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Has anyone else had problems with the Nvidia drivers crashing..................it's happened to me 3 or 4 times since TG3 was released. According to the Nvidia website, the drivers are the latest released for my card. But they are 2 months old.............. :o

Crashing only with TG3?
Otherwise the latest drivers are not necessary always better. You can try to go back one version earlier. If that driver worked alright and all your programs works okay then go for it.
BTW are u sure it is the driver and not your card is crashing? Overheated VGA cards can freeze the picture on your screen and even shut down the whole computer per my experience.   

Yes it's crashing when running TG3..............the only time it's crashed. And the message says the driver has stopped responding and the program needs to close. This is the same driver I was using with TG2 and never had the problem.

U just installed TG3 and it is just not working or it is a sudden problem and TG3 worked okay before?
Does your PC says that the VGA driver stopped to work? Does your PC usable after this or need to restart?
If TG3 is a new install then there is a compatibility problem between TG3 and the driver. You can try other drivers like an earlier one. Also you should ask the Planetside guys to look into this just in case.
What card do you have?

Quote from: archonforest on September 11, 2013, 07:54:56 PM
Does your PC says that the VGA driver stopped to work?

That's the main question.

Using myself latest TG 3 Free right now and latest nVidia version for my GTX 580 (v.320.49).
Me too still have to face sometimes crashes or probs which occur here and there - but not very often.

TG, as I know, is a complex but mainly CPU stressing software, so i don't think it could be a GFX driver problem "in the 1st place".

I had never any graphics driver problems till yet, old or new ones with TG 2 or 3.

You should explain/describe you problem or case much detailed as possible to the support - if something obvious goes wrong, even you can't reproduce horrible crashes.

Planetside asked short time ago again for reporting any problems which occurs in any version (Free/Pro etc.).

You can call TG 3 still as "Very New!" version/software. Don't think everything will run "perfect" soon in every detail right at at this stage after a new release.  :)

The message that comes up is from the Nvidia application. It says just what I said in the previous post. The driver is unresponsive and the program needs to be closed. Nothing special going on, the scene is just rendering. As far as I know, there is no other program causing the problem. And I cannot reproduce it. It happens when it happens......................... :-\


The driver version is the same as you are using v320.49.

We have an update coming in the near-ish future that should address at least 1 remaining source of crashes. It may have an effect on this problem, though I don't think it necessarily changes anything that would be causing the graphics driver itself to crash.

- Oshyan

Just last evening I had a number of unusual things happen while working on an image using TG3; most notably the populator you see while it indicates instances, upon completion, it does not just blink off - but rather fades off in increments. Also, I'll see something that looks like a colored bar code flash on; then go off quickly. Then, after closing TG3, I went into the Internet and it froze. Other weird things like my screen would produce a dialog box when I clicked on anything (normally what I would see if I right clicked on it). And a few other things as well. All of this gets me thinking it could be my Nvidia card being affected by high heat.

Today, everything seems OK. I'm beginning to think the issue is overheating. I installed the 'Core Temp' software which displays numbers. Example: The higher numbers means you are running cool. As the numbers get lower, you are approaching higher heat. When idling, my cool number is in the low 80s; while rendering, the higher heat numbers are down to 52.

I have placed a small portable fan behind my tower to help disperse the exhaust from it.     

I just checked mine...........


Idle: Low 80's


Rendering: Around 70  :)

Rendering at seventy sounds pretty good. In my computer room, I notice that when ever the A/C kicks on, the numbers go higher. Wish someone would invent a miniature air conditioner for computers. For me, those water cooled varieties are out of the question.

Actually there is something like that. It is called Slot cooler. It is an extra fan you can install into an empty slot in your PC. Preferably above/beyond the VGA card. That can help a lot to handle the heat. Also it is possible on some cards that u can replace the fan with a bigger one...etc

If you have heat issues make sure your vga card and the fan is clean and works. (I saw enough dead fans...) I would chk also the installation of the computer generally as you might have a bunch of cables in the airflow.

Here is an example of the slot fan :
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835888602

I have one similar to that which came with my Lian Li case. It is a centrifugal type fan. Had to replace it once a few years ago. Available at Mouser Electronics.

Quote from: yossam on September 15, 2013, 01:54:57 AM
I just checked mine...........


Idle: Low 80's


Rendering: Around 70  :)

I assume Celsius?   It seems to me a little odd the render temp is that much lower than idle temp, though I guess the graphics card cooling turns on to lower the temp, but I don't recall one that would lower the temp below the idle temp.

