Use 3dmark 05 In Your Conquest Of Instability Deduction...

[ManicDevlin]

After hours of not able to found out my random lock ups in DoW, I figured to install the most heavy gfx needy benchmark out there... So I downloaded the free version of 3D MARK 05.

I ran the benchmark, even the first test didn't appear on my screen and automatically my pc booted... This lead me to believe, this is not an sound card issue nor a heat issue.

I started disabling hardware acceleration features in my motherboard. Disabled fastwrite and other performance boosting features, even increased agp voltage... Alas, no luck.

Then I figured, what the hell let me reduce my AGP speed from 8x to 4x. BAM! Can now run all benchmarks in 3DMARK 05 with no sweat. So I finally figured out the instability in my setup, the agp speed.

If you have a combination of an AMD/VIA setup with an ATI radeon card and have stability issues with DoW, run 3DMARK 05, it's the best way to narrow down the causes of your instability. The benchmark is very needy and sensitive to instability.

[greymonk]

Looks like you're lucky. I've run 3dmark 05 and it ran beutifully. Unforturnately Dawn of War doesn't.

[ÜberJumper]

After hours of not able to found out my random lock ups in DoW, I figured to install the most heavy gfx needy benchmark out there... So I downloaded the free version of 3D MARK 05.

I ran the benchmark, even the first test didn't appear on my screen and automatically my pc booted... This lead me to believe, this is not an sound card issue nor a heat issue.

I started disabling hardware acceleration features in my motherboard. Disabled fastwrite and other performance boosting features, even increased agp voltage... Alas, no luck.

Then I figured, what the hell let me reduce my AGP speed from 8x to 4x. BAM! Can now run all benchmarks in 3DMARK 05 with no sweat. So I finally figured out the instability in my setup, the agp speed.

If you have a combination of an AMD/VIA setup with an ATI radeon card and have stability issues with DoW, run 3DMARK 05, it's the best way to narrow down the causes of your instability. The benchmark is very needy and sensitive to instability.



Again, this is one method of many to solve hardware configuration issues.

It's plain to me that there's no one magic pill to fix DoW crashes. Like any other game, it stresses hardware in new and unique ways due to it's particular combination of graphics and AI. It's too bad PCs couldn't be more like consoles hardware wise.

[general griff]

New and unique ways?

Hmm im sure they are new and unique if they keep overheating peoples rigs uber. Admit it was poorly coded on release.

Not to mention the choppiness scrolling and blue screen crashes people have been having.

[Moe]

OK, we are not going to get into that discussion again.

Does DoW have bugs? Yep, hence this forum.
Is it badly coded? No. It also seems to run just fine on a lot of rigs.

This game comes on three CDs. Even minus the speech files, that is still an awful lot of code, and there are bound to be some bugs. We are doing our best to find fixes for them and list them here so that they may be adressed in a patch. Spamming up other people's threads with comments about how badly you think Dawn of War is coded will do nothing but increase tension.
You are of course entitled to your opinion, but I think you have made it clear earlier. Doing so over and over again is not going to help anyone.

[Davezor]

Just to clock in with my 2c.

Im still experiencing the same crash to desktop bug as before after trying literally every fix on this forum. However some interesting things to note.

3d mark 2005 works just fine, even run for several hours, along with every single game I can throw at it.

Dawn of war will successful crash to desktop within 10 minutes playing a skirmish mission, significantly more when in single player. Did not crash during beta (with the memory read error).

INTERESTING TO NOTE: The microsoft memory tester (and other companies) gives me a 100% fine result on my ram, however, prime95 will not run for more than a few minutes without coming back with an error. I am going to try and get my hands on some new RAM soon to test, however swapping out what seems to be *almost* perfectly good ram isnt really a great solution.

I just wish it didnt crash, this has been my most anticipated game this year and I cant even play it for more than 10 minutes at a time.

[general griff]

Yo chill dude

Just an opinion. Wont say another word. I just think DOW likes a bit more CPU juice than normal thats all.

[ÜberJumper]

Griff:

This statement was inflammatory and un-needed.


Hmm im sure they are new and unique if they keep overheating peoples rigs uber. Admit it was poorly coded on release.


The game does NOT overheat everyone's systems, and it's not dependent on developers to ensure that people's systems are properly cooled.

Overheating issues have nothing to do with poor coding.