11 réponses à ce sujet

[hallonballon]

Hello!

I recently bought the digital version of Mass Effect 2 from steam, and got two problems with it.

Problem 1. PhysX wont load unless it's the version provided by Mass Effect 2 and steam. The latest version results in the game not loading.

Problem 2. The game randomy crashes every once in awhile. Sometimes it takes an hour, usually it takes only minutes before it crashes. When it crashes the game freezes with a brown-striped patterned screen, or small checker boards in gray. I suspect the colours depend on the colour palette of the sceene rendered at the moment of the crash. The music continues for a short period before starting to ****ter and sort of play the same few samples over and over, like a buzzing sound.

I have tried different methods to solve this problem, like window mode, different resolutions and graphical settings. Turning Catalyst AI on and off. Nothing helps, except window mode seem to slightly delay the time before it crashes.

I have searched google and I find quite alot of ppl describing this problem, however no solutions yet.

My speccs are as follows:

Operating system: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate  Service Pack 1 (6.1.7601)
CPU: Intel® Core™2 Duo CPU     E8400  @ 3.00GHz
RAM: 2GB Corsair DDR26400 (800MHz)
Video Card: ATi HD4890 from XFI, running Catalyst 11.4. (Catalyst AI (game optimizations) turned off) 1GB
Audio: Creative Labs Audigy 2 Platinum Pro eX (without the use of the breakout box) Driver version ctaud2k.sys [6.0.1.1377]
DirectX: DirectX 10.0  (Mar2009) or later

Game version: Steam version
MassEffect2.exe v1.02
MassEffect2Launcher.exe v1.01
MassEffect2Config.exe v1.03

[hallonballon]

Here's a link to a thread with lots of post regarding the same issue: http://social.biowar...06/index/830507

[Bogsnot1]

1) Seems to be a problem inherent with the Steam version only. Disk version works fine with the latest version of Physx. You can try inistallnig the newer version over the top of the old one instead of uninstalling it and see if thath works, but if it doesnt, take it up with Steam support.

2) Try rolling your drivers back to Catalyst 11.2. Latest drivers often incorporate tweaks designed for newer games, but can leave older games such as ME2 out in the cold.

[hallonballon]

Thanks for your response Bogsnot1. I have already tried installing over the existing PhysX installation from ME2, but with no luck.

Regarding the second problem I have, I will try to install an older version of Catalyst (11.2) and see if that helps.

EDIT:

Using an older driver did not solve the problem. I'm not sure what to do now, except return the game if that's posible over steam, since it's not working 
I'm gonna try and run the game w/o sound, see if it's soundcard/driver related or something.. far fetched but worth a shot.

EDIT 2:

Alright, I've come abit further with this problem now, to my surprise. 
I just played a full 2 hours without any freeze!

Here's what I've done:
First, I played the game with no sound and the resolution dropped to 1280x800. This worked just fine, I could play through some combat scenary for 20 minutes with no freezing. I then went ahead and turned the sound on again. This worked as fine as w/o sound and after this I enjoyed this wonderful game for two hours! No freezing!

Other changes I made before I tried what I wrote above:

1.In Creative Audio Console, I shut off CMSS.

CMSS is some way the soundcard uses voodoo on stereo signals and extracts more channels. It sounded stupid in headphones anyway so I shut it off w/o really knowing it might affect the game and help me avoid crashes.

2.In Creative Audio Console I also switched speaker setup from 2.1 (Two Speaker Setup) to Headphones. I doubt this actually help me but might be worth mentioning anyway.

I'll continue with this settings for awhile, maybe I'll try upping the resolution again to my montiors native resolution, but right now I rather stick to what's working and just play the game. Anyone having the same problem and similar setup could try my "fixes" and let us know how it worked!

Cheerz all!

Modifié par hallonballon, 08 mai 2011 - 08:45 .

[hallonballon]

Alright, update.

The sound settings don't seem to affect the game at all. It's rather the resolution. The lower it is the less likely the game is to freeze on me, but it does freeze, eventually. My system meets the requirements by far so that should not be an issue. Over heating GPU isn't a problem either since I can run other far more GPU taxing software without a problem.

I guess it boils down to just simple incompatiblity with my hardware. I sure hope there's a way to return a faulty product at Steam. Gonna try a few more things and graphics settings before I give up tho. Any suggestions are welcome!

Modifié par hallonballon, 09 mai 2011 - 08:58 .

[mcsupersport]

hallonballon wrote...

Alright, update.

The sound settings don't seem to affect the game at all. It's rather the resolution. The lower it is the less likely the game is to freeze on me, but it does freeze, eventually. My system meets the requirements by far so that should not be an issue. Over heating GPU isn't a problem either since I can run other far more GPU taxing software without a problem.

I guess it boils down to just simple incompatiblity with my hardware. I sure hope there's a way to return a faulty product at Steam. Gonna try a few more things and graphics settings before I give up tho. Any suggestions are welcome!

How do you really know it isn't about temperature??  The only real way is to put a temp monitor program/guage on the card and see how hot it is running.  By the very fact you are saying the resolution is the issue greatly increases the probablity that heat is playing a roll, all the way up to increased load on vid card causing a failing powersupply to put out bad voltage causing the crash.

I would run some basic checks, ie temp monitor program, check your connections inside and fan/dust condition, and positioning of the vid card to see if possible to be moved to cooler location if the box/computer will allow.

[hallonballon]

mcsupersport wrote...

hallonballon wrote...

Alright, update.

The sound settings don't seem to affect the game at all. It's rather the resolution. The lower it is the less likely the game is to freeze on me, but it does freeze, eventually. My system meets the requirements by far so that should not be an issue. Over heating GPU isn't a problem either since I can run other far more GPU taxing software without a problem.

