Anyone having lockups after ~10min of game?

Originally Posted by Aesir Rising

That readme note and suggested setting change was applicable to those running Fraps.

I understand that, but after a solid day of having no way to play the game I just paid $50 for, anything was worth a shot.

At this point, I have no idea why it keeps crashing and freezing.

I have updated drivers. I have used the newest beta drivers. I have reinstalled direct x. I have re-installed the entire game. I have tried validating the local cache, which always, always has 1 corrupt file. I have even done a system repair on windows to insure it wasn't a operating system error. I am out of ideas and patience at this point.

Originally Posted by BeniBluemchen

Has anybody with this problem tested this in windowed mode, and what were the results there? I'd like to test myself but I deleted the demo to make room for the full version and now I have to wait till friday to get the game.

I've tried in windowed mode on a couple of resolutions. It has managed to BSOD the machine even when playing that way.

[Wirapuru]

I'll be quick and dirty because I have to be on college in 30 minutes...

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Good and bad news.

The good: seems that FINALLY it stopped crashing like before. This time I played for 3 hours, between 2 different games including the one that crashed so many times before.

The bad: even undoing everything I did since the last crash I couldn't make it to crash again! Yes, it's very bad. Because we have been on this for almost 2 full days and the only thing I wanted was to identify the cause.

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But: this doesn't mean my problem is gone, if you were here since the start of this thread there was one single time (right after running DxSetup.exe) that I could play for almost 2 hours but then it crashed again.

What makes this different is that I abused, hard. Since all the crashes *seem* to be caused by some oddity between vsync, refresh hates and Directx 11 (I really believe these are the causes) - and all of them happened on random situations (most while scrolling through the map or when some screen should pop up - i.e. city screen), each time I undone any setting I did I kept clicking and running the map like a crazy hienna for about 10-15 minutes, plus playing it normally (for 3 hours). None of these crashed the game again ($@#%@!!!).

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What I have done

On Genk's thread "DX11 performance issues -59htz vsync?" anasuelli said some interesting things about Triple Buffering and such, so I gone to try this one too. For that I needed Ati Tray Tools, since is the most developed tool to tweak Ati cards.

So..

1. (I shouldn't have done that) For some reason, since installing many drivers didn't work I gone back to Catalyst 10.9. Now I don't know if this was the fix reason, even with the fact I was with 10.9 in first place. But you know Microsoft, everything is implicit - I wonder if somethings have to be reinstalled 3x to commit some changes..

2. Before going ingame again (I didn't think using the same driver from before would change anything, even more after 12 crashes in a day - I just diodn't have the patience) I installed Ati Tray Tools and began to tweak.

3. The patience wasn't there again and I, stupidly, did around 5 tweaks before testing each individually:

- Enabled Anisotropic Filtering Optimization
- Enabled Trilinear Filtering Optimization
- Enabled 'Refresh Lock' at 1440x900@60hz* (see note below)
- Disabled Catalyst A.I.
- Set 'Wait for Vertical Sync' to 'default on' from 'default off'

* the reason I highlighted this one is because I think this could be the one. Of course you would put the resolution you use (here the max is 1440x900) together with 60hz.

4. played and never crashed again (not that is that much time of playing, but if you consider how it was unstable I guess it's something relevant).


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What I think you should give a chance to..

If you own an ATI card like me get Ati Tray Tools and try one tweak each time and go play to see if it stops crashing.

If it's a Nvidia card I can only suggest since I don't have one of these a long time ago (when a 6600 was a very good card =P). I remember using some tools like RivaTuner and nHancer to tweak advanced stuff, I'm sure at least RivaTuner has options like the ones above.

But please: try one tweak each time if you can, so we can identify what's causing this @#$%@# #$% ¨$%@##$@#%#$ bug!

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Being this the cause or not thanks to Genk and anasuelli for mentioning this, else I would never know anything on the subject.

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After college I'm back to tell more about this, best luck everyone!

Spent four hours today debugging Civ V crashes. NVidia 7900 GTX, 512meg. Above the minimum, not good enough for the recommended settings. I play a number of other 3D games, Risen, Oblivion, Gothic III, Runes of Magic, WOW, X3, Fallout 3. All more 3D intensive that Civ V in my opinion. They all run without a hitch.

I posted a support ticket with Steam. They replied with what I assume you all have received.

-If you are running in Windows Vista or Windows 7, please completely exit Steam, and right-click on the shortcut which you use to launch Steam and select "Run as Administrator."

-If you are running in Windows XP, take the following steps (ignore these if you are using Windows 7 or Vista):
1) Exit Steam.
2) Go to the "Start" menu, select "Run", type "regedit" and click "OK".
3) Navigate to the following registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USERSOFTWAREVALVE
4) Right click and select "Permissions"
5) Check the "Allow" boxes for "Admin" and "System" for both "Full control" and "Read".


Then verify the GCF for this game:
Title: Verifying Game Cache Files (GCF)
Link: http://support.steampowered.com/kb_a...2037-QEUH-3335

Verifying the GCF solves many issues for most games.


If the issue persists, you may also need to manually run secondary installers required by this game.

Exit Steam entirely.

