Intermittent Freezes? *UDPATE 8: Solution: Use Nvidia Beta Driver 169.28*

[fbh]

Hello,

I wish to report that I have the same issue, but NOT an 8800GT!

In the "Gateway" map, after playing it for a few minutes, I get a hiccup where the music keeps playing fine, yet, for 2-3 seconds i dont see myself move (no matter what i press) :P

Over at the Tracked Issues Thread (http://utforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=590466) this is mentioned to be an 8800GT bug only, but I do experience it on the 8800GTS (320MB) as well.

I am currently running the 169.12 Beta Drivers as I had no luck finding the 163.75 Drivers, and to be honest, I do refuse to downgrade my drivers and lose 10-15 FPS in Crysis for a bug in UT3 :P

Other Specs:

OS: Windows Vista 64 bit Ultimate
GPU: Nvidia 8800 GTS 320MB
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
RAM: 4GB Ram (OCZ, DDR2-800Mhz , 4-4-4-15)

I do have installed all the hotfixes recommended by nvidia (and those required by crysis for the ram) So yeah, I hope to see a fix or if possible, a post confirming that the issue is not specific to 8800GT cards :)

Thank you

Aye i know what you mean m8, i have same problem jsut stops complete pause for a few seconds but on server others still see me moving in my last known direction... which tends to be off side of the map. And i have a GTX.
163.75 DOES correct this but as u say its a hefty fps lose. I put these on from my normal 169.09 and lost at least 40fps at same detail in UT3.
Some maps jsut became low fps completly... so in end its 1 map compared to lower performance all round all games i play. Am mostly 1v1 or TDM player and gateway (thankfully) is never used so i reinstalled my 169.09's.

Tho am d/ling the new 169.13's for a test run now.
Strange tho how the newer beta introduce the problem, like they took out something that made it this way.

[UejYi]

Hi Kitch. We're working with NVIDIA on a driver solution for 8800GT card owners who can't use 163.75 (which typically fixes this issue). When we have a solution we'll update the tracking issues sticky thread in this forum.

Is NVIDA making a new driver for 8800gt cards? Not talking of remaking some of the crap they already say supports them, but A NEW DRIVER? I have posted and posted and posted in many forums aside from this one, and I am so far from being an nvidia or epic fan any longer. I have spent entirely too much money on this game, and hardware that should support it only to find that I have not one game of Unreal Tournament 3 with out some problem with tearing, hitches, or just simple stalling and crashes. This has been my first top of the line system, and i have put alot of time and effort these past 3 weeks to make this game run, so far, only for a headache and disappointment.

So what gives WarTourist? Are we ever going to see all of you companies that make this crap come together and fix our products? Or do we just entirely not get anything at all but a reciept for things that do not work, and have ZERO return policy....

[lopezd2]

Thanks EPIC for recognizing / reproducing the hitching with new nivida drivers which include the 8800GT.

Please keep us posted.

[Zoë(Co30)]

I haven't read through every page so I don't know if this has been posted, but... I was getting very bad stuttering and freezes, and I smoothed it out a bit by setting UT3 core affinity to 1 of my cores. What I found is that UT3 was using 85%-95% of both cores just being in the map, and as soon as another player appeared(bot or human) both cores would spike to 100% and I would get stuttering. I think UT3 was using all the cpu power, and when the system needed some resources, they weren't there for it. I still get momentary lag spikes, but they aren't nearly as bad as they were.

My specs:
Asus P5W DH Deluxe
E6600 @ 3.33ghz
Crucial Ballistix DDR2-713 4*1gb 4-4-4-12 2.1V
BFG 8800gt 720/953 169.02 drivers
xfi fatal1ty
Vista64

[CraiZE]

...*snip*... I have not one game of Unreal Tournament 3 with out some problem with tearing ...*snip*...

Ah, actually, the screen tearing is quite a normal thing. And, just like you, I do not accept it happening. However this is fixable and is not epics fault, nor nvidia's or anyone's really.

For a short explanation, screen tearing happens if your GPU has not completed rendering a frame, yet moves on to the next. depending where it "stopped" rendering the previous frame(s), you will see horizontal screen tearing. This is annoying, and I absolutely hate it - but its normal if you run the game without a framerate lock.

In order to ensure this doesn't happen, its quite easy! Enable V-sync. V-Sync assures each frame is fully rendered, and additionally locks the framerate to your monitors refresh rate.... while this has sometimes a significant impact on framerate, on systems like ours, it doesn't.

I would suggest you try it :)

[cel4145]

This has been my first top of the line system, and i have put alot of time and effort these past 3 weeks to make this game run, so far, only for a headache and disappointment.

It may not alleviate your pain, but it's to be expected that when you buy something as new as the 8800GT graphics card that driver support might not be perfect yet because the testing that companies do typically cannot anticipate all real world problems.

For instance, while my desktop system is not anything new in terms of hardware, I just got the new Asus Eee PC ultra mobile. It has a few quirks, but I try not to worry about them because I know that they'll be updated later on. Since it has been out less than month, I knew there would be some problems; to expect otherwise is to be naive. Whether one is willing or not to deal with those hassles should always be a part of the decision making process when buying newly released equipment built on brand new hardware platforms.

Sorry. But welcome to the world of purchasing cutting edge computer technology. Consider yourself having won the lottery if you ever get lucky and there are not any problems. LOL

[UejYi]

I appreciate what you guys are doing, but i would really get off on just an empy "we are looking into it" sort of thing. But I do hear you about the screen tearing, and enabling vsync. And through all of the tests and messages I have posted here, I would have thought I would have gotten some official response, here, and nvidia. But since these two companies like to use their message boards as user to user, and have the users do all of the troubleshooting for them, then what is the point of even asking for help at places like this. Present company excluded, but normally a response is usually a flame, or speculation because of this. I am just tired of this whole thing, and needed to vent. Why I chose here, thats not my business.

[kitch9]

Hi Kitch. We're working with NVIDIA on a driver solution for 8800GT card owners who can't use 163.75 (which typically fixes this issue). When we have a solution we'll update the tracking issues sticky thread in this forum.

Thanks Wartourist. I've been PC gaming for years, and I'm more than aware that teething troubles like this can happen.

I'm not too fussed. I know the Epic will sort it, their track record is second to none.

[CraiZE]

WarTourist, could you please update the tracked issues thread and include the 8800GTS and GTX? I've the 8800GTS and am experiencing the same issue as well as someone else here is using a GTX.

Aynone with this problem will be worried that if there will be a fix, it would only be for the 8800GT or worse, believes it only affects the 8800GT while it does indeed affect the GTS and GTX models aswell.

[m4tr1z]

I got same problems.... i tested XP PS2 169.02 no problems Vista Ultimate 32Bit 169.02 Game freezed after 20-25Mins Vista Ultimate 64Bit 169.02 Game freezed after 20-25Mins.
Tryed to install the 163.75 driver at XP vista 32/64Bit but i can't because it ends with an error "couldn't find comapible hardware..."
Someone with same prob. maybe tryed to boot with an other card like 8800GTX/Ultra install the 163.75 driver and change back to 8800GT ?
If not i ll try that today.
My System Config:
E6300 tested at Stock and OC'ed
4GB DDRII 1066 Patriot Memory / but tested 4GB DDRII 800 Microns too
8800GT 512MB Sparkle tested at Stock 600/1500/900 and OC'ed 700/1650/1000
BFG Ageia PhysX Card tested with and without it
Gigabyte N650SLI-DS4

[WarTourist]

WarTourist, could you please update the tracked issues thread and include the 8800GTS and GTX? I've the 8800GTS and am experiencing the same issue as well as someone else here is using a GTX.

Hi Craize. But those cards can use the 163.75 drivers which you confirmed addressed the hitching. NVIDIA is working on the hitching issue with the latest drivers and hopefully you soon won't have to make the tradeoff between frames and hitching.

[WarTourist]

I got same problems.... i tested XP PS2 169.02 no problems Vista Ultimate 32Bit 169.02 Game freezed after 20-25Mins Vista Ultimate 64Bit 169.02 Game freezed after 20-25Mins.
Tryed to install the 163.75 driver at XP vista 32/64Bit but i can't because it ends with an error "couldn't find comapible hardware..."
Someone with same prob. maybe tryed to boot with an other card like 8800GTX/Ultra install the 163.75 driver and change back to 8800GT ?
If not i ll try that today.
My System Config:
E6300 tested at Stock and OC'ed
4GB DDRII 1066 Patriot Memory / but tested 4GB DDRII 800 Microns too
8800GT 512MB Sparkle tested at Stock 600/1500/900 and OC'ed 700/1650/1000
BFG Ageia PhysX Card tested with and without it
Gigabyte N650SLI-DS4

Hi. 8800GT owners don't currently have a solution to the hitching since the only known fix is to install the 163.75 drivers, which don't support that card. We're working with NVIDIA on the issue.

[m4tr1z]

But it right that some 8800GT crad can install that driver and some not ? because if thats true the problem is maybe located at the bios of those cards. I ll try to flash an other bios to my card today and try to install again after that.

[WarTourist]

But it right that some 8800GT crad can install that driver and some not ? because if thats true the problem is maybe located at the bios of those cards. I ll try to flash an other bios to my card today and try to install again after that.

To the best of my knowledge no 8800GT card can use 163.75.

[wesolyNYC]

WarTourist, could you please update the tracked issues thread and include the 8800GTS and GTX? I've the 8800GTS and am experiencing the same issue as well as someone else here is using a GTX.

Aynone with this problem will be worried that if there will be a fix, it would only be for the 8800GT or worse, believes it only affects the 8800GT while it does indeed affect the GTS and GTX models aswell.

yeah true i've got evga 8800GTX superclocked tried everything, uninstalling video drivers with Driver Cleaner pro and reinstalling barnd new for my GTX. I have updated my game to beta patch 1.01. Tried to play on minimal settings, in windowed mode and nothing i think i will give up, i have the same problem with gears of war. Game freezes in 10-15 min. i dont even wait for BSOD, cus it ussually finish with it.

I have Asus M2N32 Sli deluxe MoBo
evga geforce 8800 GTX Superclocked
APEVIA ATX-PFC680W-BL ATX12V / EPS12V 680W Power Supply
Amd Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5200+ 2.61 Ghz
2 GB of Patriot Memory PC2-6400 800MHZ DDR2
Win XP professional with SP2

[WarTourist]

yeah true i've got evga 8800GTX superclocked tried everything, uninstalling video drivers with Driver Cleaner pro and reinstalling barnd new for my GTX. I have updated my game to beta patch 1.01. Tried to play on minimal settings, in windowed mode and nothing i think i will give up, i have the same problem with gears of war. Game freezes in 10-15 min. i dont even wait for BSOD, cus it ussually finish with it.

I have Asus M2N32 Sli deluxe MoBo
evga geforce 8800 GTX Superclocked
APEVIA ATX-PFC680W-BL ATX12V / EPS12V 680W Power Supply
Amd Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5200+ 2.61 Ghz
2 GB of Patriot Memory PC2-6400 800MHZ DDR2
Win XP professional with SP2

Hi WesolyNYC. This thread is covering hitching, but you sound like you're locking up or crashing after 10-15 minutes?

If so, have you tried the first two options in the stickied FAQ thread?

[AnubanUT2]

I am so happy to know that this is a known issue that is being worked on. I was really pounding my head against my table and really getting frustrated because nothing I tried (no drivers and not one of the 3 Epic beta patches have worked). I couldn't imagine Epic missing something like this and I am glad my faith paid off. Unfortunately for us 8800GT owners we get the best Nvidia card (price/performance wise with new G92 architecture) but it doesn't play as well as it should with UT3.

Wow. If I would have known that ahead of time I probably would have not gotten two 8800GTs but one Ultra instead. Darn it all. Oh well I can confirm that the latest Nvidia beta driver 169.13 DOES NOT resolve this issue. Torlan and Gateway still have long freezes (5-10 seconds) while several other maps pause for a split second so they are not annoying even when playing on higher skill levels. But playing Torlan and Gateway levels especially against adept and above bots is a lesson in patience at times. I really look forward to a solution and I know that one will eventually happen since this is a officially known issue.

Whew. Now I feel much better. Still I sure do wish I had at least a GTX then I really would be getting a great deal more enjoyment out of this game. Is this also tied to a wierd sound issue ... like there is some sort of "frequency" issue? Like a BUZZ sound ... its hard to explain but if you are hearing this happen from time to time in a map especially at the beginning of play and it sometimes gets better as time passes then you will know what I am talking about. I think the newest Nvidia beta drivers do help this issue a bit ... at least I wasn't hearing that wierd noise as much now (actually I didn't hear it at all when I was testing these 169.13 drivers out. I need to do more testing but hopefully that is sign that progress is made on Nvidia's side.