Anyway, we should probably include our specs on these types of crashes.  I haven't seen a crash (TG3) yet since installing version 3.  I've was  running the 320.49 but have been using the beta 326.80 the past week with no problems.  I've tried a scene that uses 13.4 GB -- lots of populations too.

The lower the number the warmer the temperature...............it's the way the app is set up.

If you're experiencing problems outside of TG, that definitely indicates some kind of broader hardware or driver issue.

Quote from: yossam on September 15, 2013, 02:55:42 PM
The lower the number the warmer the temperature...............it's the way the app is set up.

Are you sure about that? That first off makes no rational sense, but more than that, if you look at this app screenshot: http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/ It shows temperatures measured in c (centigrade). So higher would definitely be hotter. I actually have Core Temp and have used it for quite some time on one of my machines and higher = hotter, at least in the version I have; temperatures increase, as they should, when I'm actively rendering. Perhaps you're looking at some other "composite" number that isn't temperature?

- Oshyan

I really don't know what was showing yesterday when I checked it. At idle I was getting around 80 C and rendering was getting about 70 C.


I checked it just now and at idle it was 40-45 C and rendering it was about 70 C. Maybe I was looking at the wrong numbers, or maybe my eyesight is really getting bad.  :-[

The numbers of today all make sense :)

I just downloaded Core Temp yesterday; and, it is true - higher numbers are cool; lower numbers are hot. Download the latest version and you will see.

As I said earlier, when idling, numbers are in the lower eighties. When rendering, they drop down to the lower fifties.

It is a funny program in this case. If lower numbers indicates higher cpu temp them yossam's cpu more cold when rendering and more hot when idle... :o :o
I will download this to see also.
Otherwise I use this: RealTemp307 if someone interested.
http://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp

Yes, it seems like there's something wrong.  I also use Core Temp, the 64 bit version 1.0 RC5 and it tracks closely with Pirform Speccy.  You may want to try the free version of Speccy at http://www.piriform.com/speccy/download   
It will also show your video card, motherboard, and hard drive temperatures on the summary tab. 

As mentioned in this thread, your video board temperature should really not rise at all during a render. On Speccy, there's a little icon to the right of the temperature that will show a graph.

Keep in mind that a memory or cpu fault can cause a graphics driver fault, so the error message may not always identify the real problem.  Narrowing down problems in a pc environment can really be a difficult problem with so many different software, hardware, and environmental conditions.

To clear up the confusion regarding the Core Temp settings wherein high numbers are cool and low numbers are hot: There is a specific option in the program that you can set called "Display the distance to TjMAx in temperature fields". If that is off, then the number displayed would be the actual temperature. So high would be hot/bad and low would be cool/good.

But since we have the option on, it's showing the distance from it's maximum temperature. So in our case, high is "farther from maximum temp"/cooler/good and low numbers are "closer to the maximum temp"/hotter/bad.

Ah, well that certainly does clear things up. I see the theoretical value of that since TJMax varies between CPUs (especially between AMD and Intel architecture). When comparing temps with others it could be confusing, since this measure is relative rather than specific and absolute, so I think it's very important to be clear what value you're reporting. It should also be noted that TJMax is a theoretical max, it is not the specific "point at which it will crash". Usually a CPU will freeze some time before TJMax. So it's useful as a theoretical value, but may not be as useful in practice. As I said a moment ago, given the relative nature of max temperature as it varies between CPUs, I do think it's an interesting and possibly useful option.

- Oshyan

I've had some NVidia crashes too, when using TG2, Photoshop or 3DsMax. It even crashes when I'm not working with the programs, they're just open in the background.
Last 2 versions of Graphics Drivers seem to give this problem, have not tried others yet...

I see Nvidia released a new driver -- 327.23.  Might be worth a try.

I just got a new graphics card earlier this week and I've been seeing a lot of the same issues previously described.  I have a GeForce GTX 770 with the latest driver version, 327.23

I've gotten a few display driver crashes talking about an OpenGL problem and I had one total PC freeze, the latter something I haven't seen in so long I forget when it was or what caused it.  I got through my last project's rendering OK, with maybe one crash.  I'm currently working on improving an old project and I can't make it to a full-size render without a crash or a freeze.  I saw some old posts talking about disabling the 3D preview and tried it a couple times with the node network replacing it while rendering, but that seems to change nothing.

Any ideas?

Maybe we need a simple chart -- something like this:

TGver         OS             GFX         OpenGL Message on Crash?     Power Save       User
----------     -------        ---------      ----------------------------------      ---------------       ------
3.0.07.0     xp64         GTX760     No                                             Always On         jaf
3.0.07.0     win7 x64  GTX770      Yes                                                                    ares2101

TG Ver: 3.0.07.0
OA: Windows 7 64 bit
GFX: Geforce GTX 770
Crash Type: Sometimes says OpenGL, one time a freeze, just now apparently a system reset while out of the room

Only Terragen 3 has caused any errors since installing this card.  Nothing else, including gaming, has any issues.

