Please help, wierd flickering and rainbow ribbons

[Donavan]

I love the game as I did SH3 and have been nursing it to playability. But, I've been getting strange geometric flashes, and now multicolored ribbons accross the screen after 1.2.

specs: Dual AMD Athlon(tm) 64 FX-60 Dual Core Processors
SLI NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX's ( i know, not officially supported)
Driver: 93.71

It doesn't seem to matter what graphic performance I select, low,med,high, it's the same problem. The only thing I haven't tried is getting a priest to sprinkle holy water on it while mumbling stuff in latin.

Help me. Please.

[Ilpalazzo]

Not sure what to tell you but may as well ask, do you know if your card may be overheating? Do you have AA on?

[Chock]

I've experienced that kind of thing in a couple of other sims, namely Armed Assault and Wings Over Europe. In Wings Over Europe, I had to turn off shadows to stop it and in Armed Assault I think Geometry Instancing was the guilty party in the (ATI) Catalyst Control Centre.

However, it sounds very similar to a problem many have experienced with NVidia cards running Armed Assault (I know this because I spent a lot of time ploughing through threads on the Armed Assault forum trying to sort it out for my ATI card). Might be a long shot, but if nothing else works you may want to take a look on those forums (Bohemia Interactive website) and see if it offers you any clues. I do know some (NVidia card users) had suggested that they lost the problem by installing slightly older drivers, and yes, many were suggesting that overheating might be the cause on that site too, although most people suffering the problem regarded this as not being the case.

Of course this might not be the problem at all, but if you've tried everything else, I guess it's worth a try - good luck with it.

[Donavan]

Mine are water cooled, but I'll try canceling AA and shadowing. Thanks guys.

[MONOLITH]

It does sound like a stressed VPU (overheating), especially if it's intermittent.


Next time you get a chance, the first time of the day you begin to play (when the PC/VPU is cold), see if they do not happen the first 10 minutes you play, but grow more frequent the longer you play.

If it's not heat, try to see if there's some pattern to when they show up,like only in exterior view, or a particular texture is showing. That would indicate a driver problem.

[Donavan]

I cut off AA, but don't have an option to cut off shadows, that I can tell. Didn't help I'm afraid.

Monolith, it starts as soon as the game starts, it's not overheating. It's constant from the moment the game loads. Temp is around 53 at loading.

[Reaves]

I had something similar (hard to tell without a screenshot.)

Turned out I needed a better powersupply.

Although I had it in more than one game and you mentioned it started after 1.2.

[shad43]

I get a similar effect (once in a while) with my ati x1600, this card is notorious
for overheating, turns out my problem is that the ps is right on the borderline
of enough wattage to run the card. I've yet to replace the ps but the general
concensus is that doing so will correct the problems... which sound similar to yours.

<<< Ok onkel Neal, wild night in Bangkok has got to go!

[Chock]

When I took the shadows off Wings Over Europe, it was an i-game option, if you hover your mouse over the SH4 graphics options, it tells you what they do, and one of them knocks off shadows. Without the game screen in front of me I forget the name of the option, but you'll find it if you do that. Worth a try I guess, as it sounds to me like your card is struggling with some sort of light sourcing calculation.

[MONOLITH]

They're right about a possible power supply problem as well.

Even if you were okay before, your PS could simply be nearing the end of it's life for one reason or another. If the Card is recieving just enough power to get it going, but yet not quite enough, funny things like that can happen.

Depending on how handy you are with this sort of thing, to check it you could open your rig, and disconnect power temporarily from some secondary drives and a floppy dirve, etc, to reduce some of the PS load and see if it helps.

[Donavan]

I apprieciate all the advice and help. I'll keep piddling with it, and trying anything to make it work. Maybe Nvidia will come up with a driver or something.

I have no problems with other games, Oblivion, Medieval 2, etc.., it's just this sim that gives me trouble. Sucks that I love it. Guess I'll go back to SH3 inbetween ramming my head into a wall.

I'll keep checking this thread for a solution. Thanks again guys.

edit: Monolith, I have a 450 power supply, this rig is less than 3 months old.

[MONOLITH]

Originally Posted by Donavan

edit: Monolith, I have a 450 power supply, this rig is less than 3 months old.

Whoa.

You just bought that rig with Dual cards on SLI with only a 450 watt PSU?

Did it have two cards when you bought it or just one?

I just bought a single X1950 Pro and a 550 watt supply was not enough to run it along with an extra hard drive.

I currently have two seperate power supplies on my rig, the 550 for the motherboard and vid card, and a stock 350 for everything else.

A 450 watt trying to run an SLI setup, I would seriously be suspicious of, bought at a store that way or not.

[Donavan]

Actually it's a 650 Watt ATX2.0 I have no idea why I said 450. Anyway, it's an Alienware Aurora.

[btaft]

I have experienced a similar problem as well, though in my case there was multi-colored smoke coming from the stacks of the ships, everything else looked fine

[MONOLITH]

Originally Posted by Donavan

Actually it's a 650 Watt ATX2.0

Ahhh...Yeah, that sounds better. The thought of two VPUs on a 450 is scary.