SHIV crashing with AA enabled

bogaty · 06-30-12, 03:58 PM

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 · 06-30-12, 04:32 PM

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 · 06-30-12, 04:47 PM

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 · 06-30-12, 05:44 PM

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 · 06-30-12, 06:21 PM

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 · 06-30-12, 06:27 PM

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 · 06-30-12, 06:42 PM

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 · 06-30-12, 06:46 PM

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

stanger · 06-30-12, 07:07 PM

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 · 06-30-12, 07:13 PM

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 · 06-30-12, 10:15 PM

NVIDIA ... love how they work so well

stanger · 07-01-12, 04:28 AM

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

@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 · 07-01-12, 07:56 AM

This is the card I bought.

http://www.directcanada.com/products...cture=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 · 07-01-12, 09:40 PM

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 · 07-02-12, 12:59 AM

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.

06-30-12, 03:58 PM	#1
bogaty Watch Join Date: Aug 2006 Posts: 30 Downloads: 14 Uploads: 0	SHIV crashing with AA enabled 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.

06-30-12, 04:32 PM	#2
cdrsubron7 Sink'em All Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Naperville, IL Posts: 2,150 Downloads: 305 Uploads: 1	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. __________________ Head Deep and Keep'em Astern" - LtCDR Samuel D Dealy SHIV Guide \| Imperial Japanese Navy \| US Submarines

06-30-12, 06:21 PM	#5
stanger Engineer Join Date: Apr 2012 Location: Poland Posts: 200 Downloads: 84 Uploads: 0	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.

07-01-12, 04:28 AM	#12
stanger Engineer Join Date: Apr 2012 Location: Poland Posts: 200 Downloads: 84 Uploads: 0	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 @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. Last edited by stanger; 07-01-12 at 05:16 AM.

07-01-12, 09:40 PM	#14
Hylander_1314 Sea Lord Join Date: May 2006 Location: 5 Miles Inland West Of Lake Huron Posts: 1,936 Downloads: 139 Uploads: 0	Nice vidcard! Yeah, I awitched to NVidia when I built this rig. I think the next build will be back to ATI and AMD. __________________ A legislative act contrary to the Constitution is not law. -John Marshall Chief Justice of the Supreme Court ---------------------

06-30-12, 04:47 PM	#3
bogaty Watch Join Date: Aug 2006 Posts: 30 Downloads: 14 Uploads: 0	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.

06-30-12, 05:44 PM	#4
merc4ulfate DILLIGAF Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: florida Posts: 2,058 Downloads: 210 Uploads: 0	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

06-30-12, 06:27 PM	#6
bogaty Watch Join Date: Aug 2006 Posts: 30 Downloads: 14 Uploads: 0	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.

06-30-12, 06:42 PM	#7
stanger Engineer Join Date: Apr 2012 Location: Poland Posts: 200 Downloads: 84 Uploads: 0	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).

06-30-12, 06:46 PM	#8
bogaty Watch Join Date: Aug 2006 Posts: 30 Downloads: 14 Uploads: 0	1050 watt PSU. Ive been testing various in game graphics settings such as SSAO, V sync, etc but no luck so far.

06-30-12, 07:07 PM	#9
stanger Engineer Join Date: Apr 2012 Location: Poland Posts: 200 Downloads: 84 Uploads: 0	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...).

06-30-12, 07:13 PM	#10
bogaty Watch Join Date: Aug 2006 Posts: 30 Downloads: 14 Uploads: 0	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.

06-30-12, 10:15 PM	#11
merc4ulfate DILLIGAF Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: florida Posts: 2,058 Downloads: 210 Uploads: 0	NVIDIA ... love how they work so well

07-01-12, 07:56 AM	#13
bogaty Watch Join Date: Aug 2006 Posts: 30 Downloads: 14 Uploads: 0	This is the card I bought. http://www.directcanada.com/products...cture=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.

07-02-12, 12:59 AM	#15
bogaty Watch Join Date: Aug 2006 Posts: 30 Downloads: 14 Uploads: 0	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.