I was doing a bit of reading today on OpenGL crashes and found this thread:
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1246105

.... in particular, post #9.  This sounds like is is similar to a lot of posts here -- crashes when OpenGL is basically at idle (I don't believe it's active during a render.)

Anyway, interesting problem but a real pain to those who have it. :(

Since I upgraded the drivers to 327.23 I haven't had a crash from the display drivers. :o  Knock on wood.....................

Thanks for the ongoing research guys. The new driver sounds promising, hopefully it stays stable! In the meantime, we're looking into things on our end too. Hopefully we'll get to the bottom of this one way or another.

- Oshyan

Just an update on my issue, maybe this will apply to other Nvidia users.  I found a forum elsewhere were a guy solved the opengl crash by *under*clocking his GPU, setting its power and such lower than factory.  I've tried this on mine, which I only just noticed is described as "superclocked" and it seems to be working so far with a TG3 render.  I've done a total of about 2 hours rendering so far, in crops, before I was getting crashes inside 45 minutes (fingers crossed).  Apparently some high-end video cards come with factory settings close to their limits.  However, If this ends up working for good, it will leave me wondering why TG3 crashed, but Rift (an MMORPG) on max settings did not, seeing as Terragen 3 doesn't seem to make much use of the GPU.

Thanks for the update. I agree, it's a bit strange that Rift would not cause problems if TG3 does. But they do use the GPU in different ways and it's possible one of the OpenGL functions TG3 uses is just more sensitive to clock issues somehow. Frankly if it is a clock-related issue, while it's something we'll want to fix if we can - especially if it's unique to TG3 - it still seems like somewhat negligent practice on the part of manufacturers.

- Oshyan

I may have spoke a bit soon, I got another crash, but fortunately sometime after a crop was done and it saved automatically.  I think I will experiment with turning the GPU down further for the last piece in the morning and see if that improves things futher.

I had crashes on my win 7 64-bit with the then latest NVIDIA driver, so reverted to an older one (originally supplied with the machine), and it never happened again. Only problem is that I don't see the sky in the preview, but it's a rendering machine only, so I don't really mind.

Which one did you revert to?  Underclocking is not solving the problem, so I need to try something else.

In my quest to find a solution to this problem, I came across this
http://www.sevenforums.com/bsod-help-support/51028-help-me-configure-registry-correctly-solve-tdr-issue.html (http://www.sevenforums.com/bsod-help-support/51028-help-me-configure-registry-correctly-solve-tdr-issue.html)
Which linked me to this
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2665946 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2665946)

I gave the registry edit a shot and it appears to have solved the problem.  I spend about 5-6 hours doing a GI cache render and have so far done 1.5 hours more rendering from that with no issues at all so far.  That's the longest stretch of rendering I've done in days without a crash by about a factor of 3.

I'll post again if it goes bad, otherwise, it would appear the issue is fixed for me. 

Got a driver crash 4 hours into the render.  An improvement from the past few days, but apparently not a solution.

So since every other solution seems to not work, does anyone know of an older nvidia driver that lets TG3 work fine?  I love this new video card, except when trying to render in TG3.  It's kinda pissing me off.

I tried to find out, but I can't find the driver number on the win 7 machine. I'm still a bit unfamiliar with how it works in comparison to XP (prefer the XP). I'll try it again...

Hi,

As the problems seem to be happening during rendering this problem is a bit perplexing, especially as it seems to be happening well into rendering. As Oshyan says we do have some graphics improvements on the way in a future update but I doubt they would make much difference here. TG doesn't use OpenGL during rendering. So it's a bit of a puzzler but do want to get to the bottom of it if we can.

Regards,

Jo

I really think a chart of the systems that experience the crash or not (those that render over-night) would help.  Things like power savings, screen savers, scheduled tasks like defrags or updates could all be suspect.  Anyone look at their error logs?  I'm not familiar with vista/win7/win8, but I assume they have some type of error logging.

I've attached a screenshot of a crash, shortly after starting a render solely to get such a thing.  I've also added a signature with my rig specs. 

---

As Jo said, TG doesn't "use" OGL during rendering, at least not in a way that it wasn't already in use prior to rendering. But I wonder if general heat is an issue here, in that the CPU is heating up the whole system and thus the graphics card's air supply is now hotter than before. Have any of you been monitoring temperatures when this stuff happens?

