Galciv 2 Video Card Temperature Observation

Buy a can of compressed air and blow the dust out of your video card. GC2 has nothing to do with it.

Thanks Kaos! This is a very useful observation.

I just asked the team to put in a bunch of graphical options so that people can turn things off. The engine is actually very advanced graphically.

It does:
1) Normal mapping (bump mapping)
2) Specular Lighting
3) 4 passes on ship textures
4) Point sprites
5) High resolution textures Most games don't do all this. For instance, Homeworld, for instance, does not have Normal Mapping (bump mapping). Even DOOM 3, which does have the same capabilities, doesn't have nearly the same number of objects. So what we need to do is put in more options. During development, our concern was having it perform FAST for all players so the system scaled very well for that. But obviously, if the card can do all sorts of good stuff, it'll use them. This is definitely a very interesting thing though. However: The Game WON'T damage your video card. All video cards will shut down way before they are damaged.

I run galcivII on a geforce go 7800gtx overclocked in a laptop. If the game is too stressful on the card then I'd be the first to know. Now it may be a bug with running in SLI mode.

BTW, you thread title is terrible. Try be a little more specific next time and avoid making rampant claims you can't back up.

My SLI rig hasnt has any trouble with GC2. Neither has my alienware laptop(which has always had problems with video card overheat)

I'd pop open your system and make sure nothing is wrong on the inside. Make sure all your vents are clean and unubstructed and that both your fans are working correctly.

Its possible it might be GC2, but I would make sure everything else is okay as well.

I noticed my laptops cooling system stepping up a bit. But what the heck, that's why I bought a laptop with decent xooling in the first place. So far everything works fine here (using a Dell XPS Inspiron Gen2 with GeForce Go 6800)...

Kaos, are you also running at a really high resolution? Are you running across multiple monitors? Can you see if changing the resolution affects the temperature of your cards?

lol, just last nite , my laptop got so hot when I was playing Gal Civ 2 the screen went blank and it wouldnt shut off...I had to pull the battery...I think I need to tone down the graphics?

I'm using Inspiron 9300 with a 256 card and a gig of ram... (I bought near top of the line specs for it- was thinking Civ IV at the time, but the specs for GC2 and Civ 4's high end settings are almost identical)

I use a $40 heatsink from Antec- Generally, playing the game, I run 55 celsius on the RAM, about 50 on the CPU.
I've had 2 CTD's so far, but both have been due to documented features, not the video card.

While that's hot, I don't think it's a big problem, I don't even have my fans put into high gear- so I'm assuming I'm well within tolerances.

Hopefully I'll be able to play the game as much as I want this weekend- work has put a cramp in things for me.

Im running a x800xt @ 1920x1200 4*AA and the temps are cooler than AOE3 at 1600*1200 no AA...

so I would say GC2 doesnt do anything that specifically heats up the card beyond normal temps

Sorry for the misleading thread title, thank you for changing it.

I run the game at my native 1680x1050x32 resolution on a single LCD monitor (SLI does not work on more than one monitor). I have not lowered the resolution but I am sure the video card temps would drop substantially at a lower setting.

I admit that I should be cooling them with liquid as I do with my CPU but this is the first time they have ever gotten this hot. They are very clean and all fans are running at max speed. As I said, they don't ever go over 55C even after hours of running games like Half Life 2, Silent Hunter III, Dungeon Siege 2, Civ IV, EQ, Unreal Tournament 2004, The Movies, and other games. It's only happening with Galciv 2.

I think it's great that Galciv 2 uses a video card to it's max potential, but maybe there does need to be some options to turn a few things down to keep the video cards stable.

Overheating or not, this game is great! Thank you Stardock.

No probs here. ATI 9800 Pro. Usually sits around 30 in just Windows. GalCiv2 it gets up around 45-48. Civ 4 pushes it up around 60 which is the highest I've ever seen it go.

I think one of the things that is interesting is about the resolution independence.

For instance:

On a typical 3D game, you can't really run the game at the maximum resolution or it's visually too slow.  I.e. you run DOOM 3 at the ultimate stuff and it's too slow on many computers.

But GalCiv II being a strategy game, it uses the same hardware features but you can actually run your system at the max. 

I don't think it's a common issue, but you figure, 1% is still a lot of people.

No probs with my ATI 9800 Pro either. Several games I play run pretty hot and make my case noisy but GC2 hasn't done that at all.

While I haven't checked the temp of my system when GalCiv2 is running (Alienware Area 51 with ATI Radeon X850 XT running 1280x1024x32), I do notice that the cooling fans do spin up to max speed.

About a month or so ago, I got a new Dell XPS, dulel core system. With a Gfroce 6800. I also went crazy an got the 24" flat panel. So I have been running both GalCiv2 and Doom3 on the system over the last month and not looked at the Video Card temperature at all. This post got me thinking, so tonight I did some test.

While running normal windowsXP with two monitors, one 1920x1200 and one 1280x1024, my card idols at abut 52 to 53 degrees.

My first experiment was to try Doom 3, I am running at a custom size of 1600x900. but I have the second monitor still on. Though it is all 2d so it is probably pretty tame. I am about 3/4 of the way true the game, and some ware in the Delta labs. After about 4 minutes of running and gunning I manage to get the Card temp up to 69 degrees. I don’t think this is a problem, but it is warmer then normal. But hay its doom 3.

Next I load up GalCiv2. the Digital release version the same one everyone should have if you bought online. (Or have updated from a retail copy). I load up a Gigantic Galaxy that I have been playing for a few weeks and run the card threw its paces. Once I hit the main game map and my couple hundred planets, and who know how many hundred ships have been loaded my card heats up to about 63 degrees. Next I pick a fight with the Altarians, we have a 25 ship vs. 12 ship battle. At the height of the battle I crank up the speed to 10x, and set it on cinematic. So it is jumping the camera all over the place, I run through the battle several times, and the hottest I can manage to get the card is 68 degrees.

I don’t know if these results are typical, but it seams that the card temp behaves about the same on GalCiv 2 as it dose on a “high end” first person shooter. Perhaps we can allow people to step down the settings. But over all I think we are right on par. This is just my opinion, not necessarily a Stardock one.