Graphics driver crashing

[ares2101]

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.

[Oshyan]

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

[ares2101]

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.

[Dune]

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.

[ares2101]

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

[ares2101]

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
Which linked me to this
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. 

[ares2101]

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

[ares2101]

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.

[Dune]

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...

[jo]

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

[jaf]

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.

[ares2101]

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. 

[Oshyan]

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

[ares2101]

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.

[Oshyan]

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