I guess it boils down to just simple incompatiblity with my hardware. I sure hope there's a way to return a faulty product at Steam. Gonna try a few more things and graphics settings before I give up tho. Any suggestions are welcome!

How do you really know it isn't about temperature??  The only real way is to put a temp monitor program/guage on the card and see how hot it is running.  By the very fact you are saying the resolution is the issue greatly increases the probablity that heat is playing a roll, all the way up to increased load on vid card causing a failing powersupply to put out bad voltage causing the crash.

I would run some basic checks, ie temp monitor program, check your connections inside and fan/dust condition, and positioning of the vid card to see if possible to be moved to cooler location if the box/computer will allow.

Thanks for the reply. You got some valid points there. Though I did mention to have run far more GPU taxing applications that do not freeze. There is no dust since I recently built the computer, and just to make sure I just unplugged the card and cleaned the contacts carefully and removed any sign of dust from the card. To be sure I'll even run the fans fixed at 100% (in catalyst). The computer is almost taking off now..
I'll try to do some missions and see how it's working.

EDIT:

Very weird. I have run an overnight Linepack stability check on my CPU, and it passed fine. I then ran a GPU test while I was at work and studies, and that passed too with no errors or strangely high temperatures.

I still get these strange freezings in this particular game though.

I have tried playing this game, running my graphics card at various GPU and GFX memory speeds, and while the slowest possible speed gives me a very cool gfx card, it does freeze, though not very often. If I bump the speed abit up, the errors are sometimes more, and sometimes less frequent, depending on what combination of gpu/mem frequencies I run at.

After some testing I seem to have hit some kind of stable gpu and memory frequency combination, and now everything is working adequate. It's not freezing, but it's not the settings I'd like to run the game at.

Very strange indeed.. maybe my graphics card has some very flaky components, and their weakness is more pronounced in Mass Effect 2.

PSU voltages are stable, and tests with oscilloscope show very little noise. If it was the PSU, it should fail in all games and tests I've run, not just Mass Effect 2?

I guess there's no answer to this really.. I'm just happy I can finally play the game more than 5 min at a time.
Let's blame ghosts..

Modifié par hallonballon, 11 mai 2011 - 08:49 .

[Kloreep]

If you want to keep tweaking, you could try using the overclock settings on your GPU to underclock it below stock speeds, see if that makes it more stable. If that works, that probably does point to something weird going on with your GPU.

Don't know that you have much to gain from that though, except possibly higher resolutions if it can still push them while underclocked. If it's working, it's probably not a bad idea to not fix it.

[hallonballon]

Thanks for the advice Kloreep, but that is exactly what I described doing in my last post But maybe I hadn't done the edit when you replied. thx anyway!

[Kloreep]

Sorry, clearly I need to pay better attention.

[Oddball1]

The problem is, is that you have a Radeon 4890. It is known in a couple of other threads that anyone with a Radeon 4800 series card will have random crashing while playing Mass Effect 2. I had this happen with a pair of Radeon 4870's and the crashing did not quit, until I took them out, and stuck in a pair of GeForce GTX 460's.

I don't know or care right now, if Catalyst 11.5 which just came out, fixed this problem or not, as I got so disgusted with ATI's driver bugs, and the fact that Visiontek messed up the bioses on the 4870's that one cannot do a fresh install of Windows 7 with them in a machine.

I haven't had this happen since I got my GTX 460's.

[hallonballon]

Oddball1 wrote...

The problem is, is that you have a Radeon 4890. It is known in a couple of other threads that anyone with a Radeon 4800 series card will have random crashing while playing Mass Effect 2. I had this happen with a pair of Radeon 4870's and the crashing did not quit, until I took them out, and stuck in a pair of GeForce GTX 460's.

I don't know or care right now, if Catalyst 11.5 which just came out, fixed this problem or not, as I got so disgusted with ATI's driver bugs, and the fact that Visiontek messed up the bioses on the 4870's that one cannot do a fresh install of Windows 7 with them in a machine.

I haven't had this happen since I got my GTX 460's.

That is bad news =(

However, the clock ratio I found stable in ME2 was 650MHz GPU and 700 MHz MEM which equals a quota of  0,928571428571429..

Another plausible frequency setting that has the same quota is 910MHz GPU and 980MHz MEM (again, 0,928571428571429)

This is a long shot, but, if the freezing has anything to do with timing of the different speed in memory and gpu, then this plausible frequency setting should work as well! Unless ME2 is actually more taxing on the gfx card than OCCT gpu test, but I doubt it. Any posibility that it's heat causing the freeze is already checked and ruled out. This might be a too big overclock for this card though. Default speeds are 870 gpu 975 mem.. no big difference so maybe. Holding my thumbs here and throwing myself into more galaxy adventures!

Also I updated to catalyst 11.5, thanks for the headsup on that update! :happy:

Feels like I'm shooting in the dark trying to solve this issue.. 

EDIT:  Ok I kinda had the feeling that this wouldnt work Back to square one!

EDIT2: More testing has been done. It seems my gfx card is showing some weakness with ME2.. I went back to default settings, but as usual it froze again. Then I tried setting just the GPU speed back just a notch, 20MHz lower than default (870 -> 850) leaving the memory at the same frequency (975). Now I'm running the game at my monitors native resolution (1920*1200) and no freezing so far (knock on wood)  Never could do that before
So it was about the just GPU all along, not some far off theory about stable frequency combinations. It doesn't get hot, but it does fail, so I guess something's wrong with it..

Modifié par hallonballon, 13 mai 2011 - 04:07 .