ATI x1900 512mb cards causing game lockup

[worse.one]

I'm joining in the line, I have a core2duo E8400, win XP sp3, MSI P35 motherboard and a MSI radeon HD3870X2. It seemed that I have put the crashes out with some additional cooling but now, it suddenly returned, after a few days of gameplay without any problems it started crashing again, not able to finish a single online match. Same as that dude above me, I did not changed anything in my configuration (HW or SW). I am so sad :'(

[worse.one]

just FYI, catalyst 8.7 didn't changed anything.

[Sincreator]

Ive never had any of the problems that you guys experiance.(Said this way earlier in this thread.) The first card I used was a 1650pro512 agp on a socket 939 asus board. Needless to say, it was running pretty poor, but I never had it lock up. Just 12-15fps on medium settings. lol. Then I figured it was time for an upgrade, so I went with the Asus M2A-MVP, 480Xchipset, crossfire board, a 1950gt512 pci-e, and also a 4800 AM2. This ran 1680X1050, at about 25-35fps on highest in game settings. Still never had a lockup though. Played pretty decent, but I wanted to play in 1080p with my HDTV(1920X1080), so back for more upgrades. The next major upgrade came when I decided to purchase the 6400+ AM2 instead of a phenom, since it was performing better in 90% of the games out there at the time. So I found out that my M2A-MVP board only supported 8X PCI-E in crossfire mode, so I got a new board. The Asus M3A32-MVP 790FX Quad crossfire MoBo. I also at that time purchased 2 3870's. Now I run at about 100-130fps average. With about 300fps looking at a wall, and 60-65 in heavy firefights. Still never had any crashes/lockups/restarts whatsoever. The only common things is that all three mobo's were Asus, 100% AMD chipsets, and Sapphire video cards.

PS: These upgrades were spread out over a 1 year period. Not a couple weeks or anything. The 3800 amd single core 2.4ghz,on the 939 was the computer I had for about 2 years. It served me well. lol I also sold the previous mobo(m2a-mvp)/processor(4800 am2)/550w power supply, so the latest upgrades didnt really run a whole lot of money either. So I will wait for another year or 2 now before I make any additional upgrades.

[oakz]

I have 256 MB Sapphire x1950 Pro Pci-e graphics card and i still have that damn problem. Its same since game released.

Whenever i try to play Deck or Coret game freezes. It seems it happenes when you kill by a rocket or flak. Tried all catalyst drivers, all config edits but no solution.

I checked 20-30 pages in this forum, sorry i couldnt read all. Any ideas to solve this? Maybe there is a very small thing that i miss.

I wonder does Epic really want to fix this problem. A game can be bad i understand that, but when you pay money for a game i think its your right to play it.

Edit:

And maybe that gives you a lead on this problem.

Community made Deck-Fps. I never had a single crash on it. If you compare normal deck and deck-fps, maybe it helps to solve this annoying bug.

[TheOldFart]

I checked 20-30 pages in this forum, sorry i couldnt read all. Any ideas to solve this? Maybe there is a very small thing that i miss.

The only "solution" I'm aware of is to run it in a window instead of full screen. At least that way you can bring up task manager and kill the process when it dies.

I just played one and a quarter rounds of CTF Korruption... got about 2 minutes into the second round and got killed while driving a Hellbender. Poof, locked up solid.

I keep popping back on this thread every now and then, mostly because I'm just wondering if Epic will <b>ever</b> respond to anyone here.

You can often tell the quality of a software vendor by how much effort they put into making things right vs. how much effort they put into making something new. Epic rocked on UT2004, I can't think of a single thing they could have done better on that. They fixed the bugs, the patches were readily available and easy to apply, they released more freebie extra content than anyone could have asked for.

Dunno what happened there since then.

I'm guessing the lockups are affecting a lot of people but only a couple dozen are complaining about it so they're either just ignoring the problem or it's extremely low priority, to the point where it'll never be addressed.

It's a business, so I can at least understand not working on this bug because they can make money on something new. What I can't understand (and what they can't justify) is just leaving folks hanging here. They should either lock this thread with a final response of "we're not going to fix it" or they should respond here in some fashion. A complete lack of communications is about the crappiest thing a vendor can do.

