Graphics driver crashing

[archonforest]

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?

[Oshyan]

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

[jo]

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.

[archonforest]

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...

[Oshyan]

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

- Oshyan

[ares2101]

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.

[jaf]

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.)

[ares2101]

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.

[jo]

Hi,

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

[Oshyan]

Hi,

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

[Bjur]

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

[Oshyan]

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

[Bjur]

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!

[Dune]

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.

[jaf]

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.