SHIV crashing with AA enabled

[bogaty]

I bought a new PC with an AMD 7970 video card and I've been having all sorts of issues with it.

I was wondering if anyone had run into this following issue and, if so, if they found a fix for it.

Under AMD Catalyst control, I set the game to AA 8x, AF 16x, MSAA, and v-sync off. These were the settings I used on my last two PCs, both with ATI/AMD cards (4870 and 6870) and never had any issues.

I was able to play the game over the course of 4 days with about 10 hours of total play time. For the first 3 days, the game ran flawlessly. Today, I began getting missing textures on the various tabbed items. For instance, if I went to the periscope screen, sometimes the torpedo tube selector would show up as completely whited out. Other times, it would be fine but the radio or gramophone tab would be whited out. The game would crash soon afterwards (or immediately if I went to external view) and give me either an ntdll error or and ati error. The only way the game would run when I tried to load my saved campaign game was if I disabled Catalyst AA overrides completely.

If I started a new career, the game would run fine. I assumed that the save was corrupted so I tried running for a few hours with AA turned off and then saving, shutting down, reapplying AA, and starting again. Same white out textures and crash.

I tried reverting to an earlier save and the game ran fine for a few hours and then the white outs started showing up again and well as the crashes.

I tried reverting to an earlier version of Catalyst. (I was running 12.7 betas so I rolled back to 12.6) but the same thing keeps happening.

Any ideas? Memory leak? This is a brand new PC so I can't see it being driver conflicts.


PS, if you get the opportunity to get a 7970 card. Don't. The drivers are just terrible and there are a lot of problems with this thing.

EDIT: I'm using Trigger Maru mod 2.something or other.

Windows 7-64 bit Home Preimium edition, SP1
16 GB RAM
ASUS P9X79 Pro ATX mobo
Realtek onboard sound.
AMD Sapphire HD 7970 3GB 925MHz video card with Catalyst 12.6 drivers.

[cdrsubron7]

A couple of suggestions. First, where do you have SHIV installed? It should not be installed in C:\Program Files (x86). Anywhere else on your C: drive should be fine. Second, have you tried lowering your AA to 4x and seeing what happens then.

[bogaty]

I have it installed on my E: drive. C: is an SSD drive with limited space so I'm using it for Windows only.

Yes, I've tried lowering AA settings for 4x and 2x but still get the corruption.

Finally, when I purchased the new PC, I just copy/pasted the SHIV folder over to the new PC rather than deal with the evil that is StarForce on my DVD.

[merc4ulfate]

For those less initialed perhaps you could use words for what AA,AF,MSAA and Vsync are?

I assume that it is Anti Aircraft, Anti Flatulence, Multiple Sclerosis Association of America, and Vasectomy.

*snare drum roll inserted here*

[stanger]

Its either overheating (more AA = more work for your GPU, and the temps outside are quite high lately) or there is something in driver control panel. Unfortunately I dont have ATI, so dont know its control panel.
But what does it mean: AA 8x, AF 16x, MSAA. 8xAA is antialiasing, MSAA is antialiasing too. Did you meant you selected 8x MSAA (instead of other type of AA?).

Do you have any problems while playing other games, or doeas it happen only with SH4?
Maybe try different driver version (some newer betas)?

There are 12.7 catalysts available, with performance improvements for 7900 series.

By the way (personal question;)), do you have sun halo with 8xAA enabled?

Another edit: you can monitor temps, fps, gpu usage with msi afterburner.

[bogaty]

Temps are steady at 61C. It's unseasonably cool here on the west coast.

Yes, I'm using 8xMSAA. If I select adaptive MSAA, then the ship and sub damage skins appear invisible. If I select Super Sampling, there's a significant performance hit for no increase in quality.

I've tried the latest beta drivers as well as the last two official releases but there's no difference in performance and the issue persists with all versions.

Yes, I'm having troubles with other games as well but they are all known issues that affect the 7970 card. It really does seem to be a bit if a lemon. I'm hoping it's just crappy drivers as its a new card with new architecture and not a systemic problem with the card itself.

The issue seems specific to anti aliasing as the game will run without it enabled. I've just never seen a situation where AA will work at the beginning of each sortie from port and then degrade over multiple play sessions until I dock again when the game resets and AA works again.

