Grimrock

I am using the following system:

Acer Aspire 7540
AMD Athalon II Dual COre M300 2.00 GHz
4 GB RAM
Win 7 64 bit Home Premium Service Pack 1
DirectX 11
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200 Graphics Adapter

I set the SSAO off and the other settings to Medium or even Low and Triple Buffering On. What happens is that the system will shut completely down without warning when it gets too hot. This happens in less than an hour of game play. There are two spots on the case that are REALLY hot to the touch afterwards.

Here is a complication. The normal screen for the laptop is not working so I am plugged into a regular monitor on the VGA port. Whenever I try to run CCC, it puts the monitor into a nonsupported state and I have to power down blind. So I cannot confirm if CCC is overriding my VSync settings. Are there registry keys to confirm this? I just downloaded the latest version of the drivers and CCC.

Is anyone else still having issues with overheating or systems crashing due to heat? Has the Dev Team ever officially responded to this, because I do not recall seeing an official response.

When was the last time you cleaned your computer? There may be a great deal of dust in there. Have a look. It may help immensely.

Your GPU isn't up to the task. If you can, try to play the game on a desktop GPU. LoG is relatively demanding, what tends to crash on notebooks might just work fine on a desktop or at least result into some glitches here and there only. You might also want to reduce the fps if you can.

It's not the game's fault that your computer is overheating. There is software which is specifically designed to test your computer stability through heat stress.
For example:

• Furmark - graphics card test
• LinX - CPU test.

My computer never shuts down and never produces any errors when these programs are running.

Please note however that if your hardware is really badly cooled then there is a very slight chance that it might get damaged permanently. Modern hardware should have failsafes against this (computer shutdown) but you've been warned.

lowzei wrote:Your GPU isn't up to the task. If you can, try to play the game on a desktop GPU. LoG is relatively demanding, what tends to crash on notebooks might just work fine on a desktop or at least result into some glitches here and there only. You might also want to reduce the fps if you can.

I do not have a desktop that will run this game. That is why I ran the pre-released demo/test program on my laptop and got no problems reported. How can I reduce FPS? Remember that I cannot run CCC at this time. But I am very capable of setting registry settings.

zalewapl wrote:It's not the game's fault that your computer is overheating. There is software which is specifically designed to test your computer stability through heat stress.
For example:

• Furmark - graphics card test
• LinX - CPU test.

My computer never shuts down and never produces any errors when these programs are running.

Please note however that if your hardware is really badly cooled then there is a very slight chance that it might get damaged permanently. Modern hardware should have failsafes against this (computer shutdown) but you've been warned.

OK first things first. I was not trying to lay blame anywhere. I just want to play this great game without it crashing my PC. Your defensive attitude right out of the box is very off-putting. BUT since you brought it up, there are some things to consider in the fact that it actually is the game's fault:

1. A pre-release demo/test was delivered and I ran it and was given a full go ahead - no problems reported.
2. I am not the only one with this issue. The fact that a lot of people are having this issue means it IS related to the software. There are at least four individual threads on this topic JUST on the front page of this forum.
3. My graphics card is more than the minimum required hardware. As a matter of fact - Recommended: Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 2900. My system: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200
4. I have never encountered this issue with any other software at all, game or not.

Just because your computer never shuts down with this game is 100% irrelevant. If you have car trouble, I cannot deny it and say it is your fault just because my car is running fine.

I ran the two test programs you listed but did not get any feedback after they ran. How do I set it up to see test results?

This IS an issue with a lot of users. Users who have already run the pre-release test. It needs to be addressed by the Dev Team, and soon. This will make a lot of unhappy paying customers in the future if it is ignored.

Phlimm wrote:3. My graphics card is more than the minimum required hardware. As a matter of fact - Recommended: Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 2900. My system: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200

No, a 4200 is quite a bit worse than a 2900.

Anyway, you can run Dxtory and activate its frame limiter to reduce your FPS.

Bees wrote:

Phlimm wrote:3. My graphics card is more than the minimum required hardware. As a matter of fact - Recommended: Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 2900. My system: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200

No, a 4200 is quite a bit worse than a 2900.

So why did the pre-release demo/test tell me no problems? It is so much of a piece of crap that will explode when the game is run why didn't it say so from the getgo? I would not have bought the game if it did.

And OK maybe it is not better than the recommended graphics card. But surely it must be better than the minimum: ATI Radeon X1600. And if not, then again why did the test program not say so?

Bees wrote:Anyway, you can run Dxtory and activate its frame limiter to reduce your FPS.

So spend $44.00 in order to run a $12.00 game that told me I would have no problems running a month before it came out? Something there does not add up.

You don't need to pay for Dxtory.

Bees wrote:You don't need to pay for Dxtory.

Yeah, I just saw that you can run it trial version. Technically we should be paying for it because it is not freeware. But that is a personal thing. I am going to try it and see what happens.

In any event, I still feel this is an issue that the Dev Team needs to look into.

I admit that the game shouldn't hog the GPU like it does. I have also noticed that Grimrock uses 100% of GPU on my system and that the temperature of my card rises to levels which it doesn't achieve with most other games (but still it didn't raise as high as with Furmark). Turning on vertical sync solved that problem for me, because vertical sync limits FPS to 60 on my computer. The game was rendering much more than that with vsync off.

However, the hardware is supposed to take that beating and survive it. In other words: if you didn't overclock your hardware, then it should work stable without any crashes, freezes or graphical artifacts at all times and no matter what is thrown at it.

The two programs I gave you work in similar fashion: they force GPU (Furmark) or CPU (LinX) to perform "heavy duty" operations. These operations will take all the processing power of the unit and they will cause massive heating. This is used to test if your system is stable. Ideally, when either of the programs is running, your system should never crash. And by "never" I mean "even if the program was left running for an entire week". However, for quick stability check shorter tests are performed:

• Run Furmark for 10 minutes. Observe GPU temperatures and the screen. Screen should not show any graphical glitches and the computer should not shut down.
  Unfortunately, from my personal experience I can tell you that Furmark tests are not always reliable. I once overclocked my graphics card and it worked perfectly under Furmark, but when I launched a FPS game the computer always blue-screened in one specific spot on one specific map.
• LinX works pretty much the same but it tests CPU and RAM memory. Leave it running for an hour. Just make sure that it is set to take all available memory. If the system doesn't crash and the program doesn't report any errors after that hour then you can slightly assume that the CPU is stable and that there are no problems with RAM memory.
  In order to be 100% sure LinX must be left running for at least few hours.

Phlimm wrote:2. I am not the only one with this issue. The fact that a lot of people are having this issue means it IS related to the software. There are at least four individual threads on this topic JUST on the front page of this forum.

Yes, this particular piece of software is a GPU hog. But it doesn't change the fact that hardware should be able to support that hog and still keep running without any problems. If your computer shuts down it is the hardware problem.

PS.
Sometimes problems can be resolved by updating drivers for graphics card and other computer components.