[wesolyNYC]

Hi WesolyNYC. This thread is covering hitching, but you sound like you're locking up or crashing after 10-15 minutes?

If so, have you tried the first two options in the stickied FAQ thread?

yes i have ! as a matter of fact I' m going to reinstall my WinXp today, hope this helps. :(

[m4tr1z]

yes XP will solve your problem i think :) but no dx10 at xp so :(

[jordie49221]

What about ATI users? Let's not be immature and say "oh ATI sucks, you deserve not to have this issue resolve bla bla bla"

I have a VisionTek ATI Radeon 2600 PCI-E pro and I'm also getting freezes at the "Gateway"

Please help us ATI users to enjoy and be happy with the games that we buy.

[WarTourist]

Hi guys. On the 2 minute slowdowns that recover slowdowns when standing in one spot we still can't duplicate this issue.

We'll continue to monitor this thread for new repro steps, but right we can't dupe this on any machine including dual core AMDs.

[WarTourist]

I have a VisionTek ATI Radeon 2600 PCI-E pro and I'm also getting freezes at the "Gateway"

Hi Jordie. Can you give me a rundown on this issue? Namely does it occur on other maps, are there regions of the map where it happens and others where it doesn't? Info on your hardware, OS and drivers would be useful.

[gwenthar]

Is this thread only for nvidia users cause quite frankly got an ati card and exactly the same problem.. the game online is unplayable like this.

Imagine deck duel 1 on 1..

screen pauses and ur down in the green goo again while 2 sec before u where on the sniper top..

it's really really annoying and unplayable if u got freezes like this every 2 minutes. The game becomes virtually unplayable cause 2 sec in unreal while ur fighting with someone is R.I.P.

Something really needs to be done about this.. i myself have tried every ati driver and with every driver it occurs.. with the latest driver i get hard freezes.. have to reset my whole computer.

I tried various ini tweaks.. and that didnt work also..

I tried switching to one core and that didnt work also.

Open ai i dont even have that kinda card. so basicly its already off..

I even tried reinstalling my whole operating system to see or it does the same on a clean system.. and the answer to that question is yes... yes it does.

Offline it doesnt happen offline everything is fluid.. so basicly to me its an error in the net coding i asume but what do i know..

The only thing i know its frustrating.. and not a lill bit but a lot this game has been out for 15 days now and people are running into this problem since day 1. theres been 51 pages of complaints and no solution yet.. so what gives.. are we supposed to play with this so called pause/lag/annoying spike of 2 sec every 2 minutes to increase the dificulty.. cause thats what it is.. basicly ever minute or 2 minute ur walking blindfolded uncontrollable into goo/off cliffs/in front of a darkwalker and basicly it Pi**es me off immensly. to see my game play getting ruined like this..

[WarTourist]

Is this thread only for nvidia users cause quite frankly got an ati card and exactly the same problem..

Hi gwenthar. Can you provide a rundown of your hardware, OS and driver versions? Concisely, you're hitching every 2 minutes or so only in multiplayer?


with the latest driver i get hard freezes

That's not good. Are you talking about 7.11?

[gwenthar]

Hi gwenthar. Can you provide a rundown of your hardware, OS and driver versions? Concisely, you're hitching every 2 minutes or so only in multiplayer?

yes i do well here you are.

Ati radeon 1950x pro 512 mb ( i know... but it should work shouldnt it.)
driver version 8.401.0.0 is 7.8 (seem to be most stable i tried every version there is including
the omega drivers.)
2 gig ram
c2d 6600
old sb live card (installs automaticly with xp plug and pray drivers)
320gig samsung hdd
asus p5b motherboard (chipset drivers updated as good as can be.)
os : xp pro *clean install)


And yes it only hitches in multiplayer but with every mode possible. The game basicly just pauses for 3 sec.. u see the last frame hanging for basicly 3 or 4 secs and then u can go further again with playing exactly in the place and the stance where u should have been if u were so stupid to go that direction aka in the goo/ off a cliff/ in front of a goliath.. and mostly death. well basicly try to run down with a flag like this and ur adreneline starts pumping immediatly cause u know it will happen and u can just pray it will happen in a good place..

And yea 7.11 gives hard freezes especially in dm- deck the older drivers don't they just give u hitches

[WarTourist]

And yea 7.11 gives hard freezes especially in dm- deck the older drivers don't they just give u hitches

Hi Gwenthar. What drivers are you currently using? Also, have you tried the first two options in the sticky FAQ thread (DX and clean boot)?

[gwenthar]

Hi Gwenthar. What drivers are you currently using? Also, have you tried the first two options in the sticky FAQ thread (DX and clean boot)?

I reinstalled my whole os.. think thats pretty clean.. and to follow that procedure that one goes only for nvidia cards.

The driver version im running now is 7.8

and the dx thing.. no idea what u mean by that tbh.. but if it has anything to do with open al and turning that off or turning off v sync or details of world/ players i tried that all. I always run everything in 1 / 1 anyways cause i think that plays best and gives the most clearness.

And thx for the fast replys i really apreciate it normally im not so short tempered but playing like this for a while really gets annoying.

[WarTourist]

I reinstalled my whole os.. think thats pretty clean.. and to follow that procedure that one goes only for nvidia cards.

The driver version im running now is 7.8

and the dx thing.. no idea what u mean by that tbh..

And thx for the fast replys i really apreciate it normally im not so short tempered but playing like this for a while really gets annoying.

Hi Gwenthar. You need at least the catalyst 7.9 drivers for ut3. Please detail your hardware and OS as well.

[gwenthar]

Hi Gwenthar. You need at least the catalyst 7.9 drivers for ut3. Please detail your hardware and OS as well.

well i tried 7.10 and 7.9 also and that basicly does the same thing.. 7.8 seems to run fine with ut 3 except for the hitches then

os is xp-pro with the latest updates.

sound card is pretty old sb live! microsoft certified driver.

Hdd is a 320gig samsung hdd.

ram i have no idea.. just know its 2 gig and never gave me any problems before. When i bought it 4 months ago i checked it for errors and found none.

Motherboard is a p5b wich never gave me any hassle before. I Immediatly went to asus site when i reinstalled my whole os to get the latest chipset drivers and installed those.

my internet is 12/1 mb and connected with a normal lan cable.

But gonna install 7.11 again and see what happens.. well i know what will happen but.. god speed ^^

7.11 does the same thing hitches also.

[jordie49221]

Hi Jordie. Can you give me a rundown on this issue? Namely does it occur on other maps, are there regions of the map where it happens and others where it doesn't? Info on your hardware, OS and drivers would be useful.

My computer specs are:

Windows XP(media center 2005)
Intel Core duo 2.13ghz
2gigs of ram
VisionTek Ati Radeon 2600 pro 512mb PCI-e
I'm using 7.10(tried drivers 7.9, 7.11; no luck)

It happens on any map at any given time. It also happens on campaign mode.

Please also fix the CPU usage for dual core users, the game tends to use 90%-95% and I have to manually set the affinity to 1 core for it to go down.

[rajput_warrior]

hey wartourist. good to see someone is finally responding. My system is as follows:

core 2 duo e6400 @ 2.4ghz
x1950 pro agp
2 gbs DDR2 Ram
250 gb 7200RPM main system drive

if i use catalyst drivers based on 7.10 (omegas) or ones from ati, i get decent framerates, actually runs pretty good but hitches like crazy. if i use the latest ones 7.11 the game barely hitches, but framerates are really bad. I just throw i would through my situation in there too. Thank you and hope to god someone is being resolved, i haven't played this game in a week :(


edit: oh yeah i did a clean install of windows xp pro when i bought this game

[{AW}IronMan]

I have found that all the new nvidia drivers reset gpu fanspeed periodically to low level overheating the video card and freezing and or crashing the game. My solution has been rivatuner http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?page=rivatuner and adjusting thre low level conrol of fanspeed to a higher speed. works for me.

[ZachE84]

Anything new? Many of us have had no luck.

[UejYi]

Hi guys. On the 2 minute slowdowns that recover slowdowns when standing in one spot we still can't duplicate this issue.

We'll continue to monitor this thread for new repro steps, but right we can't dupe this on any machine including dual core AMDs.

Well, this happened to me earlier. I was chasing some guy uphill in torlan, and once the yellow "protect your core" message occured (you know, when the enemy team builds your primary node) my game stalled, and did not come back for 30 seconds or so. Happens when I take flak to the face sometimes -and when I direct flak someone, and happened in manta a few times also.

[kitch9]

Guys,

New forceware 169.17 betas here:

http://www.electronicpunk.com/forceware/

They are beta so use at own risk...... I've heard these help with the issues, and are they are the next official release candidate. I'm at work so can anybody give these a go and report back?

[WarTourist]

Hi guys. NVIDIA can dupe the issue so I'm optimistic a solution will be found.

Thanks for the headsup Kitch. Anyone with NVIDIA hardware that is having the issue, please let us know if these help.

[WarTourist]

hey wartourist. good to see someone is finally responding. My system is as follows:

core 2 duo e6400 @ 2.4ghz
x1950 pro agp
2 gbs DDR2 Ram
250 gb 7200RPM main system drive

if i use catalyst drivers based on 7.10 (omegas) or ones from ati, i get decent framerates, actually runs pretty good but hitches like crazy. if i use the latest ones 7.11 the game barely hitches, but framerates are really bad. I just throw i would through my situation in there too. Thank you and hope to god someone is being resolved, i haven't played this game in a week :(


edit: oh yeah i did a clean install of windows xp pro when i bought this game

rajput: Can you try the clean boot and directx reinstall mentioned in the sticky FAQ thread and let me know if it makes a difference?

[Kaidence]

Guys,

New forceware 169.17 betas here:

http://www.electronicpunk.com/forceware/

They are beta so use at own risk...... I've heard these help with the issues, and are they are the next official release candidate. I'm at work so can anybody give these a go and report back?

These new drivers didn't fix the problem for me. I am running a 8800 Ultra on Windows Vista, and I have tried about everything in this thread as well. The issue applies to multiple games for me, like Team Fortress 2 as well. I don't think it's a UE3-problem. I certainly hope a fix will be made soon since Nvidia can dupe the problem - can't wait to properly play UT3 again.

[DeusGear]

These new drivers didn't fix the problem for me. I am running a 8800 Ultra on Windows Vista, and I have tried about everything in this thread as well. The issue applies to multiple games for me, like Team Fortress 2 as well. I don't think it's a UE3-problem. I certainly hope a fix will be made soon since Nvidia can dupe the problem - can't wait to properly play UT3 again.
I experience no such problem in any other game but UT3.

[N1K]

Hi all,

I've bought this game since I'm a big fan of it and do I have to say that I love it so much that I've bought myself a new PC so I can smoothly enjoy it.

I've played it for 2 days now and I can say that game rules, it runs flawlessly, but I've noticed intermittent freezes which happen every 10-20 seconds when game freezes for a second or two and then moves on. This is happening when I play Warfare Online.

I've also tried to play offline and get similar behaviour, at least at small maps.

My system is:

Asus P5E MBO
Intel Core Quad Q6600
4GB of Corsair XMS2 DHX, 800MHz RAM
XFX GeForce 8800GT, 600MHz, 512MB RAM
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate Edition x64
GPU Driver Version: 169.04
As I can see in this thread, this is a global problem, will it be fixed or do you have a solution that we can do for this?

Thx

[kitch9]

Gah, I still get the freezes with the 169.17's although they don't seem to be as frequent.

I didn't notice any sound distortions, and my computer will sleep now after playing.

A couple of steps in the right direction methinks!!

[WarTourist]

As I can see in this thread, this is a global problem, will it be fixed or do you have a solution that we can do for this?

Hi N1K. The issue is in part related to the 8800GT video card which can't use the 163.75 drivers where this issue doesn't occur. NVIDIA is aware of the issue and we're working together to get a resolution for owners of this hardware.

[DeusGear]

Hi N1K. The issue is in part related to the 8800GT video card which can't use the 163.75 drivers where this issue doesn't occur. NVIDIA is aware of the issue and we're working together to get a resolution for owners of this hardware.
Are we safe to assume that the GTS/GTX line will be included in the fix?

[WarTourist]

Are we safe to assume that the GTS/GTX line will be included in the fix?

Hi DeusGear. I'm not sure I understand. If you're having regular hitching across all maps on those cards you should use the 163.75 drivers.

[N1K]

Hi N1K. The issue is in part related to the 8800GT video card which can't use the 163.75 drivers where this issue doesn't occur. NVIDIA is aware of the issue and we're working together to get a resolution for owners of this hardware.