- Oshyan

Quote from: Oshyan on October 08, 2013, 05:18:06 PM
As Jo said, TG doesn't "use" OGL during rendering, at least not in a way that it wasn't already in use prior to rendering. But I wonder if general heat is an issue here, in that the CPU is heating up the whole system and thus the graphics card's air supply is now hotter than before. Have any of you been monitoring temperatures when this stuff happens?

- Oshyan

I have CPU and GPU gadgets on the desktop for just this sort of thing.  My CPU has a water cooler on it (some of the best money I've spent this year) and makes heat is of little conscern.  The CPU idles at 27 to 32 C, varying across its 8 cores and according to the ambient temperature in the room.  During a TG3 render, easily the most CPU-intensive thing I do so far, it tends to run at 45 to 49 C, I have rarely seen it break 50 C.  I doubt this is making trouble for the GPU, which itself idles at 29 to 31 C (my old card idled at 60, a major reason I upgraded) and while playing my most GPU-intensive application, RIFT, runs between 60 to 72 C for normal environments, maybe getting up near or even to 80 C if there are dozens of people slinging spells around in the middle of a bunch of water effects.  I've occasionally seen it hit 85, for very brief bursts, and not very often.  If a hot GPU were the issue here, I doubt I could run my RIFT sessions so well for as long as I do.

This is puzzling, as I'm sure it's not a background program.  That pic I attached was of a crash that occurred when nothing except TG3 was open.  No browser tabs, no virus scan, no nothing.  If TG3 isn't using OGL, I don't get why only TG3 causes a crash.

Thanks for the info on cooling. Indeed heat would not seem to be an issue.

TG does use OGL for the 3D Preview, but it does not actively use it, or use it differently, during rendering. In other words what's odd is that it is crashing *while rendering*, not that it's crashing at all. Yes, it's odd and bad that it's crashing at all, but it's *particularly* odd that it only (?) seems to do so while rendering, which should not be stressing the GPU at all, especially in comparison to non-rendering activities that actually make use of the 3D preview.

- Oshyan

Is there any difference how TG2 and TG3 using/handling the VGA card? Seem to me from earlier comments that TG2 was not crashing on the same PC where TG3 does. Probably this point should be investigated ???
Or can it be some stupid DirectX issue?

TG3 added textured object display capability, so there are bound to be some differences. I don't know how easily they can be investigated, given that major disparity. But rest assured we're looking into it as best we can. We are unable to duplicate most of these issues however, which certainly makes such investigation difficult. It does seem quite hardware/driver dependent (and note that I do have an nVidia card myself, but am not seeing these issues).

- Oshyan

From doing a web search on the error message it does seem there is quite a range of apps exhibiting this same problem, many reports from this year. The error reported seems quite generic, but this is clearly a problem for a lot of people in various situations.

I just read through all posts and it seems to me all who reported a crash using a GTX Nvidia Card...
As far as I know Direct X is responsible for displaying multimedia...and it can crash also...

Terragen doesn't use DirectX at all, only OpenGL.

- Oshyan

If you think that's odd, I've been rendering with the Node Network up, so the 3D preview isn't even on the screen at all.

Pure speculation.... but I wonder if even though OpenGL is not active at the time in TG3, there's not calls to it every once in a while?  I have evga precision running to monitor various things for my graphics card.  It may be using OpenGL for it's display.  That's why I'm thinking try to isolate the problem by stopping all unnecessary processes.  Look at your event logs.  Maybe some other process is corrupting opengl32.dll (I don't think there's a 64 bit version of this dll.)

Quote from: jaf on October 08, 2013, 09:19:19 PM
Pure speculation.... but I wonder if even though OpenGL is not active at the time in TG3, there's not calls to it every once in a while?  I have evga precision running to monitor various things for my graphics card.  It may be using OpenGL for it's display.  That's why I'm thinking try to isolate the problem by stopping all unnecessary processes.  Look at your event logs.  Maybe some other process is corrupting opengl32.dll (I don't think there's a 64 bit version of this dll.)

Hm, I could try trimming some unneeded nvidia stuff tomorrow.  Still, I'm left confused as to why only TG3 has issues here.

Hi,

Quote from: ares2101 on October 08, 2013, 09:05:27 PM
If you think that's odd, I've been rendering with the Node Network up, so the 3D preview isn't even on the screen at all.

The node network is drawn using OpenGL too.

Regards,

Jo

Quote from: jo on October 08, 2013, 09:39:41 PM
Hi,

Quote from: ares2101 on October 08, 2013, 09:05:27 PM
If you think that's odd, I've been rendering with the Node Network up, so the 3D preview isn't even on the screen at all.

