5870 crossfire crashing in Metro 2033

[twistedneck]

Anyone else have lockup issues with Metro 2033 runing 5870?

5870 crossifire at stock clocks. the game runs great with these options..

i7 -4.0
------------
1680x1050
all options on / maxed out except for DOF and 4x MSAA.
Advanced physx is on.

Card runs fine mid game, but at some points with huge action and massive explosions, i've seen fps hit 14 from a high over 70+, and then it usually locks up at that point- happens after a short time. thiss is rare but happened once with stock clocks. GPU's are less than 70C overclocked or not.

Overclocked to 1GHz the cards perform the same with much greater fps (ram left alone at 1200). Same thing - get a freeze up when there is a mega fps slowdown due to explosions and such.

the Physx did not hurt my fps at all, if anything it helped to offload the phyx to cpu. Similar thing happens on my 5970 - tends to lock up in metro 2033 after a bit - only when over clocked though.

Had my share of lock ups on BFBC2, but only when cranking the clocks up. The Metro seems to lock down on the 5870x2 stock clocks!

I also found out that it crashes less when i leave the fan on 52% and do not allow msi to adjust the fan. Dont know why.

 

[cadaveca]

Seems to me that VGA ram is overheating as the VGA's heatsink gets heat saturated. It's like the eqivalent of page faults is causing the crashes. Been watching log files, always have VPU recovery when this happens.

 

[twistedneck]

Seems to me that VGA ram is overheating as the VGA's heatsink gets heat saturated. It's like the eqivalent of page faults is causing the crashes. Been watching log files, always have VPU recovery when this happens.

Cadaveca, interesting it may be lack of cooling of the VGA ram. Any quick way to remedy it with stock heat sink / fan? I was considering getting the Arctic cooling products

http://www.arctic-cooling.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=2_&mID=379&language=en

however the GPU stayed nice and cool even at 1000MHz and i was not worried about it..

I'll also track the VGA ram temps now in GPU-z if thats possible, along with capturing the VPU recovery.

 

[cadaveca]

It's the only thing I can come up with..I mean, really, I'm grasping at straws here, as the only other option, to me, would be a mem leak, but I've noticed this problem on several apps, so it's not app specific...maybe driver has a mem leak...but I do not notice that sort of behavior, so with the addition of teh XFX RMA bios with higher gpu clocks, but lower mem clocks, has me looking to there as the source of the problem.

Interstingly enough, you say the 5970 is good @ 1000mhz mem, so this might be more in that direction as well, but I'm looking for the real 10.4 driver first to see if it fixes any of these problems....

If it is the gpu ram, it would explain why all the new revision cards don't have cooling appendages on the ram, just airflow, too.

I'm "jumping to conclusions" here though. I'm paying close attention to these issues, and tracking them, as I've not had a good experience with 5870's since October of last year...and I am now on my third set of cards.


I'm going to be adding the second 4GB of Dominator GT's to my rig shortly here(they FINALLY arrived, and I'm off to the store to get Stories from Liberty City after dropping my kids back at school; I pick them up every day to give them a hot lunch)...if it is a mem leak, this should prevent it from happening so often...

I'll keep ya posted with what I find...

 

[twistedneck]

It's the only thing I can come up with..I mean, really, I'm grasping at straws here, as the only other option, to me, would be a mem leak, but I've noticed this problem on several apps, so it's not app specific...maybe driver has a mem leak...but I do not notice that sort of behavior, so with the addition of teh XFX RMA bios with higher gpu clocks, but lower mem clocks, has me looking to there as the source of the problem.

Interstingly enough, you say the 5970 is good @ 1000mhz mem, so this might be more in that direction as well, but I'm looking for the real 10.4 driver first to see if it fixes any of these problems....

If it is the gpu ram, it would explain why all the new revision cards don't have cooling appendages on the ram, just airflow, too.

I'm "jumping to conclusions" here though. I'm paying close attention to these issues, and tracking them, as I've not had a good experience with 5870's since October of last year...and I am now on my third set of cards.


I'm going to be adding the second 4GB of Dominator GT's to my rig shortly here(they FINALLY arrived, and I'm off to the store to get Stories from Liberty City after dropping my kids back at school; I pick them up every day to give them a hot lunch)...if it is a mem leak, this should prevent it from happening so often...

I'll keep ya posted with what I find...

Please do.. maybe its just down to the fact that this game maxes out every aspect of these 5870's.. i definitly have way more crashing with the cf 5870's than the single on machine 5970 next to it. i was most surprised last night when she crashed during the total slowdown part of the game. it was 14fps and what froze on the screen was the beginning fireball for some huge explosion so there were a shit load of poly's flowing and computations going on. maybe i just have it turned up too high - spikes down to 14fps mean i'ts over taxed.

better memory on new cards, not surprsied! progress must go on..

let me know if the extra ram helps. wish i was picking up 4 gigs of that.