[stanger]

I assume your PSU is sufficient for this GPU (its a high end one).
It seem likely its a driver problem. Maybe try to run with vsync on and see if the AA bug is still there. How many fps you got (usually)?
Other thing would be to try some 3rd party tool, similar to nvidia inspector, and set some compatibility flags for AA (if there is such thing for AMD).

[bogaty]

1050 watt PSU. Ive been testing various in game graphics settings such as SSAO, V sync, etc but no luck so far.

[stanger]

You said you had graphic corruption with adaptive AA too? It's a transparency AA, you shouldnt have such problems, I run it on my old nvidia card with no problems. There is also something called "Catalyst AI" which can control some optimizations? If you have something like it, take a look what options are there, disable the thing maybe?
But as you see, Its a lot of guessing from my part as I am nvidia user, you should wait for somebody who knows ATI better (a lot of people here bought ATI cards when SH4 came out...).

[bogaty]

AMD cards have had an issue with adaptive AA and SHIV for quite a while. If you enable it, any damaged ship or sub looks like it has no hull.

I have tried with Catalyst AI enabled and disabled but it seems to make no difference. As the gsme ran without issue in my AMD 6870 card, i can only assume that this is specific to the 7000 series. I know Shogun 2 wont work in them at all. Wondering if anyone else with a 7000 series card can reproduce this problem.

[merc4ulfate]

NVIDIA ... love how they work so well

[stanger]

:hmmm:
Except no sun halo with 8xAA. And except when they disable one certain functionality and I have to use half-legal hacks to get it back, and except when their drivers team decide to burn peoples cards to "encurage" them to upgrade... yeah, nvidia is good. :) To be honest they both, ATI and NVIDA are worth each other:03:

@bogaty: you may check few other things: 1) your motherboard has 4 pci-e slots - 3x pcie 3.0 @16x and one that runs @8x - make sure the gpu is in one of 16x slots, not 8x. 2) you may also check if your card shifts power states properly, meaning if it goes from idle clocks and pci-e 1.1 mode to pci-e 3.0 (you can use newest version of gpu-z for that). 3) Is your GPU some overclocked edition? You can try to run the game with fixed clock speeds (in Afterburner, you can then reset it after quiting the game and all will be back to normal\factory settings); Btw is that your card: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1962/1/ ?
4) There is new bios version for your MB on asus site (from june 13), may improve stability.

[bogaty]

This is the card I bought.

http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=14080BD2881&vpn=21197-00-40G&manufacture=SAPPHIRE

It's not overclocked right now. I'm running at 925 MHz.
It's in the right PCIe slot and it went through a proper burn in cycle at the shop before I picked it up.

Thanks for the info about Afterburner and power cycling. I have to admit my ignorance on much of this stuff. I am busily reading up on how to use Afterburner and GPU-Z and what all the numbers mean. Will try them out and see what they say.

Mobo bios is the most recent one. It was flashed on June 20th.

[Hylander_1314]

Nice vidcard! Yeah, I awitched to NVidia when I built this rig. I think the next build will be back to ATI and AMD.

[bogaty]

The tech specs are impressive but without reliable drivers it's pointless to buy the card.

Do what I should have done before buying and go beyond the supposedly professional review sites and check what owners are saying on the forums. I wasn't aware that the 7800 and 7900 series of cards were so plagued with issues. Had I known, I would most likely gone with an nVidia 680 instead.

As I said, I hope this is just a driver problem that AMD will be able to sort out over time but for now, avoid these cards.

[cdrsubron7]

If it does turn out to be a driver problem, one of the nice things about ATI/AMD that there are new driver releases every month which means it might get sorted out very quickly. :up:

[bogaty]

Unfortunately they stopped that practice as of April and are now going the nVidia route of releasing drivers if and when they feel like it.

http://www.neowin.net/news/amd-to-stop-monthly-catalyst-driver-updates

[stanger]

So, did you try gpu-z? I am curious also because I had bad experience with nvidia blocking pci-e 2.0 on intel x38 - x48 chipsets, so when Ill upgrade I want to have as few problems as possible; would be nice to know there are no issues with pcie 3.0 at least on amd platform.
When you run gpu-z (no installation) there is clickable question mark next to bus interface, if you click it you can start render test; your GPU should be in pcie 1.1 state when idle, and should change to pcie 3.0 when under load, ie. running a game or running that gpu-z render test.

And make sure AMD knows about this issue, or maybe even try to get a replacement. This card was too expensive to have such issues with it.

