Legend of Grimrock blew up my computer...

[jabbrwokk]

every game release you ever see these days has a number of threads stating that the new game has fried their pc!
some are genuine..
some are bollox..
some are just muppets who have never taken the side off their pc and cleaned a fan of dust a crap in their life!

now in my experience (nie on 18 years as an IT tech building and repairing these infernal machines) ive never once seen a video go BANG!
ive blown cpu's up; ive nuked floppy drives; ive set fire to usb cables and watched smoke billow out of a power supply...but never once has a video card gone BANG!
a power supply goes BANG!
and a power supply going BANG can and will wipe out a video card; that is under stress because it trying to draw too much power from the power supply to keep its fan going to keep it cool whilst pushing pixels at a decent framerate!

LOG didnt frag your pc...a cheap arse power supply that couldnt handle the pressure has fragged your pc!!

as an exemplar i used to run a GTX295 in my pc here in the office. i ran it happily on a 550 watt power supply for years! never an issue. then recently i started getting the occasional pc restart when booting a game up.
so checked everything..didnt find much...decided to swap the power supply out! GTX295's eat power like shreddies! reccomended psu for them was 750 watts....anyway i grabbed a 750 watt "gaming" supply off my stock shelf and slammed it in....everything worked fine until i stress tested the card with Furmark....
the temps started to ramp up..10 degrees...15 degrees...fan speed upped nicely...BANG!! power supply blew up!
thats simply power demand from GPU being too much for the PSU to handle....

a 460gtx is reccomended at least a 450 or 500 watt psu..personally with todays reliance on USB id not run one on anything less than a 550 watt with guaranteed 12v rails to power the card...that means a decent high end supply from a well known manufacturer like thermaltake or OCZ etc

Your condescending answer, unsolicited advice about computer parts and maintenance and assumptions about a complete stranger over the Internet notwithstanding, you do make some good points.

You are absolutely correct. The power demand from the GPU can be too much for a power supply to handle under certain circumstances.

But I need to clarify a couple things:

1) I never said the video card went bang.

2) I am well aware a power supply going can nuke a video card, that is exactly what happened to me, and what I described.

3) Many other people on this forum have reported Legend of Grimrock causes their nVidia cards to run hot; mine did, and then apparently suddenly needed more power than my poor old power supply could handle.

4) This same card and power system were able to run Witcher 2, a very graphic-intensive game, on high settings with no need for the GPU onboard fan to ever speed up like it did for Legend of Grimrock.

5) My shitty old 9600 GT is running the game just fine now on highest settings, and no increase in heat whatsoever.

As I said, Maybe it's only newer cards that are having problems?

[jabbrwokk]

It is my understanding that an overtaxed power supply may output unpredictably, which could mean that some users are experiencing problems with a video card that has power demands too close to the limits of their power supply. Another possible explanation is a defective power supply, unable to provide what the card needs. I have had more than one PSU go boom under load, so now I'm using a 1200w model.

Yeah. I'm pretty sure this is what happened with me. Once I get my replacement video card I will see if it runs hot and with the fan kicking in like it did on the old supply, but I am thinking it will probably not.

[jabbrwokk]

The game should throttle itself, as most games do.

This.

Luckily easily fixable, once one notices, by setting the vsync option. Very glad I noticed, due to the increased fan noise.

Also this.

And it looks like patch 1.1.4 will have vsync enabled by default, which will no doubt be helpful.

I applaud the developers for such quick follow-up after launch; this is a great game and is made even greater by their commitment to it (I can't wait for the level editor stuff to come out).

There is no way developers can ever predict the nearly infinite combinations of computer hardware out there their software will be running on. You can't bug-test for everything.

[THEaaron]

If the heavy load results a damage on the card - the driver or the manufacturer are at fault. Thats fact.

AH should think about a framelimiter, yes.
Users should also think about tripple buffered vsync, yes.

Games are responsible for the temperature of the GPU, no.


This is a good benchmark as well. Anyone who got a bsod or hardware faults because of the load has major problems that does not belong to the game but with their equipment.

[dajbozerozum]

I finished Legnd of Grimrock on this comp specs:

- Windows XP Pro 32 bit,
- 3 GB DDR2 of Memory,
- Pentium IV HT 2,8 GHz,
- Asus GeForce 210 passive.

[Spathi]

see my post here for why it different to other modern games.
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=869&start=30#p14747

Now add to this something I did not really explain, if you have VSync off on a fast card then you will get lots more frames. obvious, yeah.
All these frames create a high current load, which is like a "fast" flowing river ripping at the banks. Lots of voltage makes it a "wide" fast flowing flooding amazon river, lol. also obvious, yeah?
The high current also means the GPU has to "sink" more power (waste power), which goes back into the PSU.. or sometimes up the monitor earth on a badly designed card with a badly laid out PC.
All these frames create a frequency in the GPU and capacitors... not so obvious, unless you listen.
You will actually hear the capacitors "squeal", even the capacitors in the PSU will "squeal", from the high frequency.
The current from the extra frames (and the standard or OC voltage required for the GPU at load) will create heat+electromigration and the capacitors or the chips will vibrate themselves to death.
Although some overclockers pretend or think they can fix electromigration with cooling, this is far from true... it just lets you run the card above spec by fooling the GPU. electromigration will still happen, slight reduced but not by much.

