Supreme Commander artifacts - hardware or software?

F

Flapjack

2[H]4U
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Apr 29, 2000
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No matter what I do, I keep getting artifacts in this game and cannot figure out why.

I did play for about 10 minutes after installing it w/o artifacts, then something came up and I had to quit. A few days later I tried playing and got this:

supreme_artifacts.jpg


I've tried upgrading the video drivers from nvidia's site. I even tried their beta drivers. I've tried running both SLI and non-SLI.

Here is my system specs. For once, I'm NOT overclocked. :)

- Athlon FX-55
- EPoX EP-9NPAJ motherboard
- 1GB Patriot PC-3200 memory
- (2) PNY 7900GS video cards
- Windows XP Pro
- Lastest beta nvidia drivers (98.31)
 
Try running it with the case open and have like a fan (those big ones that cools humans :D ) blowing into the case. If it still artifacts I think its RMA time.
 
Shit. I just tried leaving the door off with a fan blowing on it, no changed. So I installed and loaded F.E.A.R., same thing.

I guess I'm gonna have to remove one card at a time to see which is causing it.
 
agreed. Definently a hardware issue. if you are running SLI and it looks like you are could be either card. Pull each and see. If pulling each card doesn't fix it go for ram (pull each stick and/or try running memtest overnight), then CPU (if you have a spare)
 
Ok, I tried each card alone. Both came up as 49 degrees when starting up then about 52-55 after running a game, no artifacts on either. I put them both in and enabled SLI and they worked fine, I just switched places for each card. Games are still playing fine, but with the cover back on temps are slowly coming back up.

The computer has been running about 20 minutes now (played SC at full-res, no antialiasing of those minutes) and temps are at 66 and 56. I'll let the system get to full temp again and see what happens. Pretty crappy, because today is a cool day and this house doesn't have A/C.

The other thing that may have been an issue is that the bottom card had a firewire card underneath it that was only millimeters away. Since I don't use that card, I removed it freeing up a little space around the 2nd vid card. I didn't think it would be an issue since I'm not overclocking and these cards should be designed with adjacent hardware in mind.

I'll test again in an hour or so to see if the artifacts return.
 
my problem is a little different i find ships like destroyers in the middle of land attacking my base in campaign mode. i dont see the ship its just a diamond. Either the game is buggy or having sub-par hardware doesnt work very well.
 
Are you running a Geforce4? Im surprised it worked since Im pretty sure the game requires DX9
 
lee0539 said:
my problem is a little different i find ships like destroyers in the middle of land attacking my base in campaign mode. i dont see the ship its just a diamond. Either the game is buggy or having sub-par hardware doesnt work very well.
Click to expand...

That sounds like a software problem, like for whatever reason it didn't copy the models/textures for that ship.
 
Things are definitely better since removing that firewire card. This is ridiculous. I can't believe that these cards are designed in such a way that they cannot have a card next to them. I could see if I was overclocking... but geez.

I'm seriously thinking about going back to watercooling. This is ridiculous. I saw DangerDen has a pretty sweet SLI watercooling solution, but it's hella expensive (like $250 or something). Is there any other viable option? Tubing will be a pain, unless someone has a solution like DangerDen for a bit cheaper....
 
lixuelai said:
Are you running a Geforce4? Im surprised it worked since Im pretty sure the game requires DX9
Click to expand...

You are correct friend. Here are the requirements for SC:
# Microsoft®Windows®XP Service Pack 2, or Vista
# 1.8 GHz processor
# 512 MB RAM
# 8 GB available hard drive space
# 128 MB video RAM or greater, with DirectX 9 Vertex Shader / Pixel Shader 2.0 support
# Soundcard, speakers or headphones
# 56.6 Kbps Internet connection required

GeForce 4 Ti4200's have "full DirectX support including DirectX 8.1". I am not sure if you were able to run higher directx versions via a bios update or not, but I doubt it.

Thats probably the reason your seeing the "diamonds in the middle of the map attacking you".
 
Temps are at 70 and 60. No artifacting. I wonder if it could've been something as simple as having that firewire card too close.

What confuses me, is I wasn't using SLI and the card with the blocked fan was the one on the bottom. Weird.
 
my friend used to own pny 6800 GT and got lot of artifacts in game so i thought it's the way pny is... cheap manufacture card?
 
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