Hi WarTourist,

I'm aware that this is the new card from NVidia and that's probably why we're having issues with it.
Most important thing is that you guys are working together to find a solution for this..

BTW, when I played UT3 for the first time yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised with the fact that you guys did an awesome job in making this game.
I'm a big fan of UT series and practically don't play anything else besides this game, because I don't have much free time, so bonus DVD, which is the part of the Collectors edition pack was a bit emotional on me :D
I'm also sad that you didn't gave us keyring or something similar with this LIMITED Collectors Edition :)

[LeaderX]

Thanks for the info kitch. Didn't know that!

LeaderX: According to NVIDIA, the best drivers for that card are 169.02 ("WHQL Certified driver for GeForce 8800 GT GPUs." -nvidia site). When you say "The 169.02 and .12 don't work either", do you mean they hitch or you can't install at all? Does doing a 'clean boot' make a difference: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/815069?

Sorry War, was out of town.

Neither of the drivers work for me (meaning, I can't play UT3 at all... it locks up in the menu screen (complete freeze where my computer is unresponsive and I have to manually reboot the computer). I can use it for basic windows things like media player, movies, etc.) . I think I'm uninstalling the drivers correctly (through the control panel, then reboot, then run driver cleaner pro, then reboot in safe mode, run driver cleaner pro again, then reboot and install the driver, then reboot again).

And no matter what I do, my 8800GT still locks up as soon as it boots into UT3. I'm 99 percent sure its the card or the driver to the card because the game runs great with my 8600GTS and its associated driver.

I don't know if it works on any other game because I don't play any other game (besides ut99 and it runs fine with the 8800GT).

So, I've just been waiting on an updated driver from nVidia to see if that fixes it.

I'm gonna run through that link you posted and get back to you in this thread.

Edit: The clean boot and temp folder emptying (suggested by the Microsoft link) did not work for me either. :/ Guess its wait for nVidia or RMA the card.

[Cobbe1]

I just hope there's a solution soon. Right now I just can't play UT3! :(
Tried every fix suggested here plus some others but none of them work. I got the worst type of problem-full system locked up! Only way to get out of it is a hardrset.
Seeminly Epic is taking a look into this wide spread issue so I figure I'll post my system info. Mind you that this rig is a new build, only installed Crysis piror to installing UT3 and Crysis plys like a dream (even enabled the Vista DX10 effects).
When playing UT3 (before it lock up the system) Fraps report at over 100fps with all graphic set to max. And the freeze will happen somethime 5 minutes into the game, sometimes two rounds of VCTF and still fine but all of a sudden it froze. And it's the same for online and instant action.

Windows XP Pro SP2 with all patches and updates (brand new installation)
Intel C2D E6850 3.0 Ghz (no OC)
ZALMAN CNPS9700 CPU fan
Abit IN9 32Max MB- 680i chipset
G.Skill 4GB RAM (4x1GB) DDR2 PC6400 (no OC) CL5 Timing 5-5-5-15
XFX GeForce 8800 GT 512MB DDR3 Extreme (factory OC to 640MHz)
1 Seagate 320GB SATA Drive
ThermalTake Tought Power 750W PSU

PLZ! Epic and/or Nvidia, or somebody come up with a solution so that I can PLAY!!! :)

[WarTourist]

I just hope there's a solution soon. Right now I just can't play UT3! :(
Tried every fix suggested here plus some others but none of them work. I got the worst type of problem-full system locked up! Only way to get out of it is a hardrset.
Seeminly Epic is taking a look into this wide spread issue so I figure I'll post my system info. Mind you that this rig is a new build, only installed Crysis piror to installing UT3 and Crysis plys like a dream (even enabled the Vista DX10 effects).
When playing UT3 (before it lock up the system) Fraps report at over 100fps with all graphic set to max. And the freeze will happen somethime 5 minutes into the game, sometimes two rounds of VCTF and still fine but all of a sudden it froze. And it's the same for online and instant action.

Windows XP Pro SP2 with all patches and updates (brand new installation)
Intel C2D E6850 3.0 Ghz (no OC)
ZALMAN CNPS9700 CPU fan
Abit IN9 32Max MB- 680i chipset
G.Skill 4GB RAM (4x1GB) DDR2 PC6400 (no OC) CL5 Timing 5-5-5-15
XFX GeForce 8800 GT 512MB DDR3 Extreme (factory OC to 640MHz)
1 Seagate 320GB SATA Drive
ThermalTake Tought Power 750W PSU

PLZ! Epic and/or Nvidia, or somebody come up with a solution so that I can PLAY!!! :)

Hi Cobbe. This thread is detailing hitching. If you're locking up, that's a different issue than what is being discussed here.

I'd recommend running through at least the first two steps in the sticky FAQ thread and seeing if that makes any difference.

[DeusGear]

Hi DeusGear. I'm not sure I understand. If you're having regular hitching across all maps on those cards you should use the 163.75 drivers.
Yea but I'd rather use the newer beta drivers since they provide a nice performance boost across the board and especially in crysis. Since the problem is not native to the 8800 gt i was hoping the next beta would have the fix for GTS/GTX as well.

[Tides]

WarTourist: I have a question for you. I have an 8800 GTX on Vista 64 and I have the hitching problem as well. I realize I can go back to 163.75 to fix it, but if I do I cannot play Cysis at the smooth frames I can do with the latest betas. So is it safe for me to assume if the 8800 GT gets the fix in the drivers it should apply for all of us 8800 users?

[zer0kewl]

think i found a way to increase it well for me anyway
FoliageDrawRadiusMultiplier=6.000000
found in UTengine.ini basicly

default value 1.0000 i'm gessing the higher the more draw distance on it.
and especialy noticed tons freezed in torlan clasic basicly
so i'm gessing putting that to 0 basicly would maybe totaly eliminate freezes
well dunno just a gess

[peppybb]

yes i do well here you are.

Ati radeon 1950x pro 512 mb ( i know... but it should work shouldnt it.)
driver version 8.401.0.0 is 7.8 (seem to be most stable i tried every version there is including
the omega drivers.)
2 gig ram
c2d 6600
old sb live card (installs automaticly with xp plug and pray drivers)
320gig samsung hdd
asus p5b motherboard (chipset drivers updated as good as can be.)
os : xp pro *clean install)


And yes it only hitches in multiplayer but with every mode possible. The game basicly just pauses for 3 sec.. u see the last frame hanging for basicly 3 or 4 secs and then u can go further again with playing exactly in the place and the stance where u should have been if u were so stupid to go that direction aka in the goo/ off a cliff/ in front of a goliath.. and mostly death. well basicly try to run down with a flag like this and ur adreneline starts pumping immediatly cause u know it will happen and u can just pray it will happen in a good place..

And yea 7.11 gives hard freezes especially in dm- deck the older drivers don't they just give u hitches

Gwenthar, i dont have the hitches, i tried 7.8 to see if my deck lockups where cured but no, still locks up when dieing. I'm back to 7.11
Ow the thread to ati x19xx lockups on deck = http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=587272

[wesolyNYC]

Hi WesolyNYC. This thread is covering hitching, but you sound like you're locking up or crashing after 10-15 minutes?

If so, have you tried the first two options in the stickied FAQ thread?

Yeah i found solution to my problem. I've downloaded Rivatuner 2.04 and decreased core and memory clocks to 576mhz and 900mhz respectively, no more hangups Blue screens now not only UT3 works but also call of Duty 4 Gears of War, DiRT i think it was video card issue, but hey i had to underclock it :(, anyways better than nothing :rolleyes:

[cel4145]

Yeah i found solution to my problem. I've downloaded Rivatuner 2.04 and decreased core and memory clocks to 576mhz and 900mhz respectively, no more hangups Blue screens now not only UT3 works but also call of Duty 4 Gears of War, DiRT i think it was video card issue, but hey i had to underclock it :(, anyways better than nothing :rolleyes:

Actually, I wouldn't think of that as underclocking. I looked back at your previous post, and you have a EVGA 8800GTX superclocked edition, right? You've merely reset it to the 8800GTX reference board settings. So it's EVGA's faulty cooling assuming that you have good case cooling.

A fix for you: I just bought an MSI 8600GT superclocked for my son that had some problems reported by users similar to yours for other games. But then one user figured out that MSI was slopping too much thermal paste in between the GPU and the fan. The user cleaned the fan and chip and applied a little Arctic Silver, and the card ran correctly. So I went ahead and bought the card knowing I could easily do that. You might try the same.

Meanwhile, your experience does suggest that people with this particular set of problems using superclocked cards should try the reference design GPU and memory clock speeds in case of manufacturer hardware cooling issues.

[anthonyd]

Ok so there is problems with the nvidia's drivers. The 163.75 but not the 169.xx.
New drivers, named 169.17 were release today, is the bug still present with them ?

[N1K]

If someone with 8800GT has tried 169.17 version of drivers please drop a post :)

[DeV@oX]

why does evrything always have to be a problem with the drivers, i meen come on, why dosent any other game not work , i rest my case

[KentaroKaos]

why does evrything always have to be a problem with the drivers, i meen come on, why dosent any other game not work , i rest my case

You rest your case very poorly. Why do you think Crysis needs so many driver optimizations by NVidia? Different games require different tweaks.

[cel4145]

DeV@oX: Take a look at the release notes for the Nvidia 169 series drivers (http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_169.09.html) and you'll be amazed at how many fixes there are for particular games.

[LeaderX]

Tried the new drivers for (169.17 for XP x86 (32 bit)):

Did not resolve my locking up problem (which I think is different from hitching from what I gather from War).

But, some people here have been locking up, and here's what I learned from eVGA tech support over the last two weeks. One of the main causes could be insufficient power from your power supply. They had me download a program called speed fan:
http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

It will tell you if your 12V rail is degraded or not. Mine was sitting at 11.84 which they said could be causing lock ups. So, I bought a new power supply (800 Watt BFG). That did not fix my problem.
Another possible problem could be overheating. The obvious solution was is to increase fan speed.

Finally, when I told them that before locking up, the UT3 words in the menu screen would change from a legible word to some sort of hexadecimal crap, and the color when to like a Red, Blue, Green scale and, it became all pixilated: They said that is most likely the memory on the card that is bad.

The best way to tell is to run 3D Mark 06:
http://www.futuremark.com/products/3dmark06/

If it locks up during one of the testing screens, then it most likely the memory and you need to RMA the card. That's where I stand right now, as it did lock up in 3DMark for me during the dragon graphics test and the snow test.

I'll keep you guys posted if a new card fixes my problem. Should get here on Wednesday or Thursday.

[CuDa]

I have tried the new beta drivers 169.17, 169.13, I get freezes and mesh flickering with them both, but when I disable my SLI mode it works fine, the only drivers that work to the point of not haveing to much trouble in SLI is the 163.75 drivers. I still have some issues with 163.75 in SLI but not to bad, hopeing the next patch takes care of it.

AMD DUAL CORE
M2N-ESLI
2 EVGA 8800GTS
4 GBRAM
64 bit vista

[SDX]

bump

funny, if it really is just a display driver issue then Epic should update UT3 readme file with a line like "If it works, DO NOT update your drivers!" :D

[lapino]

Glad I found this thread, got the same problem. Game runs fine, but from time to time, I get pauzes that last a few seconds, game just halts doing whatever it was doing and then continues. Happens online and offline (but experience it more online, could be subjective).

[Sean*O]

Still stalled out here. Are we any closer to a patch, Epic?

Thanks!

[lapino]

Patch is out!

[kitch9]

Installed patch, started campaign, played for 2 mins....... Game hard locked for 10 secs, re-started playing then crashed to desktop.

I had installed Vista SP1 before that and the latest DX10.

I love UT but this is driving me insane!! Any news on what could be causing it?

[C18 Sirus]

i been haveing the same probs the game just didnt run right .exe error and freeze screen
i uninstalled the AGEIA drivers and the new nvidia whql drivers
i put in 169,17 drivers and patched up and its running sweet
just a shame i cant host as im getting a prob with con

[SDX]

OK latest update: NOTHING HELPS

I have Core2Duo 2GHz, GFM8600GT 256MB, 2GB RAM, Vista 32bit.

I have tried 163.75 driver after clean reinstall from safe mode, It does not help and does not overclock => useless

I have installed 1.1 patch, have Uninstalled Ageia Physyx driver (no changes at all) and now insalled latest beta - 169.17 driver (this one overclocks fine)

I still have intermittent freezes when game pauses for a few seconds and goes on on DM-Gateway as well as smaller but still very nasty freezes in other maps! BTW it happens even with world detail set to 1 when most effects are diabled.

