Blue Screens in TG3

[EmDee1]

Hi there,
since I installed TG3, version 3.0.04.0 and a few days later version 3.0.05.0, I had several Blue Screen messages while working in TG3. Also: Windows closed the program without no obvious reason. Don't know what's going on. Maybe someone has a suggestion. Attached the dmp files.
System: Windows 7 Pro, 64 bit, Servicepack1, Asus Motherboard P8H67 - Intel Core i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40 Ghz, Videocard: NVDIA Geforce 7600 GS (latest driver installed).
Thanks in advance for any suggestion...
Mario

[jaf]

First, I don't have win7, so I'm just speculating as to what I would do if I had the problem you are seeing.
I looked at your screen messages and each seemed to be a different problem in each, though something like a memory problem can produce what looks like random errors.  However, #3 caught my eye.  I searched on "dxgmms1.sys" and looked over this:

    http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-system/blue-screen-in-dxgmms1sys/db3f0576-976f-4401-8793-40f01942fb9d

It looks like your graphics card might be showing it's age?  I think I would start there, but this is all a guess on my part.  If you have access to a different card and are comfortable with changing it, maybe that would be a good starting place.

[pokoy]

If you have installed the graphics drivers recently, it might be a good idea to remove them and reinstall a less recent version. AFAIK, the latest NVIDIA drivers are known to cause troubles from blue screens to hardware damage (!) for some people.

Also, there's always the possibility of some hardware component giving up (like a RAM module), it may be showing up during working with TG3 because the app actually accesses the module while other apps don't because they only need 1 GB of RAM and never go beyond that.

All of the blue screens I hever ad were triggered by faulty RAM modules, a broken motherboard component or messy graphic card drivers/components, never a particular software.

[Oshyan]

Bluescreens are almost always hardware or driver related. Normal applications shouldn't be able to cause them, unless they're interacting with a driver on some deeper level, but TG doesn't do this. So as others have said, it may have been triggered by TG stressing the hardware, but the root cause is likely something in the system hardware or config.

- Oshyan

[EmDee1]

Thanks people for your helpfull remarks! First thing I'm gonna do now is examine my graphics card; maybe replace it.
Anyone a suggestion what graphics card to buy? Should the card be able to work with DirectX3 for example. The card I use at this moment only works with DirectX2...

[alessandro]

You may also want to test your system memory: try a free tool like memset (http://www.memtest.org/), and see what results you get.

[EmDee1]

Hi Alessandro, thanks for your reply. I did a memtest. No problems there.
In my earlier message I made a mistake about the DirectX version. The Graphics Card I use at the moment works with version10 (by mistake I wrote: version2  ). Will TG3 benefit from a Graphics Card that works with DirectX 11?
Mario

[Oshyan]

Terragen uses OpenGL, not DirectX (OGL is cross-platform, works on Mac and Linux too). Most modern cards should support OGL well enough for TG. What's your current card?

- Oshyan

[jaf]

EmDee1 wrote in the first post "NVDIA Geforce 7600 GS", which is why it caught my eye.  I don't have a good feel for what TG3 requires for openGL, as far as the version.

Maybe someone else is using that card?  I thing it's around a 2007 era card.

[Oshyan]

Yes, that's quite old. Even if it doesn't have driver issues due to lack of support and age, it may be having hardware issues at 6 years old... Could also be a CPU heat issue of course, that crops up fairly often when doing demanding 3D rendering.

- Oshyan

[EmDee1]

Is the nVidia Quadro FX 600 a good choice?

[jaf]

I see that question in the Lightwave forum a lot, and generally the answer is one of the gaming cards is usually just as good.  There are a lot of different answers and it seems to depend on whether you are in a work station environment or not.  Here's a newer thread from that forum:
    http://forums.newtek.com/showthread.php?136731-Opinion-Best-Graphics-Card
If your into particle or fluid animations, or other "exotic" computing, the workstation cards may be the way to go.  But for Terragen, most medium cost modeling software, I would suggest a good gaming card (and you will save some money too!)

[Oshyan]

Terragen does not particularly benefit from Quadro cards, so they're usually overpriced for this purpose. But if you have other needs for a Quadro (other software that works better with it), then it's not a bad option either.

- Oshyan

[jaf]

Almost forgot about this thread:
     http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,13924.0.html

Look down at Lat 64's input -- it's for a Mac Pro 1 though.  And there are a few older cards than yours.

[EmDee1]

Thanks guys for all the information
Now what to buy: a card in the nVidia Geforce GTX line or yet the nVidia Quadro 600? I read the quadro performs well with 3DStudio, so maybe that will settle the matter for me...Not completely convinced though...