[bogaty]

I ran the GPU-z program and, as you predicted, it was in PCI 1.1 in idle state but kicked into PCI 3.0 once I started the render test.

One thing I did notice was that the cooling fan didn't seem to keep up with the rise in temp. It got up to 74C but the fan was still only operating at 50% of max RPM.

As a test, I set the fan RPM to manual at 60%, fired up SHIV and it crashed almost immediately.

I wonder if there's a voltage issue?

[WernherVonTrapp]

Have you tried posing your questions at the Sapphire Technology web site?

http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/?lid=1

Maybe their Support or forum (Community) will be able to solve your problem. You have a killer PC that should be able to run SH4 with no problems.:up:

[Caustic]

AMD cards have had an issue with adaptive AA and SHIV for quite a while. If you enable it, any damaged ship or sub looks like it has no hull.

I have tried with Catalyst AI enabled and disabled but it seems to make no difference. As the gsme ran without issue in my AMD 6870 card, i can only assume that this is specific to the 7000 series. I know Shogun 2 wont work in them at all. Wondering if anyone else with a 7000 series card can reproduce this problem.
I can confirm that this is happening with my 6870, the problem is probably related to the catalyst 12.6 graphics driver.

[HW3]

The 12.8 driver was released on the 15th of August.

RESOLVED ISSUES

This section provides information on resolved known issues in this release of the AMD Catalyst 12.8 software suite.

Resolved Issues for the Windows 7 Operating System

Over/underscan settings are correctly restored on system reboot
SolidWorks: Graphical corruption is no longer experienced
Crysis Warhead: No longer crashes when launched in DirectX 10 mode
System no longer hangs when resuming from sleep mode
Audio is no longer disabled if the connected HDTV Is switched off/on
Enabling dual graphics mode with a HD 7000 series product no longer displays green video playback
Call of Duty- Black Ops : No longer hangs when loading a mission in DirectX 9 mode with Crossfire enabled
Shogun 2: Flickering text is no longer experienced
Star Wars ***8211; The Old Republic: In game cinematics no longer experience flicker when using the arrow keys
Dirt Showdown: 8-Ball track no longer hangs with AMD Crossfire functionality enabled
Max Payne 3: A black screen is no longer observed when launching game in DirectX 11 mode with AMD Crossfire functionality enabled
Max Payne 3: Applying in game settings no longer causes the game to crash
Resolved Issues for the Windows 8 Operating System (These issues were found in the Catalyst driver for the Windows 8 Preview)

Video playback using the Metro video player no longer shows green corruption
Deus Ex - Human Revolution: Graphics corruption is no longer experienced during in game cinematics with AMD Crossfire functionality enabled
Battlefield 3: game no longer crashes when AMD Crossfire functionality is enabled
Need for Speed ***8211; The Run: game no longer crashes to the desktop
Blocky video corruption no longer seen when using VLC
System no longer hangs when using PowerDVD
Green video corruption is no longer seen when using various video players
Resolved Issues for the Windows XP Operating System

QQ Dancer: A black screen is no longer randomly experienced
KNOWN ISSUES

The following section provides a summary of open issues that may be experienced with the AMD Catalyst 12.8 software suite.

Known issues under the Windows 7 operating system

Max Payne 3: Lights may flicker when run in Direct X 11 mode in a triple AMD Crossfire configuration
F1 2011: Vehicle textures may flicker when graphics profile is set to low
Enemy Territory Quake Wars: Poor performance may be experienced with AMD Crossfire technology enabled
Rage: Poor performance may be experienced with AMD Crossfire technology enabled
Known issues under the Windows 8 operating system

Blocky corruption may be experienced when playing back Flash video content
De-interlacing settings may not be applied to interlaced content when using MPC-HC and PowerDVD
Civilization V: game may crash when run in DirectX 9 mode
Total War ***8211; Shogun 2: game may experience random crashes
Rage: game may experience random crashes
Known issues under the Windows XP operating system

Diablo 3/Starcraft 2/World of Warcraft: Performance may be affected when run in windowed mode

I'm not sure how they run in SH IV, I haven't installed them yet.

[Caustic]

Changing my game directory stopped the visual artifacts and crashing for the most part; one of the strangest problems i've ever come across.

Make sure your Silent Hunter 4 folder is not located in "program files (x84)" if you experience any of the problems in this thread.