Overheating

when you say your computer is making a siren noise...is the sound coming from the speaker, the motherboard, the video card or PSU?

From the tower other than that I don't know. Its a siren noise from the tower. I'm worried that if I keep playing and ignore it my machine will be wrecked, but when if i just ignore it, my computer still works fine... Its frustrating to no end.

What temp is it getting to? Many temp monitors are set way to low to begin with so just up the temp alarm. Most likely this is in the Bios of your computer so you'll need to go in there and adjust or just turn them off.

Both my 7800 GTX's reach critical temperatures with Galciv 2. ;/

have you checked to see if all your fans are working properly? cool&quiet technology on/off? most of my heat problems are the result of a faulty fan on the CPU (due to dust or just plain over used). without knowing exactly which component of your rig is whinning there's no telling what it is (it could just be a fan that spins faster because your generating more heat) try running your rig with the cover off and look @ it carefully when it starts to chime.

I am not sure how a patch could help this. It sounds like it is just the first time your computer has really had to work. Maybe your video card is finally earning its keep or something? But whatever it is, it definitely sounds like a pure hardware issue. If it is a machine from a company, I would call their tech support--it sounds like their issue.

I just helped a fellow out with this issue on the chat room. (Edit: oh hey its you! bumb51 well might as well leave this here for posterity's sake.)

GalCiv is scaling itself to utilize every inch of your pc's performance. And your cpu just can not sustain that level of performace. (not your fault, could be any of a myriad of reasons.)

Turn down your in game settings. (graphics etc etc)
Cleared it right up for the guy who was having the problem in the chat room.

Best of luck
-D

ps my bet is that its the scalable textures that are making it work in overdrive.. but hey that's jsut me guessing.

My bet is that his PC is working just fine.

It's no coincidence that both my video cards run extremely hot at the same time, and only with this game. Sure they get hot when playing some other highly graphics intensive games but Galciv 2 takes them to the 75C+ mark. That's 20 degrees celsius more than even the most demanding games I've thrown at these puppies. 1680x1050x32, 4x AA. One of my cards would chew that up and spit it out let alone both in SLI mode....

It is a dramatic increase to say the least.

System Specs:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400 Dual Core, 1MB L2 Cache
Asus A8N-32 SLI Deluxe AI Life/Gaming
Corsair XMS TWINX2048-3500LLPRO (Matched 2GB DDR)
2 - Asus EN7800GTX 256MB (SLI)
2 - WD Raptor 74 GB, 10,000 RPM, 8 MB Cache (Raid 0)
2 - WD Caviar SE16 250 GB, 7,200 RPM, 16 MB Cache (Raid 0)
Koolance PC3-725BK 700W pro liquid cooling system merged with a Lian-Li
Enermax Liberty 620W Power Supply
Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS
LiteScribe & Pioneer DVD/CD RW
Gateway FPD2185W 21" Widescreen LCD
MS Windows XP Pro SP2+

I'm not sure what you would have us say to that.

We do plan to put in a feature to allow people to turn down the graphics option in game.  But I can almost gaurantee that you have no game that has a graphics engine like GalCiv's. It has no upper limit on polygon count or texture limit.  It will use all of your available video card abilities to maximize the performance.

BTW, you can also hit Ctrl-F to bring up the framerate counter.  Those of you with monster machines, what is your FPS? Curious whether it is throttled at 60fps or whether it goes higher.

I'm not actually complaining about it or even asking for a way to fix it, lol. Personally I think it's great that the game uses such an advanced rendering engine.

I just want to point out though that this game does tax video cards to new levels and that there is most likely nothing wrong with this guys computer.

Hovering between 59.9-60.1 FPS , won't go higher then that.

Do you have adequate cooling? If you're having heat issues you'll probably want to get an intake fan on the front of the case and one on the back. Fans don't tend to cost much. There is something wrong with the computer's cooling if it overheats from a game (it can't keep up with the demand), it's not the software's job to keep the system at a stable temperature.

Me, BF2 and Half-life 2 are the only games that I've repeatedly seen overheating happening in, though it happens on a rare occasion in other games. Half-life 2 has a tendency to do it in minutes. I've resorted to opening the side of the case partly, and blowing cooler air in with a fan, since the case is pretty cruddy and doesn't even have space for an intake fan.