I am a bit pissed of that on the " Tracked Issues" list it says that issues occur only on 8800GT and 169.xx drivers. WTF? Both different 8series GeForces (maybe other GFs too?) are affected as well as some problems with Radeons with ANY nVidiot drivers in most cases

[GregDude]

This issue happens to me also, well, the following issues happen:

1) Occasional short freeze for ~1 second. Very frequent in map Torlan.
2) Sound cuts out in campaign mission briefing (same as 1?)
3) Occasional mesh flicker, seems to depend on direction camera is facing.

System:
Vista 32 SP1 beta
Intel Q6600
nVidia 8800GT
4gb RAM
UT v1.1
nVidia driver v169.17
(Nothing overclocked, no custom config)

[WarTourist]

OK latest update: NOTHING HELPS

I have Core2Duo 2GHz, GFM8600GT 256MB, 2GB RAM, Vista 32bit.

I have tried 163.75 driver after clean reinstall from safe mode, It does not help and does not overclock => useless

I have installed 1.1 patch, have Uninstalled Ageia Physyx driver (no changes at all) and now insalled latest beta - 169.17 driver (this one overclocks fine)

I still have intermittent freezes when game pauses for a few seconds and goes on on DM-Gateway as well as smaller but still very nasty freezes in other maps! BTW it happens even with world detail set to 1 when most effects are diabled.

I am a bit pissed of that on the " Tracked Issues" list it says that issues occur only on 8800GT and 169.xx drivers. WTF? Both different 8series GeForces (maybe other GFs too?) are affected as well as some problems with Radeons with ANY nVidiot drivers in most cases

Hi SDX. Does this suggestion from the stickied faq thread help?

Hitching during gameplay on NVIDIA video cards:
Solution 1:
1) Go to My Documents\My Games\Unreal Tournament 3\UTGame
2) Open and edit the UTEngine.ini
3) Change UseMinimalNVIDIADriverShaderOptimizatio from False to True, and save the file.

The the best of my knowledge, on your hardware I've seen the suggestion above or the 163.75 drivers solve the issue. To be clear, I'm not talking about only hitching in DM-Gateway, which sounds map specific. This steps should address a universal hitching across all levels.

NVIDIA is still looking into why the 169.xx drivers have this hitching and the 163.75 don't.

[DeusGear]

nVIdia acknowledged the issue on page 5.... kinda
http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/169.21/169.21_WinVista_Forceware_Release_Notes.pdf
However it only mentions one map and they think it's an issue only on the GT when it's on all 8800 line of cards :/

[SDX]

yep, I tried that as well as almost all other tricks mentioned in the first 35 pages of this thread. I am quite sure that. I might try it again though, because of all the other tweaks I tried after that. And I think I have this "universal hitching" - at some moments framerate drops to 0 and then climbs up to normal (for example, stop => 3 => 13 => 22 => 35-50 fps) this happened even in map selection (main menu) before any level was loaded (I use "stat fps" all the time).

[Smit_X]

Guys i found that installing the dualcore fix from microsoft for windows XP fixed my problem,
*** KB896256 *** I tried all the tweaks,and tricks and what not but to no avail,this patch however fixed my problem instantly,it seams the U3 Engine might have some single/dual/quad core cpu issues...
_______________________
Q6600 @ 2.4Ghz,Asus EN8800GTX,Asus Commando Mobo,X-Fi Fatal1ty,2GB Corsair XMS2 DDR-800

[N1K]

This issue happens to me also, well, the following issues happen:

1) Occasional short freeze for ~1 second. Very frequent in map Torlan.
2) Sound cuts out in campaign mission briefing (same as 1?)
3) Occasional mesh flicker, seems to depend on direction camera is facing.

System:
Vista 32 SP1 beta
Intel Q6600
nVidia 8800GT
4gb RAM
UT v1.1
nVidia driver v169.17
(Nothing overclocked, no custom config)

Same problems here, same system too, only x64 version of Vista..

[WarTourist]

Guys i found that installing the dualcore fix from microsoft for windows XP fixed my problem,
*** KB896256 *** I tried all the tweaks,and tricks and what not but to no avail,this patch however fixed my problem instantly,it seams the U3 Engine might have some single/dual/quad core cpu issues...
_______________________
Q6600 @ 2.4Ghz,Asus EN8800GTX,Asus Commando Mobo,X-Fi Fatal1ty,2GB Corsair XMS2 DDR-800

Awesome! Added to the FAQ! Thanks!

[kitch9]

The new 169.21's have fixed the problem......

Can't force AA anymore though. I'm guessing Epic have asked Nvidia to stop forcing it on UE3 games.....

[anthonyd]

Well, installed 169.21 and freezes are incoming, no fix here (7800GS) ...

[Eurynomos]

I just started having this problem, just installed the 169.21 drivers, didn't have it before on the non beta driver, 165.75. Think I'll be reverting back now, thanks nvidia for wasting my time!
8800 gtx Sli
680i sli
4gb ocz dr2
vista 64
q6600

[raahness]

169.21s didn't help.

8800 GT
Vista 64

Were they even supposed to?

[WarTourist]

Were they even supposed to?

No, they addressed world mesh flickering some users experienced. NVIDIA is still working on the hitching issue on 8800GTs and drivers after 163.75.

[kitch9]

No, they addressed world mesh flickering some users experienced. NVIDIA is still working on the hitching issue on 8800GTs and drivers after 163.75.


I've fixed mine I think. I've installed SP1 for Vista 64, installed 169.21 forcewares,(No AA now though :confused:) installed latest version of OpenAL from their website. Copied OpenAL32.dll and Wrap_oal.dll from my system32 folder to UT3 binaries folder and viola!!

No hitches,(Or AA!:confused:) crashes or sound distortions.

Hope this is it for me now. Game on!!:D

[msny]

I've downloaded the latest nVidia 169.21 drivers for Vista32.

Big mistake, my hitching is back worse then ever. I now get short freezes and pauses, like i'm stuck on something for a split second and can't move.

I'm gonna roll back to 169.2 where I was before.

[KentaroKaos]

Yeah, it's performing worse than EVER on Vista now. HORRIBLE hitching, framerate slowdowns, and yeah, the freezes are still there.

No problems at all with XP version.

[msny]

Yeah, it's performing worse than EVER on Vista now. HORRIBLE hitching, framerate slowdowns, and yeah, the freezes are still there.

No problems at all with XP version.

OK I fixed my hitching with the 169.21 drivers Vista32. Smooth as silk now.

I uninstalled them and then ran Drive Sweeper to get
any old remnants of previous version. Then reinstalled them, now there sweet.

http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?page=driversweeper

I beleive these drivers make UT3 even look better.

[Resin252]

I've fixed mine I think. I've installed SP1 for Vista 64, installed 169.21 forcewares,(No AA now though :confused:) installed latest version of OpenAL from their website. Copied OpenAL32.dll and Wrap_oal.dll from my system32 folder to UT3 binaries folder and viola!!

No hitches,(Or AA!:confused:) crashes or sound distortions.

Hope this is it for me now. Game on!!:D

Wondering if anyone else has tried this and had their hitching issue fixed.

[KentaroKaos]

OK I fixed my hitching with the 169.21 drivers Vista32. Smooth as silk now.

I uninstalled them and then ran Drive Sweeper to get
any old remnants of previous version. Then reinstalled them, now there sweet.

http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?page=driversweeper

I beleive these drivers make UT3 even look better.

I clean installed these drivers. Did a driversweep in safe mode, even. Performs horribly for me.

[JuGGs]

Hey everyone, recently bought both UT3 and crysis, let me just say first off that i'm fairly noob with all things computers :P, but have been experiencing both hitching and total freezes resulting in hard reboots, during both online gameplay involving opponents (it seems fine if it's just me running around like an idiot by myself), as well as in the campaign mode. More often than not, it totally freezes as opposed to hitching.

Now i have read a fair bit on here and on the nvidia forums concearning the 8 series cards but am unsure how to proceed as there are various trouble shooting tips thruout this thread. As of now i'm paying attention to a point made by this solution from WarTourist in the FAQ section :

Hitching during gameplay on NVIDIA video cards:
Solution 1:
1) Go to My Documents\My Games\Unreal Tournament 3\UTGame
2) Open and edit the UTEngine.ini
3) Change UseMinimalNVIDIADriverShaderOptimizatio from False to True, and save the file.
Solution 2:
1) If you're on a multi-core CPU and WindowXP sp2, this knowledge base article may help: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896256.

Solution 2:
1) Install the 163.75 drivers from the NVIDIA website. These drivers are not available for 8800GT video cards and we are working with NVIDIA on a solution for customers with this hardware.

The point being that i can't even try the 163.75 drivers as i have a GT so while under solution 1 i had previously done #1, and did #3 upon reading this, i'm stuck with the 169... drivers.
So is that it for me? Am i in a waiting game untill epic and nvidia bring out the 163. drivers for the GT , or am i gonna run into more issues as it's seems not limited to just someone with my personal specs?
Please help with this as, it's incredably frustrating and annoying that i had a pc built specifically for UT3 and now i can't play it for more than 5 mins.
Cheers everyone, i hope we all have solutions soon.
JuGGs

[jiiihaad]

OK I fixed my hitching with the 169.21 drivers Vista32. Smooth as silk now.

I uninstalled them and then ran Drive Sweeper to get
any old remnants of previous version. Then reinstalled them, now there sweet.

http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?page=driversweeper

I believe these drivers make UT3 even look better.

Didn't work for me. :confused:
Actually it got worse and I have to downgrade to 169.02. :(

Well, nice to know that someone is working on this problem.

[geto]

I had same sort freezing problems in CSS, too. Try this: Start -> Run -> type: dxdiag -> Sound 1 -> No hardware acceleration. Not sure if this helps in UT3 but give a try.

[Grisu]

Hitching for me as well. 169.25 Beta drivers. This is NOT only a 8800GT issue!

[SkunkSir]

might help some people but allot of my issues where sorted out after i updated my bios,

[Momo]

hmmm.... i have a ASUS P5W DH Deluxe with a rather old BIOS Version.. but im not sure if i should update it, im afraid it can destroy my 3 x RAID0 setup :/
since i dont know if it updates the RAID bios..

[msny]

Hey everyone, recently bought both UT3 and crysis, let me just say first off that i'm fairly noob with all things computers :P, but have been experiencing both hitching and total freezes resulting in hard reboots, during both online gameplay involving opponents (it seems fine if it's just me running around like an idiot by myself), as well as in the campaign mode. More often than not, it totally freezes as opposed to hitching.

Now i have read a fair bit on here and on the nvidia forums concearning the 8 series cards but am unsure how to proceed as there are various trouble shooting tips thruout this thread. As of now i'm paying attention to a point made by this solution from WarTourist in the FAQ section :

Hitching during gameplay on NVIDIA video cards:
Solution 1:
1) Go to My Documents\My Games\Unreal Tournament 3\UTGame
2) Open and edit the UTEngine.ini
3) Change UseMinimalNVIDIADriverShaderOptimizatio from False to True, and save the file.
Solution 2:
1) If you're on a multi-core CPU and WindowXP sp2, this knowledge base article may help: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896256.

Solution 2:
1) Install the 163.75 drivers from the NVIDIA website. These drivers are not available for 8800GT video cards and we are working with NVIDIA on a solution for customers with this hardware.

The point being that i can't even try the 163.75 drivers as i have a GT so while under solution 1 i had previously done #1, and did #3 upon reading this, i'm stuck with the 169... drivers.
So is that it for me? Am i in a waiting game untill epic and nvidia bring out the 163. drivers for the GT , or am i gonna run into more issues as it's seems not limited to just someone with my personal specs?
Please help with this as, it's incredably frustrating and annoying that i had a pc built specifically for UT3 and now i can't play it for more than 5 mins.
Cheers everyone, i hope we all have solutions soon.
JuGGs


Well most of us have been around that solution and it flat out does not work....next!

[zer0kewl]

No, they addressed world mesh flickering some users experienced. NVIDIA is still working on the hitching issue on 8800GTs and drivers after 163.75.


its on all nvidia cards 7x00 and 8x00 series any newer then 163.75 atleast

for most have to choose between 1 poor fps
no freezing
flickering issues

or no flickering
better fps
freezes aka hitching issues

[LeaderX]

My new card came today and fixed my problem. My game was locking up because the memory on my 8800GT was bad.

Runs smooth now with the 169.17 drivers installed.

[seicer]

Installed 169.21 and reduced the freezing to at most one second per every 45-60 seconds, down from three to four seconds per every 45-60 seconds. Will continue to tweak.

Tried "-onethread" which resulted in three to four second hitching issues.