I would have bought a couple of extra copies of UT3 so when friends come over we could have some fun with it. Instead I bought a few extra copies of UT2004 for $10 each.

[Momo]

Maybe you remember my posts, had a x1900xt and experienced a lot of lockups. Couldnt never really fix it :/

I bought a HD4850 and it works like a charm, no lockups and smooth like a mot.......

[peppybb]

Maybe you remember my posts, had a x1900xt and experienced a lot of lockups. Couldnt never really fix it :/

I bought a HD4850 and it works like a charm, no lockups and smooth like a mot.......

Same here, only mine was a 1950XT replaced by a HD3850 512mb.
No more tears after that.

[Zenoxious]

I thought I would check back here after months and months of waiting since buying the game when it first came out to see if they had fixed this issue, and what a surprise they haven't.

They really have thrown the PC community to the dogs! I could have put up with this blatant console port, but when they haven't even bothered to say if they are going to address this issue or not it really does take the piss. I hope that Epic drys up and goes bankrupt, at least then there would be some karmic justice in the world.

Time to get a refund me thinks!!!!!!!

[Moloko]

They simply might not be able to replicate the lock up issue and/or Know exactly what is causing it, for this particular card-ATI have a responsibility too, plus the end company, plus MS for the OS. UT3 was unusable with Vista 64 for me...MS issue? Though I accept a different design game, UE3 powered Bioshock seems to have had far less graphical issues,across OSs,with all due respect, what do they know at 2k games,about your engine, that you don't epic?

[TheOldFart]

They simply might not be able to replicate the lock up issue and/or Know exactly what is causing it, ...

I stopped cutting them slack on that point quite a while back. I know threading/deadlock issues can be real buggers to find so I offered them free use (they just had to pay shipping) of an E6400/2600XT box that would reliably reproduce the problem. All they had to do was play for a short while and it'd reproduce it. They never even responded. I made the offer in this forum and in a PM to one of the Epic employees who used to post here. No response.

I don't think ATI really has any responsibility unless/until Epic could demonstrate that the problem is happening inside of a properly formed DirectX call.

I pre-ordered UT3 on Newegg some six months before it came out, paid full retail price and got what is basically shelf-ware. I (and I'm sure some others here) will factor that in the next time we see the name Epic on the outside of the box.

[martinblank]

I have a PC with an Opteron 165 and an X1950XTX, running XP x64 SP2 and Catalyst 8.7.

No issues with UT3 for me on it, with max graphics at 1024x768 (max res of the LCD).

[worse.one]

just for info, I told all my issues to go to hell with installation of windows vista, 32bit version, succesfuly. hope all you guys will get it solved soon. cya.

[sipifier]

Same here, only mine was a 1950XT replaced by a HD3850 512mb.
No more tears after that.

Exactly my story too; bought a 3870 and everything just worked...at the setting I was playing on-line (1280x800, 1 texdet, 1 wlddet). I still can make it freeze at 1920x1200 + high settings while off-line after > 2 hours of play.

I also have freezes in Assassins Creed at 1920x1200 with max settings btw. Anyone know if AC is a Unreal engine title?

[Lensman]

I've had an HIS X1950 AGP GPU installed since I purchased UT-3 and I've been plagued with constant crashes, lockups and green bitmap corruption. That GPU cost me £200 ($400) a year ago and today I installed a Sapphire AGP 3850 at half the cost and (once I'd got some working drivers - ATI Hotfix did it, Catalyst 8.8 vanilla did not) it's working superbly thus far. I've finally completed the 3rd Campaign mission (always crashed before) and moved onto the next one. Damn good game when it actually runs!
Bin the X1950's, they're the weak link. The 3850 took my 3DMark score up from 3775 to 5062 too (hey ... I'm running a P4).

[moonbrother]

Oddly enough, I don't get the freeze on Deck, even with a VisionTek x1300 and "low end" system. I did, until I disabled the hardware phys-x. Now it runs fine, except for the 1/2 second lag between pressing "fire" and the actual shot appearing on the screen.

[MastaBlaster]

I solved all ATI unreal engine problems by doing extra cooling on the graphics card... try this yourself.. just put a huge fan on it (open ur box for a moment) and u will probably find that it helps!!!

