Graphics and crash to desktop

[Majick 10]

I've trying to get this game working properly for 2 days and getting pretty sick of it. First I got triangular graphics artifacts and layers all over the place. Then after pushing the graphics settings up to near maximum the artifacts went away. But guess what? Constant crash to desktop, slowdowns and pauses. Seems somebody forgot about memory management when this thing was programmed.

I'm using a Geforce 8800 GTS card.

Tried setting the meory uasage to 512 on the command line as one poster suggested. No effect.

Does anyone have any suggestions before I repackage it and send it back to Amazon as not fit for purpose?

[SpecterM 10]

in my launch target I have..

-maxmem=2047 -cpuCount=4 -nosplash

4gigs of memory, and quad core processor. No start vids.

I didnt realize you could set the memmory of vid card. how do you do that?

[Majick 10]

Thanks v much I'll give that a go. I meant the maxmem parameter on startup. I'll try your options and see if I have better luck :)

[Bulldogs 10]

What temps are your card at when you are getting the artifacts and just before crash (you can check by running EVGA Precision and enabling the temp overlay)?

[Calamity_Cruse 10]

I'm having this same problem too.

System:

CPU: I7 920 @ 2.67Mhz

RAM: 6Gb

OS: Vista 64

HD: 640Gb (Dual SATA 320GB in RAID-0)

VIDEO: GeForce 9600 GS W/756 Mb Ram

I've updated the Nvidia Driver. Checked the Temp with EVGA - 52 Degrees C. Tried the in-line command string "-maxmem=2047 -cpuCount=4 -nosplash", and when I entered the game I was able to run it for about 2.5 minutes. Drove my Humvee into Krasnostav (I'm playing Manhattan in the campaign) and whamo! Game crashes.

I'm also getting crashes to desktop on Save-Game (During the campaign missions), Getting lockups and crashes in the Scenario "01: Trial By Fire" - which I read in another forum post was supposed to be more stable. I've had the spiky artifacts, lost terrain texture mapping, and ultimately had a crash, in two of the "Armory" Missions - and of course the Manhattan campaign mission where everyone else is seeing them too.

All-in-All the Game is not "Ready for Prime time". I'm an old OFP player, Mission Writer, and Mission Reviewer. I was on staff for a couple years at the old OFPed.com as "Calamity". I must say I'm really disappointed here. I've been waiting years for an update to OFP. Right now I'd be giving this a 0.2 overall.

I'm pretty sure BIS will get this fixed, but my patience is wearing thin. What's the next thing to try? Any patches for English/American Vista 64 yet?

Let me know,

Calamity out.

[Majick 10]

Any word from the publisher? Don't be strangers. After all this is your own forum......

Are you offering refunds for the tiny minority of the gaming population that use GEforce cards?

---------- Post added at 01:03 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:29 AM ----------

Hi Bulldogs. It peaked at 87% before the last crash

---------- Post added at 01:11 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:03 AM ----------

Degrees I mean... :)

[-s!Gm4- 10]

Try to set your gfx-cards fan to a higher load in order to keep your temps down.

Now, Nvidia cards are supposed to work fine even when they go into the high degrees. Obviously this is not true for Nvidia cards + Arma2.

I had some serious problems too...

I set my gfx card to 80% fan load when i begin to play.

In the background, rivatuner protocols the temps.

Up to 68°C everything works fine.

But when temps start to peak into the 70ies, I get a black screen (game still runnning, though I got no graphics anymore... funnny, eh?)

All I can do is guess what is the problem there. I dont think its the GPU - maybe the video-ram doesnt like to get hot?

Anyway, give it a try. Either your problem will be solved or at least you can say "I tested that, too, but sigma was wrong" :P

[Bulldogs 10]

Technically a card should be able to handle 90+, but from what I've heard everyone seems to be having problems when the GTX 2XX's get over 80. Same thing happened with the 7900GT's, Nvidia gave the wrong thresholds to the manufacturers.

I should add that most of these problems occur in Arma 2 (and some other games, but mainly Arma 2) and can only guess that it's something to do with the way the game is accessing the video card that causes Windows to think something dangerous is happening.

[Majick 10]

Still no word from the developers? Come on guys sort yourselves out.

[-s!Gm4- 10]

Still no word from the developers? Come on guys sort yourselves out.

I do not expect word from the devs on this thread for a loooooooooooong time, not only because of them being busy (hopefully with coding patches to already known problems) but also of the scarce info you provide on your matter.

Also, there are a lot of threads which do not only adress similar issues, but have users posting exact diagnoses of their crashes.

Perhaps you should try the search function first and read those threads ...

Anyway, this post would not be constuctive if I did not give you some advice, again.

Your PC crashing from the game can be caused by several problems, as you might well know.

First off, try to increase your fan speed manually (as I told you to do two threads above). I'd say 70% of all crashes are related to overheating-issues (yeah, even when u think your pc is cooled sufficiently...) of the GFX-card, the CPU or the RAM.

Then, you should take a look at post #56 from this thread: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=84156&page=6

I personally did not read the whole thread (and thus cannot say whether this whole thread could prove useful to you - I wont do the work of reading it for ye), but in my experience crashes are mainly (after being caused by overheating issues) caused by the graphics driver.

