Nvidia 8800 Series Card owners
 

My hopes and dreams of having a new subsim that would work properly were dashed in one fail swoop this morning. Since I have had SH4 I have had constant issues with not CTD's but entire system freezes. I will play the game for approx 5-10 min and the sounds will studder and then the entire system will freeze. The only way out of it is a system reset.

So began my 3 day quest to try and get what promises to be a beautiful sim up and running. Let me start by describing my system. I have a Dual Core 6600 Processor, BFG 8800 GTS vid card and 2048MB Dual Channel RAM. I have tried various driver and BIOS changes and even OS changes to make this game work. Even tried running the game at horrible settings as others have suggested. So, as a last resort I tried calling tech support at Ubisoft. I thought for sure that a company as big and generally well regarded would get me on my way. Well, I was certainly in for a surprise.

After the not so friendly tech support person answered the phone and I rambled a few things from DXDIAG off to him , he informed me, without any further troubleshooting, that my problems were because I am using an Nvidia 8800 GTS which is not a supported video card. He told me that in order to make the game function properly I would need to downgrade to a lesser, supported video card. When I asked why the latest and greatest series of video cards was not supported as it would be with any other developer he stated he did not know. Then here comes the real kicker. When I asked if the video card would be supported in future patches he stated that they have no intention of supporting the 8800 series of cards. And finally, when I asked what my next step should be, his suggestion was to return the game to the store and make sure that in the future I read the system requirements. I can fully understand that new games may not be able to support older video cards, but to ignore new cards is completely unacceptable.

I guess what i am getting at is never before have I ever been so disappointed with a game company. This product is a shamble at best and the combined effect of poor product support and poor product prep has put a very poor taste in my mouth . I hope that one day Ubi and others will realize the error in their ways. If anyone has another idea to try, please feel free because until then this sim will be collecting dust on my shelf, much to my dismay.

OKay, let me state here and now that I am running SH4 on an BFG NVidia 8800 GTS with no problem whatsoever. My PC is a dual core 6600 with NVidia chipset. I'm running it in 1600 * whatever and i've not experienced any crashes. That said, I have so far only ran all the submarine school training missions and a couple of the supplied missions (battle of midway etc).

I personaly think the guy on the phone hasn't a bloody clue what he is talking about.....but then he works for a facelesss corp so there's no real suprise there.

I would suggest ensuring you have the latest NVidia drivers (Oct or Nov 2006 I think) and keep trying.

Athlon 64 3500+ processor, 2 gigs of memory and I'm running an eVGA nVidia 8800 GTS. It runs like a dream. I'm sorry to hear you're having problems, and for the moron on the phone. I'll echo the "make sure you have the latest drivers" sentiment.

I am definately using the newest drivers. I am using the 9792 Drivers dated 12/21/2006. That was the first thing I checked.... :(

I find you sentence on sound studdering interesting. Perhaps a soundcard issue? Driver? Acceleration?

I am running a 8800 GTX on Vista, all settings maxed, with no CTD's. I do however think there is a memory issue. I have 2 GB of ram, and get occasional stutters and had one CTD.

I save my missions about once every 30 minutes or so. It seems that much longer than that, it runs out of memory and slows down.


SH3 runs like a charm with the 8800 series.

He's got a point...what soundcard are you using ? I'm using XiFi with no problems. What OS are you using...Vista or XP Pro/Home ? (i'm using XP Pro).

Did you install the DX drivers (9.03c I think) that came on the disk as part of the install ? (I did).

Are you letting windows handle your memory?

Exactly..!!..High end sound cards can be a drain on the system at times. Cut the sound requirements back so card doesn't have to work as hard and check the drivers.

I have an Audigy card only because it came with the system at purchase. However, since I use head phones I don't need the intense settings as with speakers.

Ill bet dollars to doughnuts its an onboard soundcard with obsolete drivers.

Good luck on finding vista certified drivers for that ;)

Just because a particular video card is "not on the list" doesent mean it wont work.

Other things to look into is what processes are you running ? Have you tried running with your virus protection and or a software firewall disabled as a troubleshooting measure ?

This will er should get moved over to the troubleshooting / tech section.

I am also running a non-supported card (Radeon X1900XTX) and for the most part it runs beautifully. I did have some issues last evening with some CTDs.

What I discovered was that these CTDs were more than likely caused by sound issues. At the time I was running TeamSpeak and involved with some pretty heavy chatting, whle at the same time running at 1000+ Time Compression. The sound stuttered, the game locked up, and the game crashed.

I experimented even further by running the "CBS Radio Mod" whilst in heavy TC. It took a bit longer, but eventually the sound stuttered and another CTD ensued.

I was able to replicate these things with some success. To prove this out I rebooted, closed out TeamSpeak, turned off the radio and ran some heavy TC. No more CTDs.

So in summary, I believe that, at least in my case, all of my CTDs are sound related. I run a SB Audigy Gamer w/ the latest drivers. I suggest that you focus on the sound.

I hope this helps :yep:

Could it be the power supply is too small?

I would look at soundcard issue at this point.

I agree with the others suspecting the sound card. Simple thing to do is disable the sound completely within game and see if that allows you to play without any issues. If so you've found your culprit. I also run a 8800 GTS with no issues (other than the "A" key CTD) at the moment. Good luck! S!

Yes, windows handles the memory for me. Food for thought, the 8800 GTX video card has 768 MB of memory. Audio cards use system memory, could be the culprit.