[TheOldFart]

I just discovered that one is available. I haven't been paying any attention, pretty much gave up on them providing a fix. Just wondering if anyone had beaten me to testing it on a system that's known to lock up.

You young punks generally being a lot faster than an old geezer like me...

[TheOldFart]

Still freezes with 1.3 patch.

[foresta27]

Game freezes for me also.Quite often when have just died but not always.Map deck is very bad for freezing while others are a little more forgiving depending on how the wind is blowing.
Been an epic supporter all through the UT series but am pretty dissapointed with what appears to be a lack of help for alot of their customers regarding this widespread freezing issue.
If this issue doesn't get resolved I don't see how I could trust buying another epic produced product.
Even if it isn't a coding issue would still like to know what the cause is.
Epic,if you are reading please restore my confidence in buying your games by fixing the freezing issues with UT3 and Radeon graphic cards.

[SmokingRope]

has anyone tried with the 2.0 patch? The release notes mention a crash fix in the ragdoll system that sounds suspect.

[ymom182]

I am not reinstalling that game until I know that it is fixed, It has taken them far too long to do anything about this problem and as far as I know they still have not fixed it since it was not mentioned in the patch list. But if anyone finds the game to be fixed post it in here, Im sure there are still a few people with x1900 and x1950s that would love to play this game without the constant freezing.

[B0T0X]

EDIT: Turning off hardware physics *might* have solved the problem. I successfully completed the level below. I'm playing in window mode, but with no freezes so far.
EDIT2: I've played for over an hour now with no freezes. It used to freeze much more frequently than that. I think turning off hardware physics was the trick for my problem. Maybe it'll help you too (I saw another post that said that helped... not taking credit)
EDIT3: Turning off hardware physics and playing in windowed mode might have helped somewhat, but I'm still experiencing game freezes, and even a few system crashes. I literally just rebooted from a state in which my monitors went black and my speakers were SCREAMING at me.

BUMP.

Wow Epic. C'mon guys. If you have time for the Titan Pack you have time for this. I'm playing Private Campaign mode and am experiencing continued crashes on the level "Serenity"... To the point that I can't beat it because it always crashes too early. Like others, this is a system-wide crash that totally locks up my entire computer. Ctrl+Alt+Del is useless. I have to hard reset.

My System:
AMD Phenom 9850 BE
ATI X1900 XT
OCZ 2x2GB Dual Channel DDR2 (forgot speed... sort of irrelevant for this issue apparently)
2x1TB Hard Drives.

Less focus on Titan Pack, more focus on general stability.

[Cyba]

RAM is quite possibly not compatible with the motherboard

[B0T0X]

RAM is quite possibly not compatible with the motherboard

False. If that were an issue I'd be having a lot of other problems. My system has been running stable for a long time now. I've played plenty of other games on it fine as well, including UT2k4 with all maxed settings. I also do tons of other RAM-intensive processes such as editing massive .PSDs in Photoshop, and tweaking raw files in Lightroom 2.

This is a serious UT3-related issue that users are experiencing across many different setups that needs to be addressed.

[Cyba]

Hm in that case I will see if I can find another issue.
What audio card does your system have?

[B0T0X]

Hm in that case I will see if I can find another issue.
What audio card does your system have?

I know you're trying to help, but these basic troubleshooting questions are not helpful. I've read the entire thread and this isn't some simple Geek Squad type problem. There many different X19xx cards, CPUs, chipsets, sound cards, system RAM amounts and brands, GRAM amounts, driver versions, game settings, that users have and yet they all have this same issue. Thus far the only common denominator I've seen is X1900s and Windows XP.

[B0T0X]

EDIT: the 5-hour crash-free stint was a fluke. I have no idea why I went so long without crashes. The only odd thing about that night was that I was playing in the early AM all night long...

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

I have zero freezes now, and as frustrated as you probably are to hear this, I have no idea why. I've stayed up all night trying to figure out what I did. I've been playing for like 5 hours straight now without a single crash... Even on Deck... I've racked my brain for everything I did and although I can't reproduce the instability, it's gone...

