[CryptoTheSlow]

Hi,

I've been struggling for a long while (months) now to get UrT to run without crashing. After anything from 1 - 20 minutes of play the screen freezes and the sound goes into a loop, putting the PC into a hardware lock (caps lock / numlock unresponsive etc.) then usually a few seconds later the PC reboots or sometimes requires a hard power reset.

Currently on Ubuntu 9.10 (karmic), but I had the exact same problem under Win2K when I used to use that (same PC).

I'm fairly sure it's either the poxy ATI onboard graphics chip overheating or something in the q3 engine that throws it out.

So I'm finally throwing in the towel on making it work and want to get a decent NVidia card that's been proven to work well with UrT and Ubuntu. This is where I need help! When I start looking at what's available my brain starts to ache.... so all recommendations welcome.

BTW.. UrT is the only FPS I play so it probably doesn't need to be a totally bleeding edge card... I just want it to work at a decent res and fps rate.

Current system spec:

Ubuntu 9.10 (karmic)
GNOME 2.28.1 (Ubuntu 2009-11-03)
Kernel 2.6.31-17-generic (#54-Ubuntu SMP Thu Dec 10 16:20:31 UTC 2009)
GCC 4.4.1 (i486-linux-gnu)

MB Asus M2A-VM
AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+
Freq 1000.000 MHz
RAM 4GB (3402 MiB Available to Ubuntu)

Graphics Onboard ATI Radeon x1250 (256MB Shared Mem)
Drivers:
xserver-xorg-video-ati v. 1:6.12.99+git20090929.7968e1fb-0ubuntu1
xserver-xorg-video-radeon v. 1:6.12.99+git20090929.7968e1fb-0ubuntu1
xserver-xorg-video-mach64 v. 6.8.2-1
xserver-xorg-video-r128 v. 6.8.2-1
fglrx-modaliases v. 2:8.660-0ubuntu4


I looked at using xorg-driver-fglrx "Video driver for the ATI graphics accelerators" but that doesn't support this chip so I can't even try that.

Any suggestions will be gratefully received.

edit - Should have mentioned I've got 2x PCI, 1x PCI Express and 1x PCI Express x16 slots available.

Thanks

This post has been edited by cryptotheslow: 22 January 2010 - 06:25 PM

[no|kbar]

ati radeon 4000 cards are cheap, and they run urt really good. pretty sure they work on 9.10

[Rambetter]

The freezing and sound looping problem - I too am familiar with this. I believe that it can be cause by your soundcard drivers.

Before you come to any conclusions about a faulty or overheating graphics card, or issues surrounding your graphics card drivers, I would try to replicate your freeze-up and/or crash while running UrT without any sound.

Add the flags "+set s_initsound 0" to the command-line that launches the game. See if you can replicate your crash with that.

On my secondary desktop, I found that launching UrT with no sound will altogether avoid the freezes and crashes I was having when running UrT with sound.

Even if you can run a stable UrT with no sound, I don't exactly know what the culprit of the freezes is. Bad sound drivers?

I found that recent Linux distributions have this problem with a lot of sound hardware.

[CryptoTheSlow]

rambetter, on 23 January 2010 - 12:54 AM, said:

The freezing and sound looping problem - I too am familiar with this. I believe that it can be cause by your soundcard drivers.

Before you come to any conclusions about a faulty or overheating graphics card, or issues surrounding your graphics card drivers, I would try to replicate your freeze-up and/or crash while running UrT without any sound.

Add the flags "+set s_initsound 0" to the command-line that launches the game. See if you can replicate your crash with that.

On my secondary desktop, I found that launching UrT with no sound will altogether avoid the freezes and crashes I was having when running UrT with sound.

Even if you can run a stable UrT with no sound, I don't exactly know what the culprit of the freezes is. Bad sound drivers?

I found that recent Linux distributions have this problem with a lot of sound hardware.

I have been down that avenue too. Disabling sound seems to just delay the inevitable... on both w2k and ubuntu if I disable sound I can play for 30 mins to an hour before I get the lock up... but it always happens eventually and playing UrT without sound - I might as well be a no-armed man with a gun. If I go to 640x, no sound, lowest detail, no brass, no blood, no textures - it lasts a bit longer but still crashes.

Having read a few posts on here I installed TremFusion and running at 800x600 with all detail on it ran at about 80-90fps (UrT typically runs at about 50 fps on minimal settings).. and lasted for about 2 hours before it too crashed in the same way and needed a reboot.

I really think this MB's chipset is not designed for games. The north/south bridges are having to cope with graphics, sound, disk i/o, raid, usb...

OK... I'll do another run adding +set s_initsound 0 again on lowest res with no effects and see how long it lasts

[Rambetter]

If you are using your MB's onboard graphics chip, then yes you'd better upgrade regardless of whether it will fix your problem or not.