I'm using a Geforce 7600 GS (will upgrade soon), 4 GB mem., Intel E6400 2.13 GHZ Core-2 Duo, etc. for specs.

[cel4145]

Here's something to try. Over in the Weird FPS Drops / Poor performance thread (http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=586465) (see the last few pages), we've discovered a few very strange things that might be impacting performance for the issues here. One of the weirdest is that the low FPS drops in maps that many people get (such as near the goo pool in Deck) is not CPU bound; a couple of us found out that those FPS remained the same when a CPU is grossly underclocked. That led to another discovery that perhaps UT3 has something funky going on with BSP because the user contributed maps, such as Krodan (http://download.beyondunreal.com/fileworks.php/mods/dm-krodan.zip), which all are built from meshes instead of using BSP, are giving excellent consistent FPS without slow downs.

I'd suggest trying Krodan or another map and seeing if your problem goes away. If so, that means that some of the intermittent freeze problems might be related to whatever bug or poor optimization is causing the slow FPS. Wouldn't be a solution, but at least a step closer to narrowing in on where the problem might be.

[CuDa]

kinda starting to feel like a lab rat.....I love the game but dam this is getting frustrating, kinda wierd that we have to tweak this and that just to play it,

[Ultron]

One thing to keep in mind the base world geometry is naturally going to be built from BSP - there is no way around it. But reducing the amount of BSP used in maps can help with CPU-based issues. BSP is essentially world geometry. If you could reduce the amount of those polygons you are rendering, you can improve your framerates and reduce CPU usage. Meshes can be much more detailed and complex (in terms of polygons that can be rendered) because the GPU does that rendering.

Bottom line is we're seeing a CPU-based issue of some sort.

Another thing, a lot of us aren't having those problems, so it's a unique problem, and probably not one that cropped up in Epic's testing. :)

[xi0s]

I wonder if hyper-threading combined with UT3 combined with nvidia altogether creates some sort of Gordian Knot. :P

[cel4145]

One thing to keep in mind the base world geometry is naturally going to be built from BSP - there is no way around it. . . .Bottom line is we're seeing a CPU-based issue of some sort.
But in the case of very poor FPS, it seems GPU dependent. If someone can successfully underclock the machine, and there is not a discernible drop in FPS for a particular part of the map, that would indicate that there might be a GPU related hang up, where the CPU is waiting for some kind of timeout or set number of GPU clock cycles to correctly execute something.

I just don't know enough about how the GPU and CPU are working together, but as a theoretical example, perhaps some kind of GPU memory cache is getting full and not clearing properly until a global timeout occurs. Or the GPU is locked up some other way. So the CPU keeps trying and trying to execute a set of instructions and send data to the GPU, but keeps defaulting back because the GPU can't accept the data for a set period of GPU clock cycles.

[Ultron]

I see what you're saying. I'm just coming to the conclusion that most of the performance errors at this point are CPU-related, if someone does all the troubleshooting options that have been suggested in this forum, and any hitching/sudden FPS dropping is still occuring. My eye is on the threads being rendered since these things only seem to be occuring on multi-core PC's now.

Time will tell. :)

[Resin252]

Just ran UT3 with the beta 169.25 drivers. The hitching is still there but a bit less frequent than the 169.21 version.

Nvidia is getting closer with each driver release.

Asus P5GC-MX motherboard
Intel Pentium D 3ghz Processor
2GB DDR2 ram@ 533 mhz
XFX GeForce 8600 GT Pci-E "XXX" 256MB edition
Seagate Baracuda 500 GB SATA II HD
Windows Vista Home 32bit / Service Pack 1 (RC)

Getting good performance in UT3 even with 5/5 graphic options enabled.

[CuDa]

I did some of Ultron tweaks for the nivida cards, the freezing is not as bad... but still there 2 or 3 per game, instead of 5 to 6, looks like alot of peeps are having this problem, got to be a game thing, hopefuly it will be fixed with the next patch.

AMD Dual core
ASUS m2n-esli
2 evga 8800 gts 320s in sli
4gb ram
win 64 vista.

[AnubanUT2]

Well I still have the problem ... the game will just freeze for a second and then I am right back into the action but the issue is I am not in the same place or the bot has moved and I am now a sitting duck. Also the issue is still really bad on Torlan maps and on DM-Gateway (but on Gateway the freezing only occurs in the tropical/primordial area) where the game will freeze for up to 20 seconds ... imagine how much that throws gameplay off :(. And this is after I installed the Vista SP1 RC1 update. I am not using the 169.25 since they completely break AA and there are some issues with SLI (the profile no longer says custom but instead says Single GPU) so for now I just play certain DM maps which kind of bites since as much as I enjoy the game I am starting to get bored seeing the levels over and over. I know this is OT but is there a VCTF map converter yet (one that converts Warfare maps to VCTF maps)?

[Grisu]

Might these freezes be releated to UT3 streaming technology? Like waiting for the HDD.

[rockerz]

guys i am also using q6600
4gig
935 se asus
x-fi

i play ut3 prostreet fifa 08 - and even do few task at same time i get freezed
and go to safe mode
i think this is vista prob

before amd 3200 i play ut3 and above games no problem

[Ultron]

I'm thinking that. But it's a bit outside of my range of knowledge, so I could be wrong. Pure guesswork at this point, on my end.

[rockerz]

I think is q6600 prob

[Resin252]

Might these freezes be releated to UT3 streaming technology? Like waiting for the HDD.


Nope.
Using the 163.75 Nvidia drivers there is no hitching issues at all, but the world flickering problem rears its ugly head.

Using the 169.25 drivers there is no world flickering, but slight hitches during gameplay. A reasonable tradeoff for now to actually "see" the game.

[msny]

Nope.
Using the 163.75 Nvidia drivers there is no hitching issues at all, but the world flickering problem rears its ugly head.

Using the 169.25 drivers there is no world flickering, but slight hitches during gameplay. A reasonable tradeoff for now to actually "see" the game.

I got the hitching also when I upgraded to 169.25 but fixed it. Try this, uninstall them completly. Get a program called Drive Sweeper and run it against the driver type you have. Do this in safe mode (F8). Reboot and reinstall 169.25.

When I did this the next time I played the hitching was gone. It may be leaving some remnamts behind.

http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?page=driversweeper

[FireFly^]

i have helped to my friend who has a Q6600 processor and we realized that many of the guys who has this bug has the Q6600 i told him to set the Affinity ( which can be set at ctrl+alt+del right click on ut3 while running and set affinity ) hes running his 0.core and 1. core and we disabled the 2. and 3. core so the game runs on 2 proc cores try this it worked for us no more freeze here...

[FireFly^]

u have to set this everytime u start the game!!!

[FireFly^]

PS: the bug happens mostly of the times on intel processors its some kind of software bug it cant syncronize the processors?... dont know it... if someone have the bug with dual core then try to set to one core only! maybe works dont know

[BuckoA51]

Well I'm getting freezing all the time, not impressed Epic, I thought you said in your little book in the special edition box that you didn't release games until they were finished? I just played Bioshock on this rig and it never froze once.

Sometimes it freezes and I have to hard reset, other times it freezes then un-freezes but the framerate then drops right down. I've tried doing the driver clean thing, I've also tried the hotfix mentioned and also installed the latest patch, still the game keeps locking up.

Im on Windows XP (*NOT* Vista) SP2 with 2GB ram and AMD Dual Core CPU 4800 on a Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 Socket 939 motherboard, BFG 7900 GTX graphics card, Sound Blaster Audigy 2ZS sound card.

[FireFly^]

if it freezes on a FULLY different config not like others ... intel proc-s then maybe u have some driver uncompatibility my config is: asus m2n-e, gigabyte 7950gx2,4x512 kingmax 800mhz , integrated soundcard and athlon 64x2 5200+ ( random errors then? ) dont think so its some software problems i bet!

[BuckoA51]

Sorry Firefly barely understood a word of that !

[FireFly^]

sorry let me edit it :) if it freezes on a different config. most of other guys here with the problem has intel processor , then maybe u have some driver uncompatibility ... my config is: asus m2n-e, gigabyte 7950gx2,4x512 kingmax 800mhz , integrated soundcard and athlon 64x2 5200+ ( random errors then? ) dont think so i bet it will be some software problem it can be fixed by a patch i think sorry for my english sometimes i write stupid things:p

[BuckoA51]

Well my friend who has Intel Dual core CPU and Windows Vista says the game runs fine! Plus all my other games work too, so I don't know what the problem is.

[FireFly^]

i said it must be some software problem m8 the error comes on random rig-s

[iNFLUENCE]

Just wanted to say Update 7 worked for me, no more studdering! I'm running Vista 64, latest drivers for everything on a Gigabyte mobo and have a 8600 GTS:

- Download latest *beta* ForceWare 169.25
- Download and install Driver Cleaner
- Uninstall current nVidia drivers via Programs and Features in the Control Panel
- Reboot into Safe Mode
- Run Driver Cleaner and check the log. Make sure it says it removed the files because there are many files left over in c:\windows\system32 even after the nVidia uninstall.
- Reboot as normal, install newest ForceWare, reboot.
- Play UT3

[rockerz]

Just wanted to say Update 7 worked for me, no more studdering! I'm running Vista 64, latest drivers for everything on a Gigabyte mobo and have a 8600 GTS:

- Download latest *beta* ForceWare 169.25
- Download and install Driver Cleaner
- Uninstall current nVidia drivers via Programs and Features in the Control Panel
- Reboot into Safe Mode
- Run Driver Cleaner and check the log. Make sure it says it removed the files because there are many files left over in c:\windows\system32 even after the nVidia uninstall.
- Reboot as normal, install newest ForceWare, reboot.
- Play UT3


are you using 2 core q6600
my computer new just build
and i have this problem in any games i play

restart happen when cpu overheat
i think 1 of the core have a problem
i cannoy use my computer more than 1 hour
its restart
games for 5 minutes

this is intel problem
and they lie to the world
c2 q6600 is good
its worst then amd 3200 my old comp

[rockerz]

i have helped to my friend who has a Q6600 processor and we realized that many of the guys who has this bug has the Q6600 i told him to set the Affinity ( which can be set at ctrl+alt+del right click on ut3 while running and set affinity ) hes running his 0.core and 1. core and we disabled the 2. and 3. core so the game runs on 2 proc cores try this it worked for us no more freeze here...

how to do this

[GregDude]

i have helped to my friend who has a Q6600 processor and we realized that many of the guys who has this bug has the Q6600 i told him to set the Affinity ( which can be set at ctrl+alt+del right click on ut3 while running and set affinity ) hes running his 0.core and 1. core and we disabled the 2. and 3. core so the game runs on 2 proc cores try this it worked for us no more freeze here...
Just tried here. Didn't help. I tried 1 core only also. Q6600 + Vista here. Had to run in a window to easily switch to Task Manager to perform the change.

[Teddie]

I'm going to try the Update #7 one...

I've got the hitching (random 5-10 second pauses).

8800GTS 640mb
amd x2 4600
2 gb mem

I'm going to try using the Driver Sweeper someone mentioned earlier.

Wish me luck.

Thanks for this helpful thread, guys.

Teddie

[GregDude]

Some things I've tried so far:

o Run in window
o Update Audio Driver (Realtek onboard latest update)
o Run without sound (modded .ini since -nosound didn't work)
o Update video driver (and down grade driver)
o Use OpenAL
o Change .ini to PumpWindowMessagesWhenRenderThreadStalled=True
o Set CPU Affinity on .exe via Task Manager

No solution so far to in game freezes or Campaign briefings. Game is barely playable in maps like Torlan. Just too frustrating.

[CuDa]

I am going to wait till epic fixes it, hope they hurry....

[Teddie]

Ok. Just got back from testing. Solution #7 worked for me. Thanks!

8800GTS 640mb
amd x2 4600
2 gb mem
Vista 64

I used Driver Sweeper...

Teddie

[FireFly^]

Rockerz:

open the window with CTRL+ALT+DEL and right click on ut3.exe at the processes and SET AFFINITY then set it to only run on 2 core-s maybe works...

[Tweakd]

Am i the only person that can't get rid of the problem? Sol #7 has worked for me but only for a few days, then i get random freezes again. It's really strange. This will be something like my 8th reinstallation of the 163.75 drivers and i know it will be fine for at least two more days. But inevitably it will be back. Very odd idd.

[CuDa]

Am i the only person that can't get rid of the problem? Sol #7 has worked for me but only for a few days, then i get random freezes again. It's really strange. This will be something like my 8th reinstallation of the 163.75 drivers and i know it will be fine for at least two more days. But inevitably it will be back. Very odd idd.


no your not the only one, I have done it all to... I really believe this is a game problem, not a driver problem but I am no wiz at this stuff.

