CMBB and CMAF freeze (have read troubleshooting but..)

[Euri]

I had the problem with CMBB but I decided to buy CMAF as, save for some furstrating issues like this, the game has no rival in its category.

THE PROBLEM:

Game freezes after a while it starts. Normally if I pass the first 20 minutes the chances of freezing are very low. Music still plays for a while and then the monitor sreen becomes totally corrupt and have to reboot.

I have read that turning Full screen AA off deals with the problem. The thing is I cannot find the option on the RADEON control panel (smartcard or elsewhere). I am currently with CAT 3.10 drivers which are very stable with all my other games and applications and am not very much motivated to update (after all the problem sees to have persisted with all past CAT versions).

I would appreciate your help.

I have a radeon 9700 pro on an Asus p4G8X deluxe with 512 memory.

[Euri]

I am on WIN XP home (english) - in case this is important

[Schrullenhaft]

I somewhat doubt that turning off antialiasing is going to fix your particular problem. By turning it off it does make for less work for the videocard, which could possibly lead to less heat generated by the videocard, but I'm not sure if that is the specific cause of your problem.

I'm not looking directly at a setup with a Radeon and some of the newer Cat drivers, but generally you should be able to find it here: go to Control Panels > Display control panel > Settings tab > Advanced button > in here should be some tabs that have the ATI logo on them. One of these will probably be labelled '3D'. In here select the 'Direct3D' dot-selector and click on the Custom button. In here you can select the check-box for "Application Preference", which will turn off antialiasing for CM (and most other games). You can also do the same for Anisotropic Filtering, which improves the images (possibly more than antialiasing), but puts a significant workload on the videocard.

Here's one article that covers these features from Tweaktown (the initial page may be a full screen ad - click on 'skip ad' in the upper right if this is the case):

(UBB is having some issues with the following URL, so you'll need to cut and paste it)

http://www.tweaktown.com/document.php?dType=review&dId=601

[ February 06, 2004, 02:55 PM: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ]

[savagegoose]

i have a similar problem, i have a geforce 4 and started with the missing graphics from multi player games , then read about the anti alaising problem and managed to turn my AA off and that problem was solved.

now while playing the game i will have the screen freeze up and it usually happens with a sound playing like an explosion. the whole machine locks up and needs rebooting.

this happens on cmak and cmbb.

my sound card is a SB 4.1 live windoze says all drivers are uptodate.

anyhow , ive set graphics to lowest prettiness ie no AA or anisotropic settings, i'll see how that goes.

i think my prob my be sound, tho the chip is same as the sb5.1 for sound card

[Schrullenhaft]

If your SB Live 5.1 has a driver with one of the following versions, then there is a 'hotfix' (dated 01/05/2004) available for download from Creative:

5.12.01.0290

5.12.01.0291

5.12.01.0296

This 'hotfix' only addresses a problem with audio syncronization with video in DVD playback. So more than likely it may not help with CM.

Otherwise the latest audio driver is dated 02/28/2003.

What motherboard do you have and have you installed chipset drivers for it (especially if it is a non-Intel chipset) ? Some motherboards have problems with PCI Latency and software patches have come out to help with that problem, though the problem usually manifests itself as a 'crackling' sound from audio playback of any source.

I'm not sure how well some SoundBlasters work with ACPI and the IRQ sharing that scheme enforces. Sometimes it may be a matter of what other PCI devices you have installed. Turning off ACPI isn't an option in many BIOSes now, but sometimes it is available. However turning it off can prove to be a big headache as devices are 'rediscovered' by Windows and have to be reinstalled and reconfigured (by Windows).

You can also experiment around with the audio settings in DirectX. Launch the DirectX Diagnostic (dxdiag at the Run line) and go to the Sound or Sound1 tab. Move the slider to the left for 'Hardware Sound Acceleration Level'. This may or may not require a restart. Reducing this level forces the CPU to do more of the work for processing audio, which is normally not a good thing, but it may result in a little more compatiblity.

[savagegoose]

ahh tks, not sure what the freezing is, i did see i gotta turn vid graphics back top minimum most things , to fix the no 2d graphics, then in chat someone said dont at+tab swap out o game till well into turn 1 and that seemed to fix the remnants of the 2d graphics probs i had.

im still runnin win 98 , buddy is tryin to convince me to upgrade to xp , ispose they may have most of the bugs ironed outa xp by now for it to be safe to get

[Schrullenhaft]

I wouldn't necessarily upgrade to WinXP with the expectation that your problems will go away. They may, since the XP OS is a bit more tighter in its control of drivers and their effect on OS stability, but it would only prove better for CM if the drivers for XP are better. Depending on the age of your hardware, XP may be a tad bit slower than Win98 on the same hardware. It does expect to have access to quite a bit of RAM (which you seem to have plenty of).

[didactylos]

Well I have the same 20 minute freeze and lock up on all the games. I have onboard Sis 7120 sound, and an Nvidia GeForce 4. All drivers are smack up to date. I am runninf v 1.1 of CMAK. I''ve tried the antialiasing stuff and nothing changes....... :mad:

[Schrullenhaft]

I suggest minimizing the number of applications and utilities that are running in the background while you run CM. In your case the videocard or CPU could be overheating (CM will push them both harder than most applications will). Perhaps taking off the case cover while playing and see if this helps.

There are no known memory leaks in CM, so a lockup after 20 minutes suggests that there is something else going on with your system.

If you are overclocking either your videocard or your CPU, you may have to 'down-clock' them back to stock speeds (or at least slower than they are set currently). CM seems quite touchy about videocards being overclocked. Not that it is impossible to overclock your videocard while running CM, it's just that CM will show problems sooner than most other games.