[Taenon (old)]

Nvidia... I have actually just in the last two weeks finished building myself a Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala/Win7 desktop so that I might play with CUDA and get better frames/hits on UrT. I went with an Nvidia GTX 260 core 216 from BFG, though these are now practically impossible to find. The 9800 GT, GTX 220's and 240's are easier to find, but kind of a waste of money compared to the ATI 4850/4870/5770's that you can get for nearly the same price (if you can find the 48*0 cards). Sadly, we wont be seeing Fermi until March, and until then Nvidia is a very poor buy. I have gotten great results in both windows and linux with the GTX 260 core 216, 125+ frames (I'm sure it is overkill, but w/e). Ubuntu seems a bit choppier (it may be the extra X window on my second head that is active the entire time), but oh well.

My Macbook Pro only has an x1600 256MiB and gets ~60 fps, so it wont take much of an upgrade. For just this game the 9800 GT, GTX 220 or 240 might be a good choice. If you want to do GPU computing avoid the 5770, as it isn't hardware capable of doing double precision floating point number calculations, while the 4850 and 4870 are. Check out Tom's Hardware's charts and best graphics cards for the money reviews, though note they give no consideration to Linux, just windows gaming:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card,2521-3.html

My systems:

Ubuntu/Win7 Desktop January 2010:
AMD Phenom II x4 955 3.2GHz
Asus M4A79XTD Evo 790X Mobo
G.Skill Ripjaws 2x2GiB 1600MHz DDR3
BFG GTX 260 core 216
Corsair 750tx
Cooler Master Storm Scout
Urban Terror: 1680 x 1050 Detail:High 125 fps

Macbook Pro1,1 15" June 2006:
Core Duo 2.16GHz T2600
ATI Mobility Radeon x1600 256MiB
2GiB DDR2-667
500GiB WD HDD
Urban Terror: 1440 x 900 Detail:High 60 fps

This post has been edited by Taenon: 25 January 2010 - 06:45 AM

[Quit Evilslut]

I'd recommend going for a nvidia card, simply because their linux support is better then ATI's.

have a nvidia gtx 285 2Gbyte ram myself, works like char, but so did my previous nvidia cards. Only my short ATI history as a dark spot in combination with linux. Damn that worked crap, maybe now their open source drivers have improved, i'm not sure. But i'm not going to make that mistake again.

Kind Regards
EViLSLuT

[mitsubishi]

imo nvidia is stronger on windows too; e.g. you get x264 acceleration.

[Quit Evilslut]

well there is quick some 2D (so to say) artists that i know that swear by colors of ATI. but proper driver support is essential for me.

[Nationalist]

cryptotheslow, on 22 January 2010 - 06:15 PM, said:

Hi,

I've been struggling for a long while (months) now to get UrT to run without crashing. After anything from 1 - 20 minutes of play the screen freezes and the sound goes into a loop, putting the PC into a hardware lock (caps lock / numlock unresponsive etc.) then usually a few seconds later the PC reboots or sometimes requires a hard power reset.

Currently on Ubuntu 9.10 (karmic), but I had the exact same problem under Win2K when I used to use that (same PC).

I'm fairly sure it's either the poxy ATI onboard graphics chip overheating or something in the q3 engine that throws it out.

So I'm finally throwing in the towel on making it work and want to get a decent NVidia card that's been proven to work well with UrT and Ubuntu. This is where I need help! When I start looking at what's available my brain starts to ache.... so all recommendations welcome.

BTW.. UrT is the only FPS I play so it probably doesn't need to be a totally bleeding edge card... I just want it to work at a decent res and fps rate.

Current system spec:

Ubuntu 9.10 (karmic)
GNOME 2.28.1 (Ubuntu 2009-11-03)
Kernel 2.6.31-17-generic (#54-Ubuntu SMP Thu Dec 10 16:20:31 UTC 2009)
GCC 4.4.1 (i486-linux-gnu)

MB Asus M2A-VM
AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+
Freq 1000.000 MHz
RAM 4GB (3402 MiB Available to Ubuntu)

Graphics Onboard ATI Radeon x1250 (256MB Shared Mem)
Drivers:
xserver-xorg-video-ati v. 1:6.12.99+git20090929.7968e1fb-0ubuntu1
xserver-xorg-video-radeon v. 1:6.12.99+git20090929.7968e1fb-0ubuntu1
xserver-xorg-video-mach64 v. 6.8.2-1
xserver-xorg-video-r128 v. 6.8.2-1
fglrx-modaliases v. 2:8.660-0ubuntu4


I looked at using xorg-driver-fglrx "Video driver for the ATI graphics accelerators" but that doesn't support this chip so I can't even try that.

Any suggestions will be gratefully received.

edit - Should have mentioned I've got 2x PCI, 1x PCI Express and 1x PCI Express x16 slots available.

Thanks

I have an nVidia 7600GT laying around somewhere. If you're prepared to pay the shipping costs, you can have it for nothing.

This post has been edited by Nationalist: 07 February 2010 - 06:18 AM