I am Still getting freezing with the 169.25....

[lopezd2]

Yeap. Same Here. I have tried 169.25 with 8800GT in SLI and have really bad hitching problems still. I hope this gets fixed soon in ethier nvidia driver patch or in unreal engine 3.

WarTurist any updates from EPIC / Nividia if this issue is still being worked?
I did not see it mentioned in the 169.25 as an open issue / bug with Nvidia Driver Release Notes.

[Ultron]

Turn off SLI, or set it to AFR2. Failing that look in my tweaks thread in my sig and see if any of those things apply to you, from using the -onethread option to setting affinity to one core, etc.

[CuDa]

Thanks for all your help Ultron, but I am really getting burned out on trying to tweak this and adjust that, I dont get it, I think some one from epic needs to resolve this in a patch, we paid them for the game they should be fixing it, I cant spend 2 to 3 hours a day trying to get a game to run right. Things just should not be that way.

sry for the vent but I am getting........

[Sean*O]

I am over this. I have had the game since November 24 and have not once ever successfully started a game. It's not my system, everything else works fine and I often stress my gear with loads way beyond what UT3 would be throwing at it.

I just installed the latest patch (1.1 official) and it was running smooth in the settings menu, then when I LOWERED some of the detail settings, it said "you may have to restart for some changes to take effect" and then it crashed.

Then when I launched it again, it was back to the same old 'freeze up during the splash screens and then crash to the desktop' routine. It's nonsense, and I have waited long enough for Epic to address the issues and provide a proper fix.

Look at all of the problems in this thread... look at how people are tying themselves into knots just trying to make this one piece of code run properly on their otherwise functional systems.

This game is going back to the store, and I am getting a refund. There is more than enough evidence in this forum to support returning this product as defective.

I love the UT series but I have had enough of this. Good luck to the rest of you.

[stallinggame]

Currently:

Windows XP SP2, 4 GB (3.5GB) RAM interleaved
Video card: Asus EN8600GTS (Nvidia 8600 GTS), ForceWare 169.21
Processor: Intel quad core 2.4ghz
Motherboard: Gigabyte P35C-DS3R
Sound: Integrated Realtek (latest drivers)

Post-install, UT3 would stutter and stall every few seconds. Completely unplayable.

I have followed steps outlined in this thread and others to completely remove graphics and sound drivers. I have, within windows safe mode, uninstalled drivers, rebooted, run driver cleaner, run driver sweeper, rebooted, run sweeper/cleaner a second time, etc. I have tried several versions of Nvidia drivers as well as Realtek drivers.

The best I am seeing is on a FRESH boot, without running any other programs, I can launch UT3 and play for hours.

Attempting to Alt+tab or exiting the game and launching the game again both result in stutters and stalling from that point forward.

I am convinced this is not a problem with the drivers, but with how Epic is making use of them. I am very disappointed to see UT3 in such a state of suck. The last couple Unreal games passed me by unnoticed but I was really hoping I'd enjoy this one.

It's quite apparent, both from these threads and from the players who HAVEN'T MADE IT ONTO ANY SERVERS that MANY PEOPLE ARE SUFFERING FROM THESE STUTTERING AND STALLING PROBLEMS.

Please Epic. Take some F'n responsibility. I would rather have my $50 back than have to reboot my computer every time I want to play a game.

Yours truly

Stallinggame

[lopezd2]

Ultron, Thanks for the feedback but the hitching issue occurs with SLI disabled as well. This is an ongoing 8800 GT issue with ethier Nvidia Drivers and Unreal Engine 3.

I would like to too if anyone with the new 512 8800 GTS cards are having this issue as well or if its 8800 GT only.

[CuDa]

I have the 8800 gts 320s, same stuff happening as well

[Resin252]

I'm going to have to say that it's a driver issue on the 8xxx series of cards.
The 163.75 drivers had NO hitching issues at all. Framerate was a little slow and the world flickering problem was in full force with those.
169.21 drivers eliminated the world flickering problem (thank you!) but the whole 169.xx set has the hitching issues.

Uninstal Nvidia drivers and run Driver Sweeper in safe mode then reinstall drivers?
Done that many times.

UTEngine.ini tweaking?
Yep did that too.

Running the 169.25 drivers on a Geforce 8600 GT

[Greebo]

Just to confirm: the new 8800GTS 512MB with stock drivers (169.06 I believe) shows the same symptoms.

[H-BW]

Never had any freezing problems with my 7600GT... Just upgraded to an 8800GT and I get the 5-10 second freezes. Only seems to hit me in online play though. Tried cleaning out drivers as suggested, no good. have also tried a few ini tweaks .
I do find that lower settings results in shorter freezes, but hey, i just put in a new gpu, i want full settings!

[SDX]

join the club...

[stallinggame]

It doesn't matter whether I'm on the 163.75 or 169.21 Nvidia drivers.

The first time I launch the game after a fresh boot everything will play fine.

If I alt+tab out, the game locks up.

If I exit the game and start it back up, it stalls at the menu screen (no options clicked) every 1-2 seconds for a period of 5-10 seconds. There's no reason to even try to get on a server when the game menu is locking up.

Disabling onboard realtek at bios level has no effect.

EPIC what is being done about this?

[MuBashi]

I recently put together a new build(my 1st) just for this game.

Nvidia 680i SLI
Intel Q6600 2.4 gHz
BFG 8800 GT OC
4 G's RAM by OCZ
PhysX Card by Ageia

and to top it off, I choose Windows Vista 64-bit Ultimate as my OS

What a f'ing nightmare: hardware that doesn't have driver support software out or even being created yet, had to rewire my house to what I'd planned to do WiFi to get direct line to my new PC, internet connection still goes on and off without any forseeable cause or reason, I can view the internet, but not Myspace(!?) or it shuts off!? WTF!!!?

AND....

UT3, what I made this build for, freezes fairly frequently and at very random times, the menu will also randomly become unresponsive, I can tab to highlight different menu options but neither the mouse nor the ENTER button respond!!

I don't know who's side this problem falls on? Epic or, my guess, Bill Gates but somebody needs to get their ass moving on this one.

[JeauxBleaux]

I have the same issues Dirk has... Totally different machine. I had to go to nVidia driver 169.25 to get rid of the flashing world issues but still have the intermittent lockup and dump to the desktop. Occassionally, it will dump me to the BSOD and write the core dump info.

[stallinggame]

I have the same issues Dirk has... Totally different machine. I had to go to nVidia driver 169.25 to get rid of the flashing world issues but still have the intermittent lockup and dump to the desktop. Occassionally, it will dump me to the BSOD and write the core dump info.

****, and I thought my situation was bad. Dual 8800's in SLI? PhysX card? Damn guy, that's a hardcore set-up. You should definitely be in the game by now or at least have tier-2 support technicians available to you at both Nvidia and Epic who are working on getting you going.

[cel4145]

I haven't followed this thread closely enough to know for certain if this has been discussed, but a user in another thread says that turning off antialiasing in the Nvidia control panel (http://utforums.epicgames.com/showpost.php?p=25181867&postcount=3) helped him to eliminate freezes.

[SDX]

Coolermaster Case - Abit IN32-max mobo w/g-skill 4GB PC8000 ram running on Q6600@3.00GHz
Windoze Vista 64 (andboyamisorryaboutthat)
2 8800GTS 512MB - 576/900MHz - SLI'd w/169.25 drivers
Areca 1220 w/4 750GB Seagate HDDs in RAID 1+0 (1.5 TB total)
Dell 2407 in 1920x1200
Thermaltake 1K watt PS

hey mate, you sure have a lot of excess money for this **** but have you thought about proper power supply? I have a 75W power supply myself and don't care about what's enough for your Global Warming PC, but I seriously doubt that 2x8800, 4xHDD, 4GB RAM and Q6600 can all run on 1000W supply without shortages!

[Ultron]

Read through the thread listed in my sig for possible troubleshooting options, and if anything works, please let us know what does. :)

[Eurynomos]

any updates on this problem?

[CuDa]

got to be fixed in the next patch I hope,

[kitch9]

hey mate, you sure have a lot of excess money for this **** but have you thought about proper power supply? I have a 75W power supply myself and don't care about what's enough for your Global Warming PC, but I seriously doubt that 2x8800, 4xHDD, 4GB RAM and Q6600 can all run on 1000W supply without shortages!


1000W will be more than enough. That rig will eat 600-650w tops..... Plenty of overhead....

[UejYi]

had to rewire my house to what I'd planned to do WiFi to get direct line to my new PC, internet connection still goes on and off without any forseeable cause or reason, I can view the internet, but not Myspace(!?) or it shuts off!? WTF!!!?

ditto to the freezes. Get in a manta sometimes, or even just touch water and boom. Next thing I know, I have fallen off a cliff, or just simply been killed.. Do not know if you were here for the flashing, but we are glad that part is over aren't we.

But the router thing. If you have dlink, I have had that problem on all models of their wireless routers I have owned. Just try flashing older and newer firmware until you find one that works. Make sure you load default settings before and after each and every time you flash with any firmware.

[calix]

hi . i 've been playing it during 3 weeks without a crash with the trick i posted on p.33' wich worked also for a good friend of mine ..
and since i use patch 1.0 i can play on full details but not my friend for whom it's worse than ever !
i precise i've set antialiasing to false in 169.09 driver page . hope it helps some of you

[Ultron]

Just to be clear, his fix was setting the Texture Detail to 2 in-game. I'll update my thread with that suggestion.

[Grisu]

8800GTS640! same issues with latest 169.25 drivers.

[Ultron]

Have you tried setting the texture detail down to 2? :D

[Lazor]

KentaroKaos you're my saver! Man i was really upset of these freezes because not only did the game stopped every 10 sec or so,but after 4-5 freezes the whole system crashed and i had to reboot my pc. So i read your "update 7" and do what you said there. It all worked fine to me. THANKS A LOT!

My pc:
7600GS 256MB
IP4 2.6Ghz
1,5 GB RAM
450PSU

Edit: BTW that problem is really strange. I was playing almost a month the demo and i had no problem at all and in the full version i had! WTF?

[Greebo]

Have you tried setting the texture detail down to 2? :D

This works, thanks. I'll use this until the real fix comes out.
BTW: NVidia acknowledges the issue in their latest release notes.

[KentaroKaos]

KentaroKaos you're my saver! Man i was really upset of these freezes because not only did the game stopped every 10 sec or so,but after 4-5 freezes the whole system crashed and i had to reboot my pc. So i read your "update 7" and do what you said there. It all worked fine to me. THANKS A LOT!

My pc:
7600GS 256MB
IP4 2.6Ghz
1,5 GB RAM
450PSU

Edit: BTW that problem is really strange. I was playing almost a month the demo and i had no problem at all and in the full version i had! WTF?

I'm very glad to hear it works for you. You're on Vista right? That's the only driver that eliminates the stutters for me in Vista, but at the cost of FPS. In general, UT3 runs CONSIDERABLY slower for me in Vista than in XP.

[Tasties]

This works, thanks. I'll use this until the real fix comes out.
BTW: NVidia acknowledges the issue in their latest release notes.

I just looked through 169.21 release notes and it says nothing about it. Which driver version notes and what does it say?

[peppybb]

Try this

http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=594117

[H-BW]

Did another driver sweep and a couple of ini tweaks

[Engine.ISVHacks]
UseMinimalNVIDIADriverShaderOptimization=True
bInitializeShadersOnDemand=True
DisableATITextureFilterOptimizationChecks=True
PumpWindowMessagesWhenRenderThreadStalled=True

and No freezes!!!!!!... for 2 days :(

Did some testing as suggested on DM-gateway, left the settings on full however. I did not get any freezes at all in the snow and skyscraper sections, did get a few freezes in the waterfall section though, less frequent than when online.

[GregDude]

Some people might want to try the latest nVidia driver beta 169.28
Looks like it may contain the fix, but this is unconfirmed.

http://www.osnn.net/comments.php?shownews=14358

[cryofhayt]

I too am having all the issues you lads have described. In another thread i did some tinkering to an .ini file and that helped for a while, like i was playing 2-3 hours with no issues. I also got the latest Nvidia drivers but again was good to play for 2-3 hours and thats it. I get the freezing then the random crashes and it seems much worse in online play and instant action. I mean WTF Epic? We pay good money for this shoddy product and yet I recall UT2004 to be one of the most stable games i have ever played. Can anyone help me out with these issues?


AMD 4600+ X2
Gig of RAM
Nvidia 7950
Creative X-fi
XP s2

[Greebo]

I just looked through 169.21 release notes and it says nothing about it. Which driver version notes and what does it say?

