Strange Mac behavior after playing CM

[Michael Emrys]

That's right! The Hard Luck Kid rides again!

In the last few days I've begun to notice my Mac doing something odd and, to me, inexplicable. What it does is to lag in certain ways. If I try to scroll using the arrow keys, as in my browser on this board for instance, the page moves in a very jerky fashion. As I type, the letters appear after a delay. No problem with the mouse. Also, when shutting down or putting it to sleep, there is sometimes a long delay, as if it were quitting open programs, even though I have already carefully closed them all. All in all, it kind of acts as if I have some other processor-hungry app running in background...except that so far as I know I don't

Now the kicker is this: the problem only seems to appear after I've played CM for a while. Before I play it, everything is fine. After I play it, Boom! the problem appears (or so it has seemed so far; I'm still studying the matter). Putting the Mac to sleep and then waking it up does not effect the situation. Neither does a restart (something that otherwise seems to cure a number of problems at times). Only turning it completely off seems to do anything.

My system is the G4 733, about a year and a half old; 512MB RAM; 60GB drive; GeForce 4 Ti card with 128 MBVRAM.

Anybody ever hear of anything like this? Let's dialogue.

Michael

[kmead]

I have had the same thing happening when playing Ghost Recon. I suspect it may be a Geforce driver issue. I have not suffered the issue with ATI cards.

[_UXcva]

The problem might be memory or file related.... have you tried rebuilding the desktop lately? Its recommended that you do this once a month. TechTool lite (free) does a better job of doing this (rebuilding) then the usual command-option technique. I also use Speed Disk (via Norton Utilities) to defrag the HD and this I find to do wonders as far as restoring "speed".

My machine will start to bog down too if I’ve been playing CMBB for quite awhile in combination with having had other apps (esp. memory hungry ones) open previously etc., but a restart and the periodic maintenance listed above usu. clears up any problems. Forgive me if I've mentioned something you already know.

[edit: specs of my machine if your'e wondering; G4 800DP 640MB RAM, GeForce3]

UX

[ December 14, 2002, 11:01 PM: Message edited by: UXcva ]

[Michael Emrys]

Karl, I too have suspected it might be card related. I am presently playing a fairly good sized battle—a battalion defending and a reinforced battalion, amounting essentially to two battalions, on a large map. I noticed that after I started plotting the movement of my forces that cursor movement over the map became very jerky, as did panning and shifting the camera across the map. However, the animations move smoothly during the action phase, no loss of framerate there that is apparent to me.

In any event, I can't understand why this behavior (as reported in my first post) manifests after I quit CM and start working on something else. I've even wondered if my card is overheating while CM is playing and needs to have the computer turned off to cool down. But I can't understand that, since it ought to be able to handle anything CM can throw at it, especially given that the textures for Mac are still being downsampled.

It's that lack of consistency in this behavior that has me puzzled. This goes far beyond my present understanding, which is why I am asking around.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

UXcva, I used to use TechToo Lite, but I have moved up to Pro. I will try having it rebuild the desktop, as that is probably a good thing to do anyway, but I suspect the problem lies deeper than that. A restart doesn't appear to effect the problem, only a complete shutdown works. I haven't checked yet to see if it makes any difference how long the computer needs to be shut off for it to restore itself.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

Update: I used TechTool Pro to check/repair desktop. It did find one faulty file and fixed it, but it had no effect on the behavior in question. I am able to confirm that the objectionable behavior appears after spending some time with CM, and only then. One change from what I posted before is that a restart will make it go away, which is the good news. But I am still puzzled why it appears in the first place.

Michael

[kmead]

Does this behavior manifest itself after using CMBO and CMBB? If CMBB only, it would suggest that its and issue with CMBB differences in code.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by kmead:

Does this behavior manifest itself after using CMBO and CMBB? If CMBB only, it would suggest that its and issue with CMBB differences in code.

I never had it with BO, and haven't tested since it showed up to see if it now does. That's an idea though.

The funny thing is that it didn't appear until after I did two things, upgrade to 9.2.2 and install the GF4 Ti card. But it didn't show up immediately after those two events, only several weeks later, so I don't know if there is a connection. That's what makes all this so enigmatic.

Michael

[_UXcva]

Do you still have the old card?,,, try exchanging vid cards [stating the obvious I know... ]

You might also want to look at the fans inside your box... the one for CPU and the one on the vid card itself.... can't hurt.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by UXcva:

Do you still have the old card?,,, try exchanging vid cards [stating the obvious I know... ]

I believe I'll hold off on that one until I get really desperate for an answer, thank you just the same.

You might also want to look at the fans inside your box... the one for CPU and the one on the vid card itself.... can't hurt.

This idea has ocurred to me too and I think it is a good one. I also thought of checking the temps before running CM but after a period of normal use, and after running CM to see if there was any notable difference.

I haven't done so because, due to its location on my desk, opening the box is a little awkward. Love these new easy-open Mac boxes though. As much as PC users seem to muck around inside their machines, I wonder why this is a feature that other computer makers haven't emulated.

Michael

[davidh]

You might also want to look at the fans inside your box... the one for CPU and the one on the vid card itself.... can't hurt.

Several people suggested this when I reported this problem a few months ago. I don't think it's the issue, though, because I've started CMBO or CMBB, set up a game, and then quit immediately after placing my units, and it still results in the lag. FWIW, it doesn't happen when I play either game on my PB G3/400 running with OS 9.0.4, but does on the desktop system running 9.2.2. After I tried everything, I just gave up and assumed it was some inaccessible driver/system problem, and so now I just reboot as needed. (I also note, though, that if I stay within the CMBO or CMBB app, the lag doesn't occur, i.e. it develops only after playing and then QUITTING and then restarting.)

