Fafhrd on 14/11/2010 at 10:43
I need some help figuring this out. So I'm playing Dead Space with ATI Checkerboard 3D output through IZ3D (because Dead Space in stereo 3D looks fucking awesome) as I have been doing off and on for the past couple of months with no problems whatsoever. Tonight, however, after playing for about 30 minutes it starts losing textures and the framerate goes bad and I'm getting crazy artifacting and what have you, and eventually my PC just crashes. I reboot, everything seems okay, I try again, more or less the same thing happens.
My thought is: 'My video card (Radeon HD 5870) must somehow be catastrophically overheating. As this has never happened previously, new drivers are to blame.' So I uninstall the 10.10 drivers and Control Center and re-install the 10.8 drivers that I was using before, reboot, and load up Mirror's Edge, turn on IZ3D and run around for about 20 minutes, nothing untoward happens, 'All better,' thinks I. Quit ME, check the GPU temp in CCC: 85 degrees C and rapidly dropping since GPU load is gone. All previous experience with this card tells me that's pretty much normal. So I let it cool down to its usual idle temp (55 C. A little warm, but not crazy hot) and boot up Dead Space again, alt+tabbing out periodically to check the GPU temperature. 10 minutes in and the GPU seems to be holding at around 83-85 C, everything seems alright. 15 minutes in and I get black squares in the weapons inventory, so I quit out immediately. CCC says the GPU is at 88 C, and the fan is running at 33%, so that can't be a catastrophic temperature.
Here's where it gets weird: I don't reboot and I let the card cool down, then I manually set the fan to 60% and I try to start Dead Space again. This time, NOTHING loads. The EA logo comes up, but after that I get nothing but black screen. I alt+F4 out, and Windows goes more or less completely bugfuck nuts. Three finger salute gives me a 'This program failed to initialize' error, the Start menu doesn't have any programs in it, Log Off is available (but doesn't work), Turn Off Computer is gone, Run won't let me actually run anything, etc. I was forced to do a hard reset and now everything seems to be hunky dory again.
Anybody have any ideas about what might be going on? Somehow I don't think an overheating graphics card can cause Windows to completely lose its shit like this, but I can't for the life of me think what could (unless my RAM is dying, but then why wouldn't Mirror's Edge be effected?).
steo on 14/11/2010 at 23:08
My days with a failing Radeon X800XL taught me that not rebooting windows after seeing artifacts in a game is a bad idea.
You could try running memtest off a boot CD, such as The Ultimate Boot CD. That would limit the chances of the graphics card screwing things up. Even better, if you have a spare card or onboard graphics, try removing the card and running a memory test, or stress test such as prime95, and see if anything fucks up.
Fafhrd on 14/11/2010 at 23:32
I think the issue is the newer version of IZ3D + WinXP + Dead Space. Tried it under XP with 3D disabled and played with no problems for 20 minutes, tried it with 3D enabled and it crashed instantly. Tried it in Vista with 3D enabled for about 90 minutes, and no problems.