In the 169.25 release notes on page 7:
GeForce 8800 GT: Unreal Tournament 3-the game freezes up at the Gateway map [373530]

I would assume this is the same issue?

Gateway still shows a few freezes (2-3 seconds) with texture detail 2, esp. when entering the tropical part.
But definitely a big improvement to other settings.

[KentaroKaos]

Some people might want to try the latest nVidia driver beta 169.28
Looks like it may contain the fix, but this is unconfirmed.

http://www.osnn.net/comments.php?shownews=14358

Just installed these. They have fixed the freezes in Gateway for me when playing in Vista. HOWEVER, I still experience horrible performance due to:

-hitches
-sudden FPS drops (that last one second or less)
-load stuttering (when turning corners or when items spawn)

The freezes may be gone, but the performance sucks compared to XP.

[zer0kewl]

169.28 drivers out have fixed the issue atleast for me inc link soon
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=247872

xp vision avaible to bit further down the page

[CuDa]

Some people might want to try the latest nVidia driver beta 169.28
Looks like it may contain the fix, but this is unconfirmed.

http://www.osnn.net/comments.php?shownews=14358


installed the drivers, no freezy, hope it last........ thanks Gerg:)

[Eyemaster]

169.28 fixed the freezes I was having in Warfare, especially Torlan.

[GregDude]

Great news folks, the 169.28 are now official betas and specifically address the UT3 issue:

ForceWare Beta Release 169.28 is provided below for customers experiencing issues with the retail version of Unreal Tournament 3. This driver is only recommended as an update for these customers. All other customers are recommended to use the latest WHQL or Beta drivers offered on NVIDIA.com.

http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_ut3_downloads.html

[TheLeech]

I didnt have this problem at all until I upgraded from 163.75 to 169.25 (newer forceware)

It has got rid of the flickering graphics problem (apart from 1 bit in WAR-Avalanche)

But now I get proper 3 second + pauses every few minutes in game :(

When it unpauses I have walked into a wall or have been shot etc.

Gonna try changing some settings to see if it changes anything.....

*EDIT*
GOING TO TRY THE ABOVE 169.28 DRIVERS THAT HAVE JUST BEEN RELEASED !

[KentaroKaos]

Updated front page. :)

[jiiihaad]

Great news folks, the 169.28 are now official betas and specifically address the UT3 issue:

ForceWare Beta Release 169.28 is provided below for customers experiencing issues with the retail version of Unreal Tournament 3. This driver is only recommended as an update for these customers. All other customers are recommended to use the latest WHQL or Beta drivers offered on NVIDIA.com.

http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_ut3_downloads.html

Yep! That fixed it. :)

[Lazor]

I'm very glad to hear it works for you. You're on Vista right? That's the only driver that eliminates the stutters for me in Vista, but at the cost of FPS. In general, UT3 runs CONSIDERABLY slower for me in Vista than in XP.

No i've got XP ;).

[SDX]

Updated front page. :)

sorry guys but it still is not perfect... Yes these169.28 drivers are Much better than before, but I still get very small (~3-5 times shorter than before) hitches. It happens even on custom community maps, so it is Almost a solution for me.
(GeForce 8600M GT on 169.28)

[Tweakd]

ffs 169.28 drivers and i'm still getting random freezes every now and then.

This is really pissing me off :/

Vista 64-bit
8800 GTS (320)
E6600
Asus P5B
4Gb OCZ RAM

[TheLeech]

freezing has stopped but I still get funny graphics flickering on Avalanche.....

[muchu]

I still freeze :S wtf..

[Tweakd]

muchu what are your specs? What kind of freezing?

[DarkOneX]

OK I posted this reply already this morning and evidently it magically vanished so here it goes again.

I have the freezing still too, every couple min or even a little less it will freeze for a couple seconds and when it unfreezes I'm in a diff spot as if my guy was still moving (and the sound was still playing) but my video only froze briefly. It's not horrible enough to totally ruin the game but it is incredibly annoying and I'd like this fixed immediately. Here are my specs:

Intel Core2 Duo e6600 @ 3Ghz
Asus P5B-Deluxe mobo
4GB Cordair DDR2 PC2-6400
eVGA 8800GT 512MB @ 750 core, 1900 shader, 2100 mem
SB Xfi Fatality FPS
750GB Hitachi sata HDD
2x 500GB WD sata HDD's
Corsair 620HX power supply
Vista Ultimate 64-bit
169.28 drivers

All my other games run great except this one so it's def something with the game or with our nvidia drivers. Also the game runs incredibly smooth and fast other than those odd freezes.

[Tweakd]

DarkOne you don't have Skype running do you? I know Skype was giving me this problem. Have you tried shutting everything down before you start playing? Shut down you rAV as well and do a quick test.

This is a different problem to the rest of this thread though.

[DarkOneX]

DarkOne you don't have Skype running do you? I know Skype was giving me this problem. Have you tried shutting everything down before you start playing? Shut down you rAV as well and do a quick test.

This is a different problem to the rest of this thread though.


No I'm not using Skype and nah I haven't really tried to shut down extra proggies. I don't recall this happening when I played it on my 8800GTS 320MB and really don't recall it happening on my 8800GT I had for only a couple weeks. And yes this is the same problem described in this thread.

[Tweakd]

It sounds like a different problem to me. At least it IS different from my problem

I get very occasional freezes (like once every half hour - once every two hours) but they are severe and the display driver actually stops responding. The screen stops for about 10 -20 seconds and then the monitor flickers off. The sound stops dead during this time. Sometimes it doesn't even recover from the freeze and i'm forced to do a hard shutdown.

As far as i know that is what most other people have described here.

[DarkOneX]

It sounds like a different problem to me. At least it IS different from my problem

I get very occasional freezes (like once every half hour - once every two hours) but they are severe and the display driver actually stops responding. The screen stops for about 10 -20 seconds and then the monitor flickers off. The sound stops dead during this time. Sometimes it doesn't even recover from the freeze and i'm forced to do a hard shutdown.

As far as i know that is what most other people have described here.

lolz no that's the NTMKKVLD or whatever problem. Means your display driver quit working then recovered. There are many threads over this issue in pretty much any computer related forum and there are many causes. I had that happen on the 1st 8800GT card I got about every 10 sec even in Windows, RMA'd it and my 2nd card didn't do that, so it was a dud card. This 8800GTS 512MB I currently have installed didn't do it until I was doing some overclock experimenting and took my memory clock too high and then it started doing it in UT3 actually. Took my mem clock down to 2100Mhz and that fixed it. So I'd start by downclocking your video card memory first, try core/shader 2nd using something like Rivatuner and see if yours goes away, if so then you need to not overclock so much or you have a dud card. Drivers can also cause this issue, some peeps fix it by using DriverCleaner then rebooting into safe mode and using it again, then rebooting and reinstalling the driver.

[Ultron]

Here are some options you might try:

Edit the UTEngine.ini which can be found in My Documents\MyGames\Unreal Tournament 3\UTGame\Config.

For NVIDIA cards:
[Engine.ISVHacks]
UseMinimalNVIDIADriverShaderOptimization=True
bInitializeShadersOnDemand=True
PumpWindowMessagesWhenRenderThreadStalled=True

...and then...

[SystemSettings]
OnlyStreamInTextures=True

Let us know if that works.

Also, if you still have problems, try the other tweaks in my thread, listed in my sig below. In particular, read the opening post thoroughly, looking for the specific problems you are having, and the solutions found there, so far.

[Tweakd]

Wow thanks DarkOneX! You may be on to something there. I have o\c'd my card so i'll try pulling back the memory clock. It's odd though because UT3 is the only game it effects. I've had this setup for a year and i've never seen this problem. I've tried using driver cleaner already and that didnt help.

Well i'll give Rivatuner a bit of a tweak and see how it goes. Thanks for replying! I hope you find a fix.

[RaZz!]

the stuff in my sig solved the freezes for mostly everyone i know and who had problems.

[DarkOneX]

Here are some options you might try:

Edit the UTEngine.ini which can be found in My Documents\MyGames\Unreal Tournament 3\UTGame\Config.

For NVIDIA cards:
[Engine.ISVHacks]
UseMinimalNVIDIADriverShaderOptimization=True
bInitializeShadersOnDemand=True
PumpWindowMessagesWhenRenderThreadStalled=True

...and then...

[SystemSettings]
OnlyStreamInTextures=True

Let us know if that works.

Also, if you still have problems, try the other tweaks in my thread, listed in my sig below. In particular, read the opening post thoroughly, looking for the specific problems you are having, and the solutions found there, so far.

Wow thanks you own because that fixed it! Just played 6 matches perfectly smooth, rox! Thanks again!

[DarkOneX]

Wow thanks DarkOneX! You may be on to something there. I have o\c'd my card so i'll try pulling back the memory clock. It's odd though because UT3 is the only game it effects. I've had this setup for a year and i've never seen this problem. I've tried using driver cleaner already and that didnt help.

Well i'll give Rivatuner a bit of a tweak and see how it goes. Thanks for replying! I hope you find a fix.

Ya dude I had my 8800GTS 512MB running @ 2200 mem and everything was working great, played the crap outta Crysis and other stuff no probs. Then while playing about 30 min or so of UT3 that same thing with the monitor shutting off happened so I downclocked my mem a bit and it fixed it.

[AnubanUT2]

All my other games run great except this one so it's def something with the game or with our nvidia drivers. Also the game runs incredibly smooth and fast other than those odd freezes.

I had the same problem but 169.28 solved all my freezing and hitching issues and for people with 8800GTs AND Vista these new drivers have worked everytime to solve the freezing problems. That is what I know for fact. I started a thread on these forums and everyone with this config who used the latest beta drivers reported that it had fixed their issue ... this is also the same results as on the Guru3d thread I started about the same thing.

I already had my settings set to the ones suggested five posts above mine but UT3 was still acting up. Still that is worth a try ... if it does work for people cool.

[Teddie]

I searched around for these beta's and found a link here:
http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_ut3_downloads.html

quote from that link: "ForceWare Beta Release 169.28 is provided below for customers experiencing issues with the retail version of Unreal Tournament 3. This driver is only recommended as an update for these customers. All other customers are recommended to use the latest WHQL or Beta drivers offered on NVIDIA.com."

[DarkOneX]

AnubanUT the config settings that Ultron had me try ont he previous page fixed my issues, game now runs smooth as butter w00t!

[Flinstone]

169.28 solved the freezing problems on my 8800 gtx.

[WaAaAaAa]

Ill try the beta drivers when my Evga 8800gt 512 sc comes in today :D
Hope i dont have any problems
Wanna see the improvemnt from a 7600gt to a 8800gt :cool:

[porky1981]

I installed the game once and it's running like a gem. Using the 169.21 nforce drivers..

what are you people all doing wrong?

[CrackHead_John]

Was freezing frequently in Torlan (and only Torlan)
Did the .ini file changes suggested in Razz's sig, no change.
Uninstalled 169.25 (used DriverSweep in safe mode), installed 169.28.

Just played a few rounds in Torlan, no freezes!! So far so good!
Not sure if it was just the driver change, or if was that combined with the .ini tweaks.

Thanks guys

[paradoxum]

are there any fixed ATI drivers for UT3 yet then? i'm having intermittent freezes with an radeon X1950

[FeedBackTest]

I got a very good PC and I get like 35fps in 1v1 Biohazard with my 8800GT 512Mb and Forceware 169.28... very lame.

I had no intermitent freeze with my X1950XT, just slightly lower performance than my 8800GT. If not the same speed... (-_-)

[N1K]

169.28 works much better and I don't have hitches anymore. Although I feel very small hitches here and then and FPS drops only from locked 62 to 55 or 58 on some maps...I've noticed only on Torlan FPS dropps from 62 to 43 and then game hitches, but not as it was before..
Although, I've experienced the first UT3 crash, but not in game, it was in the list of online servers. It happened when I clicked pings, then UT3 crashed and I got a display error afterwards...
After that I've run the game again and played it without crashing for 15 mins, so it seems good.

Anyway, this drivers are greatly improved but I presume that this isn't the final result. Hopefully, we'll get a better version..

[yeoldeone]

we tried lots of things including my husdand killing my motherboard grrr so i have gone back to xp with sp3 and i can play the way i played UT2004....badly:D

[DivineError]

Okay, so I found something that works every time for my problem, and does not require any uninstals or anything of the sort.

First of all, most people are probably having slightly different problems. For my specific problem, check out this youtube video I uploaded: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d-CGAK12xo

I'm running a dual dual opteron system (4 cores) with 8gb ram and a 8600.