[Michael Emrys]

That's interesting, David. I'm glad you piped up. This definitely suggests that the problem lies in the relationship between CM and 9.2.2 and is consistent with my observation that it didn't show up until after I upgraded.

Now we're gettin' somewhere! Although exactly where I don't know.

:confused:

Michael

[kmead]

I ran CMBB only a few times on my iMac with 9.2.2 before it was retired and in my case I never sufferred any problem. CMBO was run unnumerable times with 9.2.2 without any trouble.

Have you deleted or at least removed unneeded video drivers and so on from the System? I also would strongly suggest a clean install of the OS, which is usually quite painless as you can trade in all your old prefs and so on. I am not talking format or anything of that nature.

Resetting the PRAM would also be in order. As you have Tech Tool its a safe and easy procedure.

Another gig of ram wouldn't be a bad idea either. Right now its cheap as dirt, relatively speaking, and when you come over to the dark side (X) you'll be glad to have it.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by kmead:

Have you deleted or at least removed unneeded video drivers and so on from the System?

How do you mean that, Karl? I disabled all the ATI drivers and made sure to pull the older nVidia drivers. Do you mean to put them in the trash and empty the trashcan?

Resetting the PRAM would also be in order. As you have Tech Tool its a safe and easy procedure.

I'll give that a shot. I did that recently, but I don't suppose it can hurt. Might be a good time to check and make sure I have the latest firmware too, I suppose.

Another gig of ram wouldn't be a bad idea either. Right now its cheap as dirt, relatively speaking, and when you come over to the dark side (X) you'll be glad to have it.

Something I'll keep in mind. Right now, I'm not using half of what I already have on hand and I'm trying to permit my bank balance to recover after buying that 4 Ti.

Michael

[davidh]

FWIW, I did all those things Karl mentioned and none of them seemed to help me. I even went so far as to reformat the HD (I run 9.2.2 on a separate volume) and did a total reinstall of everything and it didn't help.

[davidh]

Ho-ho! After my last post I went back and did it all again... ran TechTool Pro and Deluxe on my OS 9 HD, zapped the PRAM and rebuilt the desktop, and went to Apple and rechecked for new drivers. The nVidia driver update is now listed as version 3.0v1.1, and notes a modification as of 12/10/02, with an original release date of 4/03/02. I don't know if they actually changed the drivers or just the documentation...

But, after doing all the above and installing the drivers, the lag seems to be fixed! I tried starting and playing and quitting CMBO multiple times and it never slowed down (even with some big scenarios) and other apps (such as Netscape) which used to get all choppy and lag after playing CMBO now seem to work fine!

I haven't tested CMBB yet but will do so and post if there's a problem.

[Michael Emrys]

I went to the Apple site to check it out and it says that the update only applies to the GF 4 MX and Matrox cards, which is not what I have. I think I will try the PRAM zap to see if that does anything though.

Michael

[ December 18, 2002, 06:07 PM: Message edited by: Michael emrys ]

[Michael Emrys]

One thing I haven't mentioned previously. About the same time the described problem appeared, I also began noticing some strange behavior within CM as well. During the orders phase, the cursor movement becomes very jerky and hard to control precisely. I.e. it moves in big jumps rather than sliding smoothly accross the screen, and it can be hard to predict where it will land after a jump. This requires time spent on finicky readjustment that is both time consuming and annoying.

Also, shifting and panning the camera can be slow and jerky, especially using the arrow keys. My first suspicion fell on my video card and/or its drivers as I thought this might be a problem with redraw, since this first appeared during a fairly large battle. But switching to a smaller scenario didn't make it go away and going to a lower resolution didn't effect anything either. Also, the frame rate of the animations is fine during the action phase.

I have only a very few mods installed, so I am sceptical that they are responsible.

All this is starting to make CM very unpleasant to play. I may try uninstalling it and reinstalling, but that's a bother I could live without. And if that doesn't work, I may decide to give up playing the game altogether.

Michael

[kmead]

Michael:

I fear to suggest this, have you tried putting your old video card back in. It is possible the video car is the culprit and could even be defective. Just a thought.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by kmead:

Michael:

I fear to suggest this, have you tried putting your old video card back in. It is possible the video car is the culprit and could even be defective. Just a thought.

Yes, I've considered that. What weighs against it is that CM is the only app I have that causes this problem. Rather than risk possibly breaking something by yanking my card, at this point I'd rather try pulling CM and reinstalling it. IMVHO, it's very much more likely to be a software problem of some sort.

Michael

[ December 19, 2002, 09:02 PM: Message edited by: Michael emrys ]

[Ales Dvorak]

Originally posted by Michael emrys:

During the orders phase, the cursor movement becomes very jerky and hard to control precisely. I.e. it moves in big jumps rather than sliding smoothly accross the screen, and it can be hard to predict where it will land after a jump.

Same here on 867 dual, GF 4 , but on i book 700, ATI, everything is OK. I think kmead is right.

[davidh]

All this is starting to make CM very unpleasant to play...<snip>... And if that doesn't work, I may decide to give up playing the game altogether.

Yikes! Don't do that, Michael! At worst, you just need to restart after playing CMBO or CMBB. Like I noted above, as long as I stay in either app, I can play without problems.

(Since my last post, I have found that the lag is still there, though it seems more random. Sometimes I've played several games and used other apps and have had no problems, while at other times the lag is back. I'm frankly baffled, but would be very interested to know how things worked if/when you do test your older video card.)