 

[OneMoar]

the game is written poorly thats your issue

 

[DannibusX]

Turn PhysX off, it's a nVidia thing. It won't work with your 5870.

 

[erocker]

The problem is x4 MSAA. It is broken with the 5 series in this game. Turn it to AAA, problem solved. PhysX runs off of the CPU in this game.

 

[ToTTenTranz]

The problem is x4 MSAA. It is broken with the 5 series in this game. Turn it to AAA, problem solved. PhysX runs off of the CPU in this game.

I'm pretty sure that Metro 2033 has hardware PhysX support.

PhysXInfo.com: Tell us a bit about hardware PhysX support in the game. Presence of appropriate Nvidia GPU will simply increase the fps numbers or add some exclusive effects ? Will GPU PhysX content have influence on gameplay ? Which advanced physics effects will be included ?

Yuriy: PhysX hardware acceleration capability of Nvidia GPUs will add performance in the first place. There are two physics modes in Metro 2033 – basic and so-called, “Advanced PhysX”, which will include both enhanced, more detailed effects from basic mode and some additional physics features. Advanced PhysX mode requires appropriate Nvidia GPU to run properly, meanwhile, it will not affect gameplay, just add some immersion.

Or engine support cloth and fluid simulation. By “fluid simulation” we imply various particles system, like lighter- and heavier-than-air gases, smoke, dust, debris from bullet hits, not only liquids.

Source.

 

[erocker]

I'm pretty sure that Metro 2033 has hardware PhysX support.



Source.

Aye. Well, it's still the x4 MSAA causing the problems.

*I played through the entire game with PhysX set to high. I got a lot of CPU usage from the game, I was just assuming the CPU was doing it.

 

[twistedneck]

Turn PhysX off, it's a nVidia thing. It won't work with your 5870.

Well, that fixed it. Runs fine overclocked now, no crashing! thanks very much DannibusX and everyone else who chimed in.

Aye. Well, it's still the x4 MSAA causing the problems.

*I played through the entire game with PhysX set to high. I got a lot of CPU usage from the game, I was just assuming the CPU was doing it.

Man i wish my PhysX would have worked.. i hate missing out on the good options. Update - it PhysX works fine on 5970 at 1000/1150 no problems totally stable and cool. Guess cpu and motherboard does not like physX - even at stock clocks

 

[ToTTenTranz]

Aye. Well, it's still the x4 MSAA causing the problems.

*I played through the entire game with PhysX set to high. I got a lot of CPU usage from the game, I was just assuming the CPU was doing it.

Yes, you can activate "Advanced PhysX" without a nVidia card, and it's quite effective actually (it uses all the cores).

But there's actually a "cosmetic" difference between using Advanced PhysX with and without a nVidia GPU:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmB4Z5xZkHI

 

[cadaveca]

Hmmm. So if it's Phys-X, why am I getting gpu driver failures?




Ugh...who cares...If I can play for more than 45 minutes, I'll be happy.

 

[DannibusX]

I'm happy I was able to help, I wasn't so sure when erocker said it was CPU PhysX. I had Advanced PhysX on for a little while when playing and I would get a red stripe crash with the faulty atidriver message in Win7. It worked itself out when I turned it off.

 

[cadaveca]

That's a stupid bug, TBH. CPU Phys-X shouldn't cause GPU crashes. Explains why I thought it was memory though...it's the shared memory that is the issue, not the vga memory.

 

[DannibusX]

Well, all the info that I can find on it says it uses GPU PhysX, but it's supposed to swap to multi-CPU PhysX if an nVidia GPU is not present. So yeah, it's a lame bug, but I don't think it's going to be fixed anytime soon.

 

[cadaveca]

Well, it seems that the gpu is stalling waiting for the cpu to complete the phys-X calcs...it IS swapping..I can see that in taskmanager the cpu load increases. In order for both cpu and gpu to work together rendering graphics w/Phys-X, they must have a shared cache they can both access. If these calcs are done on the gpu alone, there's no need for that shared buffer, and there's no conflict between who needs to do what, and when.

It's a very common problem, that, and really kinda does speak to poor quality control. Question is, is it the developer's implementation, or just Phys-X itself. If It's jsut Phys-X, we are not likely to get a fix, I think, unless ATI can fix this in driver...I dunno.

 

[DannibusX]

Hard to say whether it's just PhysX or the devs. I mean they spec sheet they released was fairly biased, lol.

Hell, it may be against their recommended specs to post problems with their games in a dedicated ATI subforum.

 

[cadaveca]

LOL. I guess we will have to wait and see.

And yeah, those specs were otu there...but that's why I bought it!

 

[twistedneck]

Anyone have a theory on why an i5/ 5970 is fine with Advanced Physx turned on but the CF i7 5870 crashes when the heavy physics really start?

 

[cadaveca]

Lower clockspeeds means that it would be waiting for cpu less, and thereby, less chance to stall out.