No, that is not the sound getting screwed up on the camera, that's actually how it sounds. And trust me when I say in real life it's much worse (and it's even harder to tell, but the graphics skip just like the sound when the sound skips)


It is indeed a multithreading problem. The way I figured this out was with fraps. I turned on recording fraps to show everyone the skipping... and low and behold, the second i hit record... NO MORE SKIPPING! That confused me at first, then I noticed while looking at the task manager that fraps was keeping UT3 from using more than 2 cores worth of processor.

Ok, so I turn off fraps, and the skipping comes back immediately. I go to task manager and go to the UT3 process and then I right click UT3 process and Set Affinity, I set the affinity to only 2 of my 4 cores. WORKS! I try setting it to use 3 cores, doesn't work.

So I try rendering something while UT3 is attempting to use all 4 cores, and UT3 doesn't hitch! So it seems to me that all that needs to happen is to make sure that UT3 doesn't get to use that extra core space.

So UT3 seems to have a problem running more than 2 cores. And it doesn't seem to be that it has the inability to, just it can't use them properly.

It definately shouldn't be that UT3 runs smoother when I am rendering things at the same time :confused:


But yeah, for those of you experiencing wierd problems in Vista on a 4 core system, just set the affinity of the UT3 process in the task manager to only 2 cores, it might work.

[BozoB]

I have these freezes as well as crashes in Vista 64 bit with quad cpu. Q6400.

(I have the freezeproblem where I can pålay a few minutes then the game freezes while sound is playing(repeatadely) for a few seconds.)

[Altrael]

I am still having NVLDDMKM.SYS errors despite the fact that I have installed the 169.28 drivers (used DriverSweeper in safe mode beforehand) and tried almost every hitch fix in Ultron's thread. I have also tried underclocking my video card and turning the fan speed up. I have updated to the latest DirectX and am current with all Vista updates as of today. I have updated UT3 to 1.1. The specific problem is that a few minutes after starting the game, even if I'm in a menu, the screen will freeze (sound does not stop), go black, unfreeze and then sometimes the game will continue and sometimes it will crash. If the game does not crash the freezing occurs more and more frequently until it does crash. I always get a message about a NVLDDMKM.SYS problem. My system specs are:

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4600+ 2.40Ghz
RAM: 2 gigs
OS: Vista 32 Bit
Video Card: EVGA Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS

[Sr7]

I am still having NVLDDMKM.SYS errors despite the fact that I have installed the 169.28 drivers (used DriverSweeper in safe mode beforehand) and tried almost every hitch fix in Ultron's thread. I have also tried underclocking my video card and turning the fan speed up. I have updated to the latest DirectX and am current with all Vista updates as of today. I have updated UT3 to 1.1. The specific problem is that a few minutes after starting the game, even if I'm in a menu, the screen will freeze (sound does not stop), go black, unfreeze and then sometimes the game will continue and sometimes it will crash. If the game does not crash the freezing occurs more and more frequently until it does crash. I always get a message about a NVLDDMKM.SYS problem. My system specs are:

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4600+ 2.40Ghz
RAM: 2 gigs
OS: Vista 32 Bit
Video Card: EVGA Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS

You should not be getting a kernel mode driver crash like that. This doesn't seem to be a widespread problem associated with running UT3, so I'd venture to guess that your graphics card is bad. That's a very likely scenario given the symptoms you've described.

[gert]

can you add a update please

"disable SLI: UT3 on vista64 doesn't support 8800gtx SLI with 169.28 beta drivers"

also disabling one cart makes it less worse i still have this issues. i would guess there is still a memory leak somewhere because it gets worse after time. Temperature indications are normal and 3dmark runs also very stable before and directly after i play UT3 with issues. So it would be appreciated if you would not set this issue to solved thanks.

[cel4145]

I am still having NVLDDMKM.SYS errors despite the fact that I have installed the 169.28 drivers (used DriverSweeper in safe mode beforehand) and tried almost every hitch fix in Ultron's thread.

I just googled "NVLDDMKM.SYS error" and got over 7000 hits. Sounds like it might not be a UT3 problem so much as nvidia and card related. Have you tried reading around in other discussion forums to look for solutions?

[Sr7]

I just googled "NVLDDMKM.SYS error" and got over 7000 hits. Sounds like it might not be a UT3 problem so much as nvidia and card related. Have you tried reading around in other discussion forums to look for solutions?

Googling an error that is completely generic like the one you describe isn't a good indicator. There were many NVIDIA driver problems early on in Vista's life time that have been resolved now, so naively searching and totalling results is totally inaccurate.

That said, it's a fairly safe assumption that this isn't a widespread problem, otherwise you'd see a LOT of people recently complaining about this in a very short duration of time.

[Nikku]

I've been experiencing freezes/lockups during online play. It crashes my entire system so I need to reboot as well. FWIW, my post on the issue:
http://utforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=604762

I'm hoping it's a patchable issue?

[shades-nl]

I know this thread is not so much alive anymore but I'm new to ut3, nvidia cards and vista (not to computers though) so I hope you people can help me a bit.

Current configuration:
* gigabyte ga-g33m-ds2r mobo
* e8500 wolfdale c2d 3,16Ghz
* 4gb cas5 (g.skill 2x2gb pc6400)
* 2x500gb wd (raid0) - the drive where ut3 is on
* 1x160gb - systemdrive
* evga 8800gts 512
* corsair 620
* case: nzxt rogue red
* vista64 ultimate
* nvidia 169.25 whql

yes or no: vista 64 need whql drivers :confused:
If not which drivers should I install: 169.44 beta or 171.16 beta ? 169.44 has been release later than 171.16 ??? and 171 is only for 9800gt ?

Plz let me know about this driver hell.
Gateway gives me steady 80~90fps but freezes to often. Think driverupdate will help but which one to choose from

edit: forgot to mention that all stuff is running stock speeds.. not oc'ed what so ever.

Regards

[Luther]

* nvidia 169.25 whql
I removed them 3 days ago.
Installed 169.44 beta - no freezes so far. (Using Vista 64 Business SP1 on (somehow) similar setup: Asus P5K-E, C2D E6850, 4 GB RAM, 8800 GTX).



yes or no: vista 64 need whql drivers
No. However, drivers must be digitally signed. 169.44 are OK.



If not which drivers should I install: 169.44 beta or 171.16 beta ? Try 169.44 - they seems stable for me by now.


edit: forgot to mention that all stuff is running stock speeds.. not oc'ed what so ever. Good. As far as I know, Unreal Engine based games and overclocking don’t match. ;)

Regards

[KentaroKaos]

Luther pretty much got you covered, shades :)

The OC thing, however. I guess I'm one of the lucky ones or something, but I've had no issues with UT3 when overclocking both my processor and my video card. Don't be afraid to try it if you want :).

[shades-nl]

@Luther : Thanks; that is a really helpful reply ! :)


Luther pretty much got you covered, shades :)

The OC thing, however. I guess I'm one of the lucky ones or something, but I've had no issues with UT3 when overclocking both my processor and my video card. Don't be afraid to try it if you want :).

I will but I never oc'ed before but the gigabyte mobo is a very good board unfortunately the memory from g.skill I have is not :(. But I wanted 4G more then 2Gb. Cool thing is that I disabled paging :D Maybe I can adjust my fsb and multiplier so that I got 1:1 - but that's a bit offtopic :D

[Devil_Spawn]

I will but I never oc'ed before but the gigabyte mobo is a very good board unfortunately the memory from g.skill I have is not :(. But I wanted 4G more then 2Gb. Cool thing is that I disabled paging :D Maybe I can adjust my fsb and multiplier so that I got 1:1 - but that's a bit offtopic :D

g.skill usually is pretty good ram

[BuckoA51]

169.28 drivers do not cure the problem for me :(

[Numbered Days]

Duuude the voltage of your ram is WAY high.. I don't know Corsair memory but.. 2.7V man, that voids MY warranty by like 0.5V!

[Grisu]

Any word from NV about newer ut3 drivers?

P.S.: I really miss the ATI monthly WHQL release circle. :(

[D-Hunter]

I'm afraid the title of this thread got me hyped up, even though no driver version has fixed my stuttering/freezing/crashing issues :(.

[shades-nl]

Duuude the voltage of your ram is WAY high.. I don't know Corsair memory but.. 2.7V man, that voids MY warranty by like 0.5V!

Who are you referring to ?

Just installed 169.44 and those freezes are gone... great

[Drekko]

You see, I have the freezing issue, but only on my laptop, Acer Aspire 5920G.

But it only happens after a couple of hours of playing, I originally thought it was overheating my laptop, but I ruled that out, after I started using a cooling plate and played other games without problems.

Then found this thread, I've tried changing the drivers on my laptop, but no change. Tried the ini tweaks, and still the same.

It bothers me that my desktop runs UT3 at max settings with no prob, no lag, no nothing, for hours on end.

While my laptop on the other hand, which is whole lot better than my desktop, the game freezes for a couple of seconds and then continues after a couple of hours of playing.

The one thing I have noticed so far though, is that my ram usage while playing unreal keeps adding up for each level and it doesn't go back down till the freeze happens.

It's odd as hell

[Estranged]

I'm curious. Did anyone else notice that when these "video driver" issues happen (crash to desktop, shutdown and recovered, freezing, etc.) whether or not there was a Darkwalker or a Fury nearby? When these things happen to me (and for the most part I pretty well ignore 'em.. they don't really bother me that much. Just another way of telling me to go outside), it's when a Darkwalker (usually the suspect) or a Fury (once or twice) shooting at me.

I've also read through every single page of this thread, and noticed that some people have said that the demo ran like a 'bat outta hell'. This question is directed to them. Were there any Darkwalkers or Furies in the demo?

[Ikaros]

See my post here. I have been using 169.28 but still had random intermittent crashes until I did this:

http://forums.epicgames.com/showpost.php?p=25347983&postcount=13

I haven't had any lockups for almost a month now, barring 4 ut3.exe errors last night due to GameSpy screwing with my INI files during their "connection" problems! Its supposed to be fixed now according to others with the same ut3.exe issue.

[Estranged]

Also tends to happen when you're either repairing a vehicle or building a node, or taking out someone with the link gun's alt fire. The reason I mentioned this is because this is the ONLY times it ever happens to me.. Also, the reason it doesn't bother me that much is because of the system specs on this machine... the OS, RAM, hdd, and everything else is up to par, with the exception of the video card... that's the culprit.. not the drivers, and I've been aware of this since the day I got the game.. I'm used to the crashes, I know why they exist, and I know the culprit. Thanx for your help tho. I, and a great many others, really do appreciate it.

Coincidentally, I could play sometimes, for hours on end, without a single issue, or just until I have to build a node, kill someone, or get close to fragged by a Darkwalker. The game itself is absolutely fantastic, even tho the video card is sub-par.

Now, I'm sure the question of 'why don't you go get a new video card' is sure to be on some people's minds, and here's the answer. Just too expensive (for now).

[Ikaros]

But I was getting crashes "until" the beginning of April when I made the changes referenced in my linked post above, and I've had a Nvidia 8800GTX 768mb card all along and with the 169.28 drivers since they first became available. I don't know if you have nTune installed, but between uninstalling nTune (my prime suspect), adding more memory, keeping 169.28 Nvidia graphics drivers and updating audio and mouse drivers my crashes went away and have no issue with Darkwalker or other vehicles and weapons no longer. Getting a better video card will help your graphics performance and looks but it may not solve your crashes doing that alone but I hope it does for you.

[Estranged]

When/if I get a new card, the drivers should be aiight to handle just about anything I throw at it =)

Again, thank you for all the help you've given myself, and anyone else that might have actually gotten this far in this here thread.

[ratphour]

Don't know about yall, but since nvidia's 175.12 beta drivers came out and I installed it, I haven't had any problems with crashes or lockups .. Only problem I get is when they are discussing what you have to do in the mission (on campaign) it freeze's for a few seconds, then resumes..

[Valis]

Linking my issue to this thread, because it occurs when I have a 'graphics freeze':
Render glitch/freeze causes fullscreen/window mode switching (http://gearsforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?p=25342473#post25342473)

[Estranged]

Awhile ago, I had complained about crashing to the desktop, video drivers freezing, recovering, etc.

An odd thing happened about a month ago... I replaced the monitor (not the video card) from a 17" LCD to a 21" widescreen LCD...

The game hasn't crashed once. Not even when I completely expected it to. And as I said in a previous post... the game just freekin rawx

ratphour: I get the same thing, it's nothing to worry about. It's as if it's building the cache that it's going to need for the gameplay to be as seamless as it is.

[Sebban]

Anybody have any suggestion to solve freezing problem for latop users ?