Unfortunately it is a fad to run games at the highest possible framerate, pushed by PC marketers and noobs. It is a bad idea and does not add anything to the visual experience as the screen will only be 60 or 120 fps anyway. It actually results in screen tearing and is far worse to look at if anything.

If you just put a card in thinking it was set up at the factory OK, you might be in for a shock, as most have bugs and incorrect voltages or fan speeds, so you need to check on forums for fixes every time you buy a card. There are cards with no bugs, so best to look for these... usually a year or so old with no firmware updates mean no hardware problems... like these 5 silent cards...
http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/inde ... &memSize=0
those cards a bit old this year, some nice low volt cards this year, but check yours anyway. It can be a bit of work working out if you need a new BIOS ( and don't just pick a BIOS that looks like yours without a of reading and checking, it might be a stupid huge OC one or one that does not fit you card design, brand or memory).

Another game that will blow out the frame rate is MTG (which you need to run in windowed mode for VSync to work), but there are heaps.

Oh and as someone said, do not worry about 70oC. Silicon likes it, at just over 70oC it can decrease latencies, not sure about GPU and CPU, but I know advanced memories do this.. like DDR3. They can operate at lower latency once they have heated up to 70... below this they operate at slightly higher latency... at sub zero.. like liquid nitrogen cooling the MB needs to artificially increase the timing to allow for the drop in temperature (as well as the poor signal from the high frequency). So cooling you thingie to below 70oC might be counter productive, although the performance might not be affected as the latencies changed probably do not effect the main timings for the 70oC switch. The temp cut off 90ish is a current protection device mainly. Although at 105 you are in trouble as most components like to be under 105, some high quality components and regulators will tolerate 120oC. Anyway, that is the reason they gun for 74-77.

[jabbrwokk]

If the heavy load results a damage on the card - the driver or the manufacturer are at fault. Thats fact.

No one is disputing this.

[Kthanid]

No one is disputing this.

Well, this guy kind of is (and it's not the only person with this sentiment that AH is somehow to blame for improperly cooled hardware and/or poor video drivers):

Let's be very clear here, you guys screwed up and this needs to be fixed.

It's a big deal. This game fries computers.

Any word from the developers about whether / when this will be fixed?

[Hamda]

No one is disputing this.

Well, this guy kind of is (and it's not the only person with this sentiment that AH is somehow to blame for improperly cooled hardware and/or poor video drivers):

Let's be very clear here, you guys screwed up and this needs to be fixed.

It's a big deal. This game fries computers.

Any word from the developers about whether / when this will be fixed?

It's pretty hard to take anybody seriously if they won't even admit that games should NEVER push GPUs to their limit for no conceivable benefit.

There is no flaw in a driver that allows a card to be driven to its maximum specified tolerances for heat. Tolerances that are only possible because the card will ramp up energy consumption and noise, by putting its fans in overdrive.

There is a flaw in code which asks for this maximum specified tolerance, for no benefit.

This is not reasonably debatable, and if the developers are being honest, they'd admit that it was a simple oversight not to throttle their GPU demands so that the game isn't asking for several hundred frames per second on systems capable of that. (Displayed on monitors not capable of that, and being viewed by humans not capable of detecting the difference even if the monitor could update that quickly.)

[pilgrimboy]

I have been PC gaming my whole life (34 years) and have never had a game shut down my computer like this one has.

I then went to my gaming computer and it started overheating. So I stopped playing.

Now I might be crazy and have a laptop for my gaming computer. Paid good money for it. But it hasn't been a problem with any game (including Skyrim) until this one.

If it can't be played on a computer that meets the specs because it is a laptop, then they should have said so.

Anyway, arguing that it isn't their fault when it appears to be is ridiculous. Something in this game is causing it to overheat computers. I would appreciate it if they fixed that, so I can play the game without worrying about frying my computer.

Also, I shouldn't have to install outside programs to be able to play the game. All the talk of download FPS limiters is crazy. Just code the game to limit FPS.

And I have never bought a game where the forums were filled with people claiming it overheats their computers. I guess I just don't play those games.

But you can go on and act like this is just the way it is. If so, that's fine. But please be respectful to those of us who just wish they would fix this problem. They're big people and can handle themselves. If they choose not to fix it, that's their choice. But they don't need people on the forums bashing those who have a problem with the game.