This is doing my head right in!!!

[Jay AK]

Ah man! what's going on with this damn game? I'm still getting crashes every time I play this. I've got to the point where I can race the veyron's on the Nordes and as I'm like 5 min's into the race the damn thing crashes! It's not a CTD either, I have to quickly hit the reset button on my tower and restart the PC because the screen just goes to like a grey colour with loads of vertical lines. My HD4850's fan is whacked right up to 100% to keep it as cool as possible but I'm now totally lost as to what the problem is. I had this very same problem with DIRT and I also have this problem with Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising. I don't have any problem's with any of my other sims, GTR2, GTL, Evo, RF, RBR and ARMA2. This is really doing my head right in, I even ran a memory diagnostic's test on boot-up which came up fine. I paid £30 for this the other night on Steam and feel I've just blown my money yet again!...

I'm gonna this PC in a minute!!

PS: I'm running an Audigy2 on Vista64, do you think this could be a contributor to my problem?

PS Pt2:
Well it appears I may have solved the problem of the constant crashes, it would appear that the memory I was using was causing the issue. I went and bought 4gig of OCZ Reaper PC6400 800mHz DDR2 to replace the 4gig Corsair CMS2 PC8500 1066mHz DDR2 and now I'm able to play this admittedly excellent racer. I've just spent a solid 4+ hours playing and haven't suffered a single crash (fingers crossed). I'm so chuffed I've sorted it now, hopefully I'll now be able to continue with my game of DIRT as well so I'll give that a try tomorrow. I did a quick test of on Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising yesterday and it ran flawlessly, no crashes after an hour's play (was crashing within 10 minute's with the Corsair memory...

[redi]

Any idea of the 4850's temperatures during Shift? The other race sims you mentioned aren't as graphically demanding as the other games you mentioned.

Have you updated DirectX to the latest version? Audigy2 on Vista64 should be OK, though I'm not sure whether it's officially supported? If other games do play without crashing, my guess is that it is not the audio that is causing problems.

[eternal0123456]

Did you overclock your 4850? what drivers are you using?

[Shinzah]

The nordschliefe will probably be the most demanding course on your videocard and processor. My 9800GTX gets up to 98c, stock clocks, and 100% fan, and begins to slightly artifact a little after sector 2, and since the game already has enough issues with ATI cards like yours, I can only assume this is most likely a temp issue.

[f0xx]

When that happens its generally related to a GPU issue. The last time I had that problem my geforce 2000 series went directly to the trash ^^

So you said this problem doesnt happen in ArmA2? Are you sure? Because the other games dont need a great machine...and its a big difference of requirements between them and ArmA2.

You should play ArmA2 for more than 30 minutes and make a temperature log of your gpu card with gpu-z (for instance).

[Jay AK]

thanks for the tips guy's

I'm running my system with no overclock's whatsoever, I'm running ATI's 9.9 driver, and I've just updated my Chipset driver's as well.
I did a restart and then fired up GPU-z and set it to record a log of the temps, started up Steam, Started up Shift and then went straight onto the nord with the veyron's. I completed that and then was able to play for over an hour and it's just this minute crashed again. I took a look at the log file from GPU-z and by looking at it I don't think it has registered all the info due to the crash. I'm starting to get really frustrated with this now as it's never ending.

As for ARMA2, yeah I know it's a System hogger but I honestly don't have any problems with it, I play online with a group of friends all the time and have never ever encountered a crash while playing it, very strange that don't you think?

I feel I'm going to end playing this as I'm totally fed up trying to solve the issue with no result's and I'm starting to regret buying this EA POS! I knew I shouldn't of bought it but with all the recent positive feedback from you guy's I thought I might of had my eye wiped but I'm now starting to think I was right all along...

I think I'm going to stick with SimBin from now on, at least they know how to optimise a game before they release it......

[Kazumi]

Have you tried messing with the settings (settings max not low) or rename the .exe which helps to improve the render thread on ATi GPUs (search grid.exe, it has been mentioned here somewhere)


For temperature problem you could also try v-sync (GPU waits for every frame except 60, 30 and so on) or GPU underclocking.

[Jay AK]

yep, tried to rename the exe to GRID.exe but because I bought it from that damn Steam crap, it won't recognise it and fails to start, I can't even install it without steam interfering because they've marked it as their's because i've bought it from them, the ****'*. Haven't tried with V-sync yet but I will, but that'll be my last attempt because I'm going to unistall it, wasting my HD space!... I can't do it atm though because I've got my brother's 40th birthday to go to shortly.

thanks guy's

[Shinzah]

Jay AK, That sensor log shows an idle GPU :/

[Jay AK]

Originally Posted by Shinzah

Jay AK, That sensor log shows an idle GPU :/

Thanks Shinzah, I noticed that too which left me scratching my head, I had it running in the background while I played Shift before it crashed, Kinda puzzled as to why it didn't monitor and record the info as it's supposed to this PC is really doing my head right in

[Shinzah]

Could you try racing a race in shift, and alt tabbing to GPU-Z monitor, and taking a screengrab that way?

Just do the single nordschleife race and alt tab at the end.

[morbias]

Try Rivatuner or MSI Afterburner for logging your temperatures

[Jay AK]

Problem solved! check out my first post for an explanation to my fix...

[redi]

Good news!

[David Wright]

My respect for sticking with this and sorting it out. Its natural to blame the game especially when its a new one, and sorting system faults isn't easy. In the summer I built a new PC which crashed after 5-10 minutes running GTL or GTR2. At least I knew it wasn't the software but knowing what the problem was wasn't easy. Eventually like you I traced it to RAM.

New game engines do tend to push hardware to the limits. When Simbin's first gM2 title, GT Legends, came out there were lots of cases of PCs which would run other titles, crashing with GTL, but all were eventually traced to the system (apart from the known issue of trying to sort in the lobby fixed in the 1.1 patch).

[Jay AK]

Thanks guy's I'm so made up I've sorted the problem, I've also eaten my sock for giving EA a hard time over this.
That's my problem though, being the boob I am I tend to get hot headed and point the blame all the time, instead of tackling the problem knowing quite well that the solution lies somewhere, I jump to conclusion's and go off the rails lol. In future though I intend to try play it cool and not blow my top every time thing's aren't going to plan

A big thanks to EA for this is a brilliant game, they have done an excellent job with this sim and I've been totally hooked since.

to summarize:

E=Extremely
A=Amazing



Cheers for putting up with me guys

[f0xx]

Well dont worry Jay, people nowadays seem to suffer from those symptons aswell...stress perhaps ^^