4870x2 Freezing during Fallout 3

[brownkc]

I'm experiencing freezing issues when playing Fallout 3 on the first system in my signature. The game will play okay for anywhere from 10 minutes to hour then just randomly freeze. Music continues but everything on the screen is frozen. I use control alt delete to bring up the task manager and it takes a couple of tries to shut Fallout 3 down. Task Manager indicates that Fallout 3 is not responding.

The 4870x2 is a new card and the only other game I have played is TF2 which also has some stuttering issues but no freezing. I run TF2 in 2560x1600 so I know I am pushing it there which could cause some stuttering.

Fallout 3 is run with medium to high settings in 1920x1200. I originally had issues playing it on a Vista 32 bit system so at the recommendation of a friend, I moved to Windows 7 64 RC1 about two days ago. The same problems are occurring. I am running the latest version of ATI drivers, 9.5. I do have a question here though. When selecting drivers for Windows 7 64/4800 series card, there are several choices for downloads. I understand that the first 2 choices are packaged while the bottom choices are individual components. However, I am still wondering which of the first two choices I should choose. I picked the 1st one that stated it was version 9.5 which was released on 5/15 but the second choice, version 8.612 released on 5/5, is 35MB larger. Am I supposed to download both? They both state they are the display driver, catalyst control center and ATI WDM integrated driver. However the description under the download button for the 1st choice states it is the Catalyst software suite while the second one states it the Windows 7 64 WHQL driver. So, do you install both, just the first, just the second or what? It's my understanding that 8.612 is the official driver number for the driver included in the 9.5 package so I'm confused.

I have run 2 instances of GPU-Z in the background, one for each chip on the video card, and find no anomolies/strange temps/etc to indicate a problem with card. The card is an ASUS 4870x2 tri fan which seems to do a great job at keeping the temps low.

Just test 3dmark Vantage and it froze after the two video tests and before the cpu tests. I have overclocked my Q6600 to 3.15 but the temps are staying under 60C. Would memory be causing a problem? I have it set to the voltage and timings listed on the package. Ran the Intel Burn Test 25 and passed.

Any insight or guidance in troubleshooting would be appreciated.

 

[wadec22]

I know you say the temps seem good, but it has all the symptoms of a heat related issue on the video card. I wonder how warm the pwm area is. Did you buy the card new? If I were you, I would try reseating the heatsink fan. If that makes you uncomfortable, I would RMA.

 

[bbf]

I ran into this problem with my 4850X2 and the solution was a two step solution:
1) If you have ffdshow installed, you have to add fallout3.exe to the exceptions list to both the audio and video filters... apparently morrowind.exe and oblivion.exe are already on the exceptions list by default... maybe we should submit a change to the svn to add fallout3.exe to the code by default ;-)
http://www.tech-forums.net/pc/f15/fallout-3-crash-desktop-solution-here-189880/
The instructions on the forum didn't exactly match what I saw with the hot-off-the-code-repository 64-bit builds of ffdshow I'm running, but just fiddle with the configuration selections and you'll see the exceptions list eventually.

2) Set some variables in fallout3.ini to disable quad core usage.
http://pdsys.org/blog/post/2009/02/07/Fallout-3-VideoDisplay-Freezes-sound-keeps-going.aspx

Open up the fallout.ini file in: My Documents\My Games\Fallout3
Find the line:
bUseThreadedAI=0
change it to:
bUseThreadedAI=1
Add another line after it and insert:
iNumHWThreads=2
This will limit the game to 2 cores and prevent the engine bug from causing the game to freeze.

Doing one didn't solve my all my crash problems, doing both did with my Q6600 running Vista x64.
The strange thing is that back in Dec-Jan I had no such stability issues... maybe it's the fallout 3 updates and the fact that I've updated ffdshow a couple of times since then. Or maybe it has something to do with the SP2 Vista update... it's broken the ability of my system to wake from sleep without corrupting file system accesses for some odd reason... I don't know which driver and/or copy protection program has been bunged by the SP2 upgrade.

I had no mods other than the official expansion packs installed.

Doing just the ffdshow fix, resulted no freezes with sound but some crashes to desktop's (CTD's). Doing only the quad core fix resulted in longer periods between freezes with sound. Doing both mods resulted in stable playing for hours...

However, if you have some community mods loaded that were created for fallout 3 before the 1.5 patch came out, you need to run fo3edit in FO3MasterUpdate mode to update the older mods to play nicely with the 1.5 patch.
http://fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=637

Hope this helps... I had a !#$!#% of a time tracking down all those items. Now I can play for hours without incident again... now if I can get the iz3d driver to work with it without blue screening with the 9.6 catalyst drivers requiring a driver reinstall, I'll be on cloud nine.

 

[AceGoober]

Thank you for the information bbf. I was having the same issue with FO3 locking up during play. The second tip worked and now I can go for hours without it crashing.