Browse to your Civilization V installation folder (Usually C:\Program files\Steam\Steamapps\Common\sid meier's civilization v\)

Run the following installers:

...\Steamapps\Common\sid meier's civilization v\VCRedist\vcredist_x86.exe

...\Steamapps\Common\sid meier's civilization v\DirectX\DXSetup.exe

Reboot your computer and test the issue again.



If you continue to have difficulty, please also run the following installer:

...\Steamapps\Common\sid meier's civilization v\DirectX\D3D11Install.exe

Reboot once more and test the issue again.

I faithfully ran all of these. With my initial install. With a fresh install. With a fresh install on a different drive.

etc, etc, etc. I have a three page log of everything I did. Software Engineer by trade, I have spent a lot of hours in debuggers and out, tracking down software issues. In the end, imo, its a graphics card resource issue. My guess is that the developers are not degrading gracefully, or handling memory exhaustion on the graphics card. Combinations of huge map, high video rez, high video settings all contribute to an eventual crash. If your graphics card memory / performance is above some threshold, then you never crash. In my final analysis I could set all video rendering options to HIGH and crash within the first 5 turns every time. With all video options set to LOW, I played in excess of 50 turns, no issues.

Eventually developer will realize the problem, and send out a patch. They need to handle situation when the game requires more graphic resources than the user's machine has, then degrade gracefully, or simply render at whatever pace possible. The third alternative of simply crashing when graphic memory is exhausted is not acceptable.

I bought Dawn of Discovery. Amuse myself with that. Wait for a patch.

[Wirapuru]

@Hylde please try some of the possible solutions we said here, mainly the last one on #78. Reply any feedback if you can..

[LongTom]

DX9 works fine with 8800GTS. DX10/11 still hangs after a few minutes. Tried changing refresh rates, no difference. I suspect the posters claiming the game uses directX 10.1 and the 8800GTS supports only DX10 (8800-series were first dx10 cards, while the std wasn't agreed between nvidia and ATI) are on the right track.

I don't know.

I have an 8800 GT, and I was crashing in dx 9 just as often. I think it's bigger than just a DX 10 vs 10.1 issue, as I have the exact same problem in either version of the game.

I was able to try out DX9 on my system. The result -> no crashing.

again:
ATI 4870x2
Intel i5 750
4GB RAM
Win 7 x64

Hi, running xp sp3, nvidia 7300gt amd athlon dual core 2.2 with 4 gig ram. i to am having a crash after 5 to 10 mins, yet yesterday played nearly 3 hours without incident, except a couple crashes at load video. don't know why suddenly having problems, yet i have tried all suggestions found here on the forum. Just wanted to add my video card and specs to the list of problems. running directx9. good luck all

edit, ran the game cache check, and it has to reaquire one file...we will see, and i'll let ya know

edit, played thru 30 or so turns, crashed on clicking action to "Bombard"

[Clonesa]

Nvidia 260 GTX
Vista 64
Phenom 9550
8 gig RAM

DX11 version is ridiculously unplayable. To the degree that it makes no sense. All settings on low, no AA and res lowered has no impact on frame rate. Something seriously wrong with this engine.

DX9 version is playable, but has waaaay more impact on the GPU than it should. I need to pump a fan full blast into my box to stop it from overheating. if I don't the temperature rises to 80+ degrees, screen goes black and box reboots.

Note that I can play BC2 and Crysis on high settings without any issues.

To people defending the game, saying how there is some element of the gfx that should be this intensive. No, there isn't, stop talking out your ♥♥♥.

Just tried all the latest fix ideas. Setting it from fullscreen to windowed, making sure I am running in my highest native resolution, setting it to skip the intro screen, re-installing the c++ and DX again, and still I crash about ten minutes in and my PC freezes.

This is insanely frustrating, and I hope a fix is on its way ASAP.

I'm having this problem as well. Monitor goes black after ~10 mins, sound plays for a few seconds and then freezes into a rapid feedback loop, then my entire desktop crashes.

HD 4870 1GB w/ CCC 10.9
Win7 64-bit
phenom ii x2 550
4gb ram

I sent in a ticket to 2K and will send another one in now to Steam. I think if we all complain loudly enough and in as many venues as possible we may see a fix soon for this excruciatingly frustrating problem.

Originally Posted by Wirapuru

Oh well.. just crashed. After nearly 2 hours, same thing as before.

My solution will be or to play it on dx 9 or to turn autosave on every turn (almost no delay between turns anyway) and reload. Until they get some solution for this I'm surrended =/

Please if anyone hear about something please tell me so I can try it.

I just wanted to thank Wirapuru for the DXSetup.exe tip, it solved my problem tryiong to start up the game!

[LordPoncho08]

A dev over at the 2k forums stated that they're looking into it. So looking for a fix may be futile as I'm sure they'll have something in the very near future for us.

[Wirapuru]

Originally Posted by LordPoncho08

A dev over at the 2k forums stated that they're looking into it. So looking for a fix may be futile as I'm sure they'll have something in the very near future for us.

And specifically how this helps anyone? I know they're addressing this on 2k forums since I have been around there too , but if you think this fix will go any faster sitting back and let programmers and testers "do magic" without any feedback or status from players maybe you should keep people who wants a solution help them with some information.

I don't know if you're having issues or someone that just pops up on threads like some leprechaun but to unnecessarilly troll a thread like this giving that kind of "incentive" is something way beyond my patience can handle right now.