The node network is drawn using OpenGL too.

Regards,

Jo

Yes, although to my knowledge it has not been the source of graphics driver issues/crashes for a long time, if ever (i.e. disabling 3D preview usually temporary resolves these kinds of issues). And I don't recall any changes to network rendering for TG3. Or were there?

- Oshyan

I don't want to derail something existing with maybe just a personal issue, sry in advance then!

I'm a new happy user of TG 3 Pro now and I didn't had to face complete crashes or freezes like ppl in this nvidia driver thread in all.

But there are "harmless" problems for me too while using simple scenes ATM., maybe there are some coherence's with my and other ppl problems here in this thread.
My nvidia driver test results may point in any helpful direction I hope, thread related or not, I don't know, this thread seems to be mix of several issues to me..

For me, in any above Full HD renderings the render view, and TG 3 in all, stops to respond for at least around 5 to 10+ seconds (software isn't responding anymore message) @ reg. basis.

No big problem for me, as any of my render manages to come finally to an end nevertheless and I get no complete crash in all, my TG recovers everytime to it's full functionality.
I can live with it at this moment as it works in the end, but it doesn' t feels legit of course..

ATM. my TG 3 "high-res" renders are just 2560 x 1080, D. 0.4. AA 4, with animation settings, don't including:

- any populations
- any painted shaders
- any plants or other objects (inclusive fake stones)
- any cloud scenes
- any water

Switched from a Quadro 1000 to a GTX 580 in between months ago but I never had any response or delay issues before till yet.
I'm/was using the same Win 7-64 Bit installation all the time, no other Hardware except GK was changed on my PC.

Because of this thread I was testing some elder nvidia drivers too for my 580 GTX right now, all with the same project and it's settings shown above:

- Driver 327.23 + 320.18, in my case 5-10+ seconds avarege "downtime" message, but TG 3 recovers
- Driver 314.22, still gets a very 5-6 second "nope" responsibility message, but TG 3 recovers
- Driver 310.90 + 314.07, TG 3 don't get any software responding message, TG 3 seems fine..
(until I'm clicking in the last few secs around in TG 3's main tabs, while the software is finishing a render, no message in the render view pops up, only in the TG 3 main window then.)

TG 3 just seems to get ultra busy the last seconds of any render for some reason, time counter stops everytime for at least a few secs in the end even in simple scenes and the CPU
cooler starts to run very high again after all seems to be finished. A Higher-Res TG 2.5 GI render still finishes like a Ninja CPU cooling/sound wise with no delay or any message appearing.

BTW.: All the time, even using different drivers, my 580 GTX wasn't caring about any TG render and wasn't showing any higher temps nor higher fan activity (in my case).

Another test of mine which may help one or two ppl to skip thoughts about:
NVIDIA Inspector which helps keeping nvidia casual Cards low in it's states, energy consumption, temps and fan activity while using 2 screens with 2 different resolutions.

If some may using this usefull software too (like me), active or not, it wasn't never ever colliding with any TG related test render and/or result of mine at any time.

In actual tests my GK, which is a hot GK by nature, with old or latest nvidia drivers:

- NV Inspector off: 47 degrees - stays @ idle temp during a TG 2.5/3 render
- NV Inspector on: 32 degrees - stays @ idle temp during a TG 2.5/3 render


Don't know my post may help anyone anyhow or at last myself somehow, heh..

Cheers, Alex

Alex, what you're reporting sounds a lot like the final stages of the new GI Surface Details option. Try turning that off and see if it goes away. If so, it's known behavior, something we'll work on improving in the future, but for the moment it's working as expected.

- Oshyan

I was afraid a driver issue could cause this behaviour and possibly may harm longer sequences I want to render soon..

Thx for intel Oshyan!

I finally found that I don't have a separate graphics card in my i7 2600k, it's onboard. So NVidia drivers won't help in my case to get the sky back. Maybe that's why I got the crashes after installing these drivers. Might I need to try the newest intel drivers.

I was thinking the preview window was inactive during a render, but today I noticed that if I move my mouse over the preview window during a render, some of the colors would "flash."  This looked like objects (preview colors on or off) and bounding boxes/axis.  So that would tell me that OpenGL is active -- probably very minimal, but still active. 

Yes, the 3D preview certainly still responds to input in some respects, OpenGL is "active". But presumably when rendering you're not actually doing anything that changes OGL state (i.e. moving the view around the scene, or even mousing over the 3D Preview), so it's either just crashing "randomly" after some period of time, or it's not OGL-related I think.

- Oshyan