I'm running 2 7800 GTx cards - 4 gigs of ram and a 3.6ghz amd processor with no problems at all. My case has fans positioned front and back top to bottom to maximise airflow and cooling. Even this game running at max resolution setting for over 12 hours has caused no adverse effects other than carpal tunnel for myself

Let me add my .2 here. Any processor running at 3.0GHZ or higher needs a better cooling system than what is usually packed with the processor. I have a 3.0GHZ Intel. The stock cooler was almost useless. I ended up purchasing a Zalman copper jobbie with a manual fan control. When I play games that are CPU intensive, I crank the sucker up. Yeah, it gets noisy. But at higher revs it will keep the processor at 44 centigrade no matter what I throw at it. If you're using a 3.6GHZ processor and a cheap aluminum stock heatsink (especially on an AMD processor) you're asking for trouble.

As well, the thermal paste or gum patch makes a big difference. If you twisted the heatsink on the CPU when you installed it (or if it was done badly by whomsoever built the computer for you) there can be bubbles between the heatsink and the CPU. Even a tiny space acts as an insulator. This can cause major probs.

Or, excessive paste can be bad too. The heatsink/CPU interface is a very touchy thing. Too much or too little can fry your CPU real fast.

Too much paste will squeeze out of the sides of the interface and end up fouling the traces on the motherboard.

Believe me when I say that I've been working on computers for many years and I have seen stuff that would curl your hair.

If you're getting heat warnings you should heed them. Just like when your car engine light comes on. You don't say, "Oh well, I'll just ignore that for a bit." Sure it will run for a while more. And then it burns out. And maybe, just maybe, it takes some traces on the mobo with it before it goes.

Then you're buying an new motherboard. And maybe memory. And maybe a videocard as well. Depends how hot the sucker got and whether it shorted out the voltage controller and decided to see where it could pass the stray voltage before it gave up the ghost.

I dont get people blaming GalCiv2 for temp problems; your cards will only pump out a certain amount of performance; they're stress tested in labs (they batch test) and push it to max for weeks at a time, not just in one game, to the most of its performance. Also, The new 6xxxx 7xxx and ati x8xx and x18xx x19xx range are all rated to 85c or higher (my x800Pros documentation said 105c!). But Its obviously not a good thing. Its not that Galciv pushes too hard, other games just arent pushing your hardware to its limit.

And anyone whos CPU overheats; That HAS to be inadequate cooling.

Froggy:

I get around 110 fps on my box, running 1280x1024 windowed, 4xaa

When running full screen 1600x1200 (native res of monitor), it seems capped at 60fps

System is Athlon64 3000, 2g ram, 6600gt pci-x

And anyone whos CPU overheats; That HAS to be inadequate cooling.

Thus my previous comments.

Well, I played in windowed mode, which seems to be more stable today. My fans do go full blast, and my RAM hits up to 50C, my processor (1.86 pentium M) up to 55-60C with a standard $40 commerical heatsink on my laptop. I'm thinking most of the overheating problems are due to a combination of GC2 plus other factors, not just GC2.

That's a little bothersome, but I don't think it's a problem. I've never gotten a good quote on what temps will give the chips I have problems...

A scale down the graphics card setting would be nice though, especially if I played this on the go. My laptop isn't really meant to be battery powered, but I can get a good 2 hrs out of it...

Actually I wonder what's going to happen next year when things like the next Farcry game come out that are really graphics monsters.

My computer's had heating problems ever since I gutted it and replaced the old 350MHz Pentium II with my current AMD 2100+. Works best in the depths of winter, less well in summer - multiple crashes, generally being irritating. Only some games seem to cause problems though - and GalCiv II seems to fall into that category (nothing autosave every turn won't fix

I found the best way is reduce these crashes is to clean out my heatsink every few months. Oh, and I took all the metal coverings off my computer (it's naked now :/ ). It doesn't stop every crash but it makes it tolerable.

I still blame the IT guy who took my computer away to install the University anti-virus software . . .errors started when it came back. Curse him!

btw, any tips on getting a better heatsink?

No one is talking about the CPU overheating here, it's the video cards. My CPU at MAX load doesn't go over 32C, thanks to a 700W liquid cooling system.

I'm getting a litle tired of people thinking that it's improper ventilation, dust, or whatever else. It is Galciv 2 specifically.

Am I complaining about it? No. But it's clear that this game raises the temperature of your video card to abnormal levels not seen in previous games before it.

Perhaps you would like to see screen shots of say two hours of Half-Life 2 running at 1680x1050x32@75Hz, 8x AA in SLI Alternate Frame Rendering mode compared to two minutes of running Galciv 2 at 4X AA SLI AFP. I guarantee you Galciv 2 will run my cards on average 20C higher almost immediately. And that's just at the main menu screen.