There are several tips, tricks and tweaks roaming this forum, you just have to do some reading work to do by yourself.

Disable Aero, disable power saving options, set your OS to performance mode, rename your arma2.exe to crysis64.exe .... this are just a bunch of several minor, but really helpful ways to tweak arma.

So, if you wait for a word of the devs, fine. But dont be angry with them when you send your copy of arma back to amazon if you did not try to help yourself (and get help by yourself by asking the other forum members) to get your problems solved.

[bangtail 0]

Any word from the publisher? Don't be strangers. After all this is your own forum......

Are you offering refunds for the tiny minority of the gaming population that use GEforce cards?

---------- Post added at 01:03 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:29 AM ----------

Hi Bulldogs. It peaked at 87% before the last crash

---------- Post added at 01:11 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:03 AM ----------

Degrees I mean... :)

While the TJmax is ~120 for the 8800, 85+ is getting into territory that could be problematic (it's not just the GPU that could be overheating). I'd concentrate less on calling BIS thieves and more on some 120MMs for your case (to begin with). Another thing to note is that if you are looking at the temp AFTER alt-tabbing, there is a good chance that the GPU was a few degrees hotter when you were actually playing.

My guess is that your cooling is extremely inadequate as, unless the room is incredibly hot, the 8800 shouldn't be hitting 87 while playing A2. I have 3 x 280 and they don't go over 70 while playing A2 (The room is AC'd) but that's 3 cores that run hotter (by design) than your one.

Eth

Edited September 4, 2009 by BangTail

[JuggernautOfWar 1]

I get the same thing GTX 285 temps only get to 65C and it artifacts in the two largest cities then crashes.

[bangtail 0]

I get the same thing GTX 285 temps only get to 65C and it artifacts in the two largest cities then crashes.

More than likely a different problem. Your GPU temps are nothing like his.

Eth

[JuggernautOfWar 1]

Anybody have any ideas regardless?

[bushlurker 45]

... does the normal temperature triangular grey/white artifacting look like the video Here?

If so - welcome to the club...

B

[Cogar69 10]

... does the normal temperature triangular grey/white artifacting look like the video Here?

If so - welcome to the club...

B

That is happening to me also Bushlurker & Majik on Vista 64. The GPU temp sits between 72 And 75

[no use for a name 0]

Anybody have any ideas regardless?

have you tried older drivers? the 182.5's seem to be the most stable for most people.

[Cogar69 10]

have you tried older drivers? the 182.5's seem to be the most stable for most people.

Yes I did try them but the same thing was happening(used Driver Cleaner Pro as well). I've since upgraded to the new Nvidia 191.00 and all seems to be okay so far!

[Calamity_Cruse 10]

Hey Guys, Sorry I haven't been keeping up with this thread, but I've been tackling some hardware issues with the Vendor. For a while I stopped playing Arma II, but after I replaced my X-45 with an X-52 Pro and started suffering BSOD's (Blue Screens of Death), I thought I should have my system checked out. Turns out that since I purchased the machine from HP in August, I've had to replace my hard disk (Not related to these problems, but does illustrate how much of a lemon I have), the Mother Board, and now I've got a replacement video card I'm waiting for the warranty tech to come and replace in the morning.

Meanwhile, this weekend I've been doing some more play testing. I'm working around the SaveGame bug by re-naming the save files before allowing a new one to be created - either a manual save, or an autosave. I've been limiting my speed as I drive through towns to about 20 to 25 MPH. I speculate that this gives the card enough time to load the texture maps of all the buildings. But I'm still getting the occasional triangles that replace the scenery, and buildings blinking in and out. Then the game will crash to desktop. After that happens, I have to go back to the last save game before the triangles, because once they've been introduced they corrupt the the save files and the frequency of occurrence increases.

All this is, of course, is with the suspect video card. After the video card HP will have me swap out the memory, then format the drive and re-install the op-sys. After that I'm throwing in the towel and returning the box. But, if it does become stable (No more BSOD's) and I still am having problems with the game, I'll pickup this trouble thooting thread again.

Calamity.

[Colt45_GTO 10]

it certainly sounds like hardware trouble. only bad hardware or bad drivers can cause the BSOD but moreso hardware. have a look round for a vid card, there are some good ones out there now going pretty cheap. i'm quite tempted to try the BFG range, they was the first to use AGEA physics so they have to be worth a try? check the sticky in general on computer compatability. i made a post in there with some prices.

[simo1000RR 10]

@ ppl complaining about temp degrees .. i have a gtx 260 OC. while playing arma2 or any other game my temp is 45 .. the max i get is 55 ...there is no trick or any thing .. im just using riva tuner to crank the gpu fan to about 75% compared to stock speed from the factory wich is 30% .. so more than likely if u running stock speed ur gpu will heat up and cause artifacts ..

[kklownboy 43]

That is happening to me also Bushlurker & Majik on Vista 64. The GPU temp sits between 72 And 75

72 and 75c is a non issue. you can go 85c or more... the most modern GPUs will play at 90/100c, the RAM will hate it, or some components on the card... but then you need more air in the case.