Everything I can remember that I've done today:
- I installed the two latest Windows Updates for XP:
--------Update for Microsoft Silverlight (KB960353)
--------Update for Windows XP (KB967715)
- I finally managed to get through Campaign mode despite the crashes (does finishing it change something?...)
- I added "-nomoviestartup" to the shortcut icon (taking it away doesn't reproduce instability)
- I added "bViewAccelerationEnabled=False" to my UTInput.ini (taking it away doesn't reproduce instability)
- I closed all unnecessary applications (rebooting and leaving them all running does not return instability)
--------Trillian
--------Windows Live Messenger
--------Daemon Tools Lite
--------Xfire
--------AVG Anti-Virus Free
- I turned off in-game chat for UT3 in xfire (turning it back on does not return instability)

I'm starting to wonder if it had something to do with xfire or MSN "notifying" me of things during the day... you know... when people get online, when they get off, etc. ...Because all night tonight from like 2AM to 5AM I have had zero problems (but zero people have also gotten online).

This is driving me nuts, but I'm determined to figure out what's happened. It's like some magic switch was flipped fixing everything. I have got to get some sleep but I'm going to continue to troubleshoot and figure this nuisance out.

[oldkawman1]

I know you're trying to help, but these basic troubleshooting questions are not helpful. I've read the entire thread and this isn't some simple Geek Squad type problem. There many different X19xx cards, CPUs, chipsets, sound cards, system RAM amounts and brands, GRAM amounts, driver versions, game settings, that users have and yet they all have this same issue. Thus far the only common denominator I've seen is X1900s and Windows XP.

That is because it's an ATI driver issue. Some sort of bug with just that card. Have you checked the ATI driver forums?

[B0T0X]

That is because it's an ATI driver issue. Some sort of bug with just that card. Have you checked the ATI driver forums?

It might be a driver problem, or it might be a UT3 problem, or it might be something more obscure, but there might we workarounds so that's what I'm trying to find :-\. I'll resume testing here in a bit to see if the instability has returned at all.

[Sincreator]

This is my opinion on the issues with the 1900 cards.

This thread should be in the ATI forums. If it was, they may have looked into this issue by now. Espiecally if the thread had this much attention. Right now ATI are 3 generations ahead of the 1900 series, so 95% of the active forum dwellers are using the 2000/3000/4000 series cards, so when they write new drivers there is most likely very little support, if any at all for the 1900 series cards.

How well is Nvidia supporting their 7 series now? I dont know, but I guarrantee that most of the support is going towards the 8800 and up.

[B0T0X]

Just to give an update on the situation, that 5-hour stint of no crashes was a fluke.

They returned the next day as bad as ever.

[TheOldFart]

This is my opinion on the issues with the 1900 cards.

This thread should be in the ATI forums.

Umm... no, actually if you read the entire thread it happens with 2xxx and 3xxx series and I'm guessing 4xxx as well.

The last response from Epic was that it is a bug and they were having problems reproducing it. I volunteered to loan them a machine for free that would reproduce it quickly. Never even got a response from them.

It's on their list of issues that they've acknowledged and claim they're looking in to.

[TheOldFart]

I've worked on the problem in the past, done all of the required/suggested tests including cleaning out all drivers etc. It has happened on two different computers using 4 different ATI video cards (1650XT, 1900XT, 2600XT and 3850

These are very high quality computers with no overclocking and built from all name brand components, large, high quality power supplies etc. etc. etc.

Last box was an Intel motherboard, E6400, 2GB Kingston RAM, Antec power supply and UT3 locked up on only some maps with the 1650, 1900 and 2600.

Current box is a Gigabyte P35-DS3L, E8400, 4GB Kingston RAM, Thermaltake 650W and an ATI built HD3850.

All of my computers are on 24x7 and have no other problems. There are no thermal issues when running Crysis at 1920x1200 for 4 to 5 hours, Bioshock plays fine, Prey, Portal, HE2E2, COD4, TF2 all run flawlessly. The only application on the computer that has a problem is UT3.

Same lockups on the same maps under the same conditions on all three computers I've installed it on.

If it were an ATI driver bug I would think that some other application would encounter the same bug, particularly another application based on the Unreal 3 engine but that doesn't seem to be the case. Bioshock, Gears of War, Gears of War 2, Medal of Honor: Airborne, Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, Rainbox 6 Vegas and Vegas 2 among many others don't seem to experience the same issue so that seems to make it less likely to be a driver issue.

