supplies are created alike, in how they distribute the available power to different voltages (usually 3, 5 and 12 volts) and different rails. (most lower end power supplies have one rail per voltage, the higher end ones can have more)
The best way to shop for a power supply that will work with a video card is to try to find how many amps a video card needs over each of its rails. This may require digging into rtechnical specs and forums as usually this is not published by the board manufacturer for some stupid reason. Some video cards have one connector, others have two. GTX460 boards typically have two connectors, each of which requiring ~6.75amps for a total of about 13.5amps on the 12v rail.
This can also be difficult to figure out, as you also have to know how many amps other parts of your system are loading on the 12v rail, and this is rarely if ever published either. Nvidia recommends 24amps in total on the 12v rail, suggesting that typical systems use less than 10.5amps on the 12V rail for other stuff, knowing how engineers think, there is likely also a safety factor there as well. To make an educated guess it's probably a 20% safety factor.
Most computer hardware enthusiasts solve this in one of two ways.
1.) Exhaustive research, and then just testing if it works.
-or-
2.) Overkill. "I'm going to make sure it will work, so I'll buy a 750W power supply"...
This is already confusing enough, but it gets worse.
In addition to the above, power supplies are a notorious area for shady vendors to make low quality parts that either don't perform as specified, or die premature deaths. If you look at the Newegg.com reviews of different power supplies you'll find them littered with complaints about different models dying.
A good rule of thumb here is to buy a power supply that has an 80+ rating (or even better, an 80+ bronze, silver, gold or platinum rating). While these are efficiency ratings and not directly related to how much power is supplied they are still a good idea. The reason is that it is relatively difficult for a vendor to get these ratings on their power supplies, so the shady ones typically don't spend the time, effort and money applying for these ratings. So, while its not an exact methodology, 80+ certified power supplies usually have more accurate power ratings and are less likely to burn up randomly.
It also makes sense to look at established brands in power supplies. Knowing what I do about the shadyness of the powersupply market, and all the issues above, I usually stick with Antec branded power supplies. They have been around forever and have a reputation of building decent units.
So, my suggestion summarized:
1.) Try to get info on amps, not overall wattage.
2.) If you have to rely on overall wattage, go overkill
3.) If possible get either Antec, 80+ certified or both.
We like these thigns to be simple and straight forward. (Box says buy 450W, so I bought 450W) but they really aren't. Again, this is not the fault of Firaxis, but rather that of the board and power supply manufacturers not providing end users with the information they really need to make good decisions.
To add a personal anecdote. I was really lucky with mine. The 500w power supply that came with my shuttle case has been great, and is able to provide the insanely high 32amps my GTX470 needs on the 12V rail.
@ mattlach
I believe you've proved my point.
Assume for the moment (just as a thought experiment) that you are a casual computer user and gamer. Muster up the empathy. Walk in the shoes and all that. Okay, so you do some work; you watch some vids; you pick up your email; you play a game of Civ IV BTS. You run CCleaner. You shut down. Next day, you start up, and it's the same all over again.
And now read your post.
When we bought our Sonata Limited, it was up to the manufacturer and dealer to tell us things we needed to know about the car. The dealer explained the basics to us, such as how to use the navigation system, satellite radio, and blue tooth. But the car also came with an exhaustive manual that details everything we need to know, from what are the appropriate air pressures for tires to how often we should service the car based on local driving conditions.
We did not need a set of drawings from the builders of the engine and drive train, detailing the parts and giving assembly instructions. We don't have to worry about the piston rings because they will not become a problem if we follow the manual's service instructions. We don't think it is the responsibility of Hyundai to educate us in automobile mechanics. If we wanted that expertise, we would attend the local community college.
You are suggesting that board and power supply makers have neglected to educate us sufficiently so that we may become able to read and understand your post. Heat cycles and load cycles and strain loads and voltages and rails, and it goes on and on and on. With respect, that is ridiculous. We ought not need to be engineers in order to figure out what we need to play the game.
Firaxis should tell us.
Again, the point Mattlach and other "blame the victim" types seem to miss is that the system requirements for this game specifically name the 9800 GT as the recommended video card.
The 8800GT is identical--it was rebranded because it came late in the 8800 series and they just thought it made sense in order to clear up confusion, but they are the same.
So, given that fact, you would expect this game to work well with that hardware, regardless of whether it is/is not a good product. The simple fact is that it does not. The cards cannot handle the stress load this game is putting on them.
Whether that is due to video drivers or some flaw in the coding of Civ V I have no idea, but the bottom line is that anyone who thought this game would run safely on the recommended specs was misled.
And that's a prima facie fact.
It does run well on both the 8800 and 9800, as long as it is not so far progrssed in it's heat cycles that it is about to fail
favete linguis!
Not really, cause Firaxis is not privy to the specifics of every piece of hardware. It is not the game that is driving the need for a higher end power supply. The need for a power supply is driven by what hardware is installed in the computer. Firaxis has no control, or knowledge of how each individual user configures their machine. They can't know this.
Firaxis can and will tell you what video cards, cpu's and ram are required, but they have to assume that your computer has the underlying requirements to power that hardware.
Should they also be specifying to us what our wall power requirements are, and how to wire our house so that the computer gets the power it needs without blowing a fuse? No. This is not their responsibility. It is that of the electrician working on our house.
The individual has to either put up with an underperforming big box PC, or overpay for a so called "gaming" PC, in both cases of which it is the manufacturers responsibility to make sure the computer can sustain any and all of its components, or decide to customize it and do it themselves, in which case they have to either read up on what is needed or run the risk of something not working properly. It is up to the individual user to know their customized computer. In essence, when you alter your PC, you are its manufacturer, and you bear the full responsibility for it working properly. This is how PC gaming works.
If you don't like it, maybe consoles are better suited to your gaming experience.
I guess th epoint I am trying to make is, when you build or customize your own computer you are getting into areas where you should know this stuff.
You are the manufacturer.
If someone built or customized their own car, I would expect them to either posess the knowledge of an automotive engineer, or to expect a bumpy road ahead.
Who said they could? No one asked that they inspect machines to deem them playable or not. That's a straw man. What we're asking is that they specify — correctly! — what machinery is needed to play their game. They've not done that.
I just had my earlier fried 8800 GS 512mb card replaced. Guess what... It got fried again playing civ 5 (early game).
So
I dont buy itIt does run well on both the 8800 and 9800, as long as it is not so far progrssed in it's heat cycles that it is about to fail
Was it a factory replacement? Are you sure it was brand new? They often use "refurbished" parts for warranty replacements.
There are quite a few people playing with these video cards without problems, a good friend of mine included...
Here's what I did to get my system able to play the game:
http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=95943
I can't be completely sure it was brand new but it was repaced by apple (Imac). The odd thing is that my Macbook pro with a 9400 card runs the games without frying the card, eventhough it's getting pretty hot.
Mybe we need to look at something Else. People with the geforce 8800gtx or 9800gt. Open up your desktop or Laptop and Clean out the Fans. Beleave me that might help in some issues.
Not a fix just a suggestion.
for people thinking that CIV5 may breakk their GC, read my post here:
http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/sho...80#post1246280
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote