Aces High Bulletin Board
Help and Support Forums => Aces High Bug Reports => Topic started by: Randy1 on November 12, 2016, 06:27:19 AM
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I thought if we listed our observations it might help HTC chase down this problem.
I use and AMD card and W10
My first is that it seems during a playing session, if I have screen stutters I have the less chance of a screen freeze. Subjective observation at best.
I can go a playing session with no screen freezes then the next day have four or five.
The freezes come in plane or GV. I had one in the tower.
Note too I have not had any "Host lost connection" messages since AH3 went live. Could it be screen freezes are the new host lost connection?
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To me it sounds like a computer specific problem causing these freezes.... I think it is something wrong in your computer.
I was flying last night in the same area as you and i had zero issues. No disconnects, no stutters, no freezes. So that would seem to cover game coad, map issues, as well as server issues. Seeing all those around didn't seem to have the same issues.
My computer isn't anything special, and I don't even want to think about how many processes I have running right now ( needs a bit of a cleaning :bhead )
ASUS P8Z77-V LGA 1155 Intel Z77
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770K CPU @ 3.50GHz (8 CPUs), ~3.5GHz
Memory: 8192MB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 with 4042MB
But again, mine runs the game smooth with pretty much all the eye candy on.
Its too bad you couldn't swap out parts to see which one was causing the issues. I know it's not the customers place to trouble shoot the product, but it looks like that is going to be the only way to find the issue as HTC doesn't seem to have the same combination in their offices to replicate the issues some of you are having.
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See sig below for my specs........................ ....
From all my testing\checking the issues that we're seeing IMHO are simply symptoms of the cause (net variance spikes, GPU clock drops, GPU frametime variance spikes, etc) and the cause is somewhere within the front end interaction w\ the AH III game client software working thru the OS thru Dx thru the CPU thru the GPU to the screen on our computers. The vast occurances are centering thru the AH III Dx11 version which puts the emphasis on Dx11 API interaction w\ the AH III game client coding IMHO. The game software is the exact same software being used w\ both Dx API versions so this kinda eliminates the AH III game coding out of the picture for the most part IMHO which leaves the rest. Yes we can do some things to improve on the symptom end to lessen the severity of the cause (which is what most of us is\are actually doing) but still the actual cause for this issue is still there. The cause is what HTC is trying to find but so far they can't duplicate it on their computer configurations to then know what\where to check for in the game client code, but are keenly aware from all the reporting that the issue is real and is there somewhere.
Again this is my opinion but I think this is due to a bleedover function of the game coding to provide VR rendering to the VR headset to a conventional monitor even though we have the checkbox ticked to disable VR in the AH III client software (which both Dx9 and Dx11 see but somehow I think that the OS thru Dx11 is misinterpreting here and is sending VR-ish code thru to the GPU to render to a conventional monitor and causing the screen to freeze waiting for the double render to screen that isn't there causing the freeze\pause and this can happen at any instance). The rest just doesn't add up IMM as to date I haven't read or noticed where a VR player has seen or witnessed any of this freezing\pausing happening thru their headsets (VR monitor if you prefer) and they're using the Dx11 version of AH III exclusively......this runs up a red flag IMHO to really focus in this area of the coding to find a random argument out of place.....which may not be so obvious to find.
But HTC may have already done this ad nausem for all I know........
Usually what causes a GPU to slow down\stop work is due to the interrupt signal from the CPU to instruct the GPU that there is work to get from the system mem cache and to flip the finished rendered graphics frames to display in sequence somehow got delayed or lost so the GPU simply stops until it receives this interrupt from the CPU after it sent an interrupt signal to the CPU to ask for data....which also interrupts everything else (Internet packet sequencing for starters...). It is this process that has been noted by others and is referred to as a "CPU bottleneck" but the CPU may\may not be the actual cause for the signal delay\drop.....could also be software related between the application\game client thru the OS (where Dx is applied thru the OS according to the game coding instructions to method\process of use) and so the CPU has to wait for the instructions to actually finish it's work before it can answer the GPU's interrupt request and would\could be more acute on a more modern, faster computer configuration where these processes happen much faster making them more prone to idle wait time vs an older computer configuration where these processes are slower thus may happen to be more in sync and thus not as prone to see this happening.....depending upon the myriad of varibles in between the start to finish of a single process path.
Then when you add in a computer configuration in this mix this is what is making this very hard to track down as the VAST number of specific computer configurations being used will either AMPLIFY the issue or actually MASK the issue. Yep, just because you aren't seeing it occur on your particular computer configuration doesn't mean the issue isn't relevant.
I have witnessed this very same screen freezing\pausing in times past and have verified that it can simply be that a specific computer configuration can't adequately feed a more modern graphics card fast enough to keep the GPU working.....this is what can happen if graphics card upgrades are done w\o taking into account of the system it is being put into. Been there, done that.
But what is happening here now is more than simply a faster vid card being used in a slower computer configuration...............
If we all don't just give up and walk away the actual cause of this issue will be found and fixed..........but this will require some patience and some cooperation w\ HTC from us to some extent.........if we care about the product being delivered. They can't see what we're seeing because they can't duplicate it on their setups and they aren't in front of our setups to see it then look into our setups to identify if the cause is either driver-related, hardward-related or client-related.........
This is why I would like to ask HTC if they could list the specific computer configurations that they are using (w\o giving up any specific things that is proprietary to their business) as this info could be used by some of us out here to then look into our setups to see if there is something that we can then identify and bring to their attention to help them w\ this. If this is something that they would not like to do then no biggie, just a suggestion to try to help identify the cause to then bring about the resolution to the cause...............
What Randy1 is asking for has some merit............thus my response.
:salute
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Just had a thought,
Hitech & Skuzzy,
What if y'all would make a separate load of AH III w\ Dx11 API but remove all the VR coding out of the game client then after complilation to send it to any specific players who have reported this screen freezing\pausing and have them to run this specific load to see if the freezing\pausing stops. If it does then this should verify that the VR coding is somehow being read when it shouldn't be..............
I leave this w\ y'all to think about........................ ...
PS--The screen freezes\pauses that I see are so seldom occurring on my box that it really isn't that big of a deal for me, but due to the thorough checking\testing I have done on my box I have pretty much all but eliminated every hardware\driver path except the interaction of my GPU's hardware PowerTune 2.0 control effect w\ Dx11 vs Dx9 thru my vid card drivers as my GPU usage % slowdown difference between Dx9 & Dx11 is not what I would consider to be within a normal margin of error so w\ that kind of power regulation difference to my GPU under game load could be a contributor to what I'm seeing............
:salute
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I am I the only one with these freezes?
I had two more last night. Both in GVs.
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Lyric ran into something last night that was very odd. He was hitting a strat when he suddenly found himself in the tower, but then immediately back into the same vehicle he had been in. It sounded to me like he almost disconnected, but then everything caught up. I asked and he was not running film.
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I am I the only one with these freezes?
I had two more last night. Both in GVs.
I think there may be others..... you aren't THAT special :)
If some of these others post you might find a common denominator. Me, Im leaning toward the AMD stuff.
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By screen freeze.. you mean the momentary pause in game play? If so, you are not alone......
Geforce 980ti on latest driver.
NEW OS Install of Win10 Pro within the last three weeks.
I7-6700K @4ghz
32GB RAM
Very frustrating to see these pauses, which were not seen in Beta, to be an issue.
I fly 3840x2160 res, and fps takes a huge hit in DX9 so I fly in DX11.
Dobs
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Dobs, no, we are talking about a kind of crash where the game freezes and the only out is power down the PC.
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Every now and then i get a total freeze of about 1 second tops, but no CTD. and they happen maybe 2 or 3 times a session.
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I am I the only one with these freezes?
I had two more last night. Both in GVs.
Hi Randy1,
No you're not alone. Thru all this I have actually had a total of 3 screen freezes\pauses on my box that I had to go to Task Manager and force a shutdown. Most of the time prior these and since these I have witnessed the occassional screen freeze\pause for a split second then all resumes w\ the vast majority of play time using AH III Dx11 to be spot on smooth.
Thru all this I have discovered that I had USB power management inadvertedly enabled to my CH USB HOTAS thru the USB-PCI-E add in card and on a USB mobo cluster which also has my NIC in it, I have discovered that my Zoom X7N ADSL modem router had a faulty power switch which kept dropping my service (believe this had a lot to do w\ the screen freeze\pause that resulted in having to do the 3 finger salute) so replaced it w\ a Netgear Nighthawk AC1900 D7000 ADSL modem\router (which then gave me 1 Gigabit LAN speed to my Bigfoot Killer NIC which then allowed me to increase the transmit and receive buffers to my NIC to the max size allowed then enable jumbo packets set to the max size allowed then set the QoS to my box at highest priority). These moves greatly stabilized the Internet packet streaming to my box and so took this part out of the picture just as the other remedies removed their contributions to the issue as well.
All these things were found to be contributors to the issue on my end but none of them proved to be the cause of the screen freeze\pause. The cause is what is being elusive at the moment.
:salute
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Just had another - ctrl/alt/del to restart out of it - no dump file
Did not get these until the 2nd to last update
thanks
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Snippet provided below of 1 of the 3 screen freezes as recorded of my box's CPU\Fury X vid card's GPU\mem on my box that resulted in me having to use Task Manager to shut down AH III Dx11 then restart it.
Please note that my CPU usage % also dropped off at the same time as the FuryX's GPU usage%, GPU clock speed & GPU FPS dropped off BUT the FuryX's mem clock speed didn't drop off at all until the 3 finger salute was done. Also note the high GPU frametime spike indicating that the GPU has stopped frame flipping in sequence..................... .
An Internet variance delay spike will cause some disturbance but not to this level so I determine these to be a symptom of the cause.......................
This is why I am thinking that this issue has to be centering around something going on within the AH III Dx11 game client\Windows OS Dx11 that is causing the CPU to drop off but not shut down (this would certainly trigger a CTD if the CPU shut down) & GPU to suddenly shut down & stay down. This is why I keep referring to the CPU has not sent the interrupt request to answer the GPU's request for data to render & frames to display which WILL cause the GPU to momentarily hesitate until this request is sent or stop if it never arrives. I have been thru SEVERAL Crimson driver versions, have checked\tested and\or have replaced all areas of my box's hardware, settings, Windows OS settings, box components, external devices, etc & can't find anything else out of place & haven't solved the screen freezes.
The fact that Windows\AH III game client isn't giving us a .dmp file is indicative of the game client\OS not going into a CTD thus the CPU isn't shutting down & generating a .dmp file so this is saying that the CPU is still functioning, the OS is still functioning, the game client is still functioning but other hardware has stopped--not malfunctioned--just stopped. Once Windows is evoked to stop the game client from operating which will reset\recover the system all will start back up as normal when the game is restarted & since we didn't do a cold boot the game coding was still present in system mem so the game will then try to start back up at the last position it has stored upon restart.
:salute
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Had 6 white screen freezes last night and all in GVs. Four in DX11 and two in DX9. No plane freezes. I lowered and raised the video setting to see if the frequency of white screens were effected but none noted.
No dmp. No films that I could recover.
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1 other item to make note of in the snippet that I sent in my prior posting:
Please note the GPU usage % line graph was on a steady decline before the GPU stopped indicating that the GPU was being steadily less used or involved w\ rendering the game graphics so at some point AMD's PowerTune 2.0 GPU hardware control will calculate that the GPU doesn't need as much power to run and so will cut the power to the GPU and I somehow get the feeling the GPU power is being cut too much causing the GPU to stumble or malfunction and so the vBIOS may be kicking in w\ GPU under volt protection thus shutting the GPU down.
This is possibly the cause for the screen freezes on my box as well as the AH III Dx11 game client\Windows OS Dx11 causing issues. With the AH III Dx9 version my GPU usage will not fall below 85%......most of the time the GPU usage % is staying between 95%-100% so AMD PowerTune 2.0 is pushing the max power to the GPU pretty much all the time.
Again this is also why I have posted this before as I can see this issue happening and am wondering is it also due to Dx11's Shader Model 5.x being so much more efficient rendering the post processing rendering work vs Dx9's Shader Model 3.x that the GPU is offloaded more running the Dx11 version of AH vs the Dx9 version..............
This is another thought that I've entertained as well but can't verify at this time.
:salute
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FYI yesterday I was demo'ing the game to a friend in the Axix/Allied arena and got a 1 second screen freeze when I fired the guns on the Zero I was flying. When in the MA I am getting freezes on a regular basis. I'm switching to a GTX 1080 card this weekend and hopefully that will help.
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I had three screen freezes last night two in GVs and one in airplanes.
I went through a series of test raising and lowering the video settings on the clipboard. I had normally just used the "Default" clipboard graphic settings.
Twice when I turned off "ground clutter" I got an immediate screen freeze that required PC power down. Turning it on had no effect.
I slid all the clip board graphic sliders to the right. I held 59FPS except in a tank gun-sight where I experienced stuttering while turning the turret.
Although not conclusive, the harder the graphic card has to work the less likely a screen freeze.
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Would be interested to see your results Relic.
Running a 980TI card here, and still get the pauses..1080 being the flagship of Nvidia, would like to see if that is making the difference.
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Would be interested to see your results Relic.
Running a 980TI card here, and still get the pauses..1080 being the flagship of Nvidia, would like to see if that is making the difference.
I will post back my results. In my experience it seems like the stutters are sound related so not sure if the card will help. It will get me new HDMI drivers so that might do the trick - plus I got a pretty good deal on the card so why not give it a shot.
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Randy1, have you got a current DXdiag posted somewhere?
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I tweaked and tested every possible setting for AH3 graphics detail and Nvidia Control Panel, and none of them affected the "petit freeze" or "pause and play" events. I'm working on a new sound at the moment, or I would disable all of my audio devices (except the ZXR) and test it that way.
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I had three screen freezes last night two in GVs and one in airplanes.
I went through a series of test raising and lowering the video settings on the clipboard. I had normally just used the "Default" clipboard graphic settings.
Twice when I turned off "ground clutter" I got an immediate screen freeze that required PC power down. Turning it on had no effect.
I slid all the clip board graphic sliders to the right. I held 59FPS except in a tank gun-sight where I experienced stuttering while turning the turret.
Although not conclusive, the harder the graphic card has to work the less likely a screen freeze.
Hi Randy1,
Just to piggyback on your observation, I also did some testing on my end.
Since I've set up my Crimson driver to use "Enhance Application AA" then set the driver method to use Supersampling (the best looking but most GPU intensive method of applying GPU side AA....used to enhance the in-game post processed FXAA...issue w\ this is which is actually being applied 1st.....) I then had a thought and reenabled the AMD Power Efficiency setting as I know this will cause my GPU to downclock but thinking since the GPU will be applying SSAA this will cause the GPU to work more thus I should see the GPU usage% line go up in MSI AB graphs. This will represent that the GPU will not as idle so thus hopefully will lessen\stop the screen freezes........hoping so anyway.
Here is a graph of my FuryX running AH III 3.0 Patch 10 Dx11 last night in this driver configuration attached below:
All pretty much came out as I was hoping it would and so far I haven't witnessed but 1 screen freeze since this was done and it was a very short 1 at that w\o any lock up, white screen....nothing. The game ran very smooth (I'm also using AMD FRTC set @ 85 FPS in addition to AMD FreeSynch......also found out that I was holding FreeSynch back too much when I had the FRTC set @ 80 FPS) so I'm gonna leave it as set for now then I'm gonna up the TF setting to High to put more work on the GPU to see how all goes from there.
What you've posted is what I've thought as well......the Dx9 version seems to prove this to me as it really loads my GPU up and so to date I've never witnessed a screen freeze on my box running any patch version of AH III under Dx9.
:salute
PS--I also remembered that I had the wife's all-in-one copier\fax\scanner\printer plugged into the ADSL line w\o a filter on it so I installed 1 on it when I got home from work today. Gonna remedy this for good this weekend as I have another phone jack in the den that is wired ahead into the Qwest installed line box ADSL filter (so 1 filter is all that is needed) so I'm gonna reroute the phone cord from her all-in-one to this jack which will then dedicate the ADSL line to the Nighthawk modem\router exclusively....already have the phone cord in place, just need to hook all up.
Then after this is done I will have taken pretty much everything into account and have got all as clean as can be done.
:D
:salute
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I have went two days without a screen freeze using DX11 with fairly high graphic slider settings. I have made no changes other than the sliders.
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Would be interested to see your results Relic.
Running a 980TI card here, and still get the pauses..1080 being the flagship of Nvidia, would like to see if that is making the difference.
No improvement. Still freezes with the new card.
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I have only two freezes in the last five days after having as many as four freezes per day for weeks. The only change was pushing the video card as hard as i could and still maintain a good frame rate by sliding the graphic clipboard sliders to the right.
I tested the other end of the setting sliding all sliders to the left and that seemed to make it worse.
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switching to the DX9 exe stopped my hard freezes - haven't had one since