Similarly the fact that when it happens, UT3 is the only application to crash makes it sound more like a deadlock issue to me. In full screen it crashes such that you can't context switch away from UT3 but the machine continues to run just fine. If you run the game in a window you can switch away from it (as several of us have proved here by providing screen caps of the crashed game) and the sound gets stuck in a loop which again seems to indicate a deadlock issue more than a driver issue.

[Sincreator]

Strange... I started playing UT3 on my old machine,(939 3800+ with a x1650pro 512AGP)and didnt have the issue. Then I upgraded my mobo so I could get a pci-e video card, and a better CPU. So I got the 4800+ AM2, and a x1950gt. Still didnt have any issues. Then I upgraded the 4800+ to the 6400+ BE, and added 2 3870's for crossfire. Still no problems.

Now my system is complete. I replaced the 6400+ with a x3 710 phenom II, and I still have no issues.(Got a HUGE performance increase with this upgrade)

All of my GPUs were sapphire, all of my CPUs were AMD, and all of my motherboards were ASUS, with ATI chipsets.

PS: Alot of the people that upgraded from the 1900 series to the 3000/4000 series have said the problem went away.(from in this thread)

PSX2: They added the sticky for the 1900 series after I made the post with my opinion on the matter, and I still think that this topic should of been in the ATI forums. This game has been out for a year and a half, and they are finally looking into the matter. Which is good, but I bet this would of been looked into a long time ago, if this thread had been in the ATI forums. ATI are constantly updating their drivers to resolve major issues with certain games, but if its not bought to thier attention in abundance, then nothing will happen. I guess epic decided to do that work for everyone here. Good job Epic.

[boz]

Just wanted to offer that there are two threads (that I know of) that concern this issue and ATI cards.

http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=663752

[TheOldFart]

Two years later and they still haven't fixed the threading bug in the game and it's still an "open" bug report?

I recently upgraded my system to a 4870 w/1GB and upgraded to the most recent ATI drivers. I played Coret about 10 times (which was guaranteed to lock my PC up after only 3 to 5 times) and no problems. I thought perhaps it was a driver problem and now it was fixed.

Then I started playing a campaign because it seemed like the game would stay running long enough to make that worthwhile. I made it to Deck and guess what? Exactly the same thread deadlock problem. The instant I died, it locked up solid just like everyone else experiences. Fortunately I still didn't trust the game and had it running in a window instead of full screen. I was able to kill off the process and continue on my way.

This evidence is very strong that it's a threading bug. The timing/performance of the faster GPU seems to have made it less frequent... but it still happens.

For the record again:

Gigabyte P35-DS3L
E8400
4GB A-Data PC2 6400 RAM (400MHz)
XFX HD-487A-ZHFC HD4870 w/1GB 256 bit DDR5

Windows XP SP3, every patch up to current is applied
DX 9.0c

All patches have been applied to UT3 as well, I've been through all the debugging steps including removing every device driver, safe booting etc. etc.

Nothing is overclocked, everything is rock solid and the system runs flawlessly under XP and when dual-booted into Ubuntu 9.10 (64 bit).

But UT3 is still locking up two years later.

I've had the same problem with 2 computer systems using 4 different ATI cards and 6 different driver versions.

Ah well.

[Sincreator]

It's been awhile since I posted in this thread.lol I have had a few problems in the last couple months. 9.9, and 9.10 catalyst were garbage for me in the Unreal engine 3 games that I play. Actually the 9.8 gave me issues as well, but not near as bad. Most of these issues(Crashes) were happening in UT3 and Gears of War PC. I just keep going back to the trusty 9.7 Catalyst.

I never had a problem until I hit Catalyst 9.8, 9.9, and 9.10. I think that the last few drivers have been focused mainly on the 4000/5000 series of cards. My buddy has a 4890 and he says the 9.10 was no good for him, but he never had any issues with 9.8/9.9. I have a 5870 on the way, so I will see if this is the case or not soon enough.

EDIT: I got my 5870 today, and it seems that the 9.10 works fine now with this card. It caused crashes on my crossfire 3870's.