TQ freezes the whole computer?

[rottenbanana]

I only need to leave the game running for 5-30 minutes, and it freezes with either a fully beige or a fully grey screen. The game music keeps playing but no movement/combat sounds, and nothing works. Ctrl-alt-del, alt-F4, nothing but a hard reset gets me back to Windows.

I've traced the problem to be TQ or TQIT, i have both and the problem occurs on both. Not a single other game on my gaming rig causes anything even nearly similar. TQ has the latest official patch, and TQIT has the latest fan-made patch.

Specs: Vista32 home premium / Intel Q9450@2.66 / Asus P5Q / GeForce 9800 GTX / 4GB DDR2@1066. Each and every component has the latest drivers as to this date, and no component is overclocked. The only problem i'd suspect regarding hardware is the onboard Realtek audio, since they often cause problems. But why only with TQ? I have also monitored my GPU temps with RivaTuner, and it never ever exceeds 78 C while playing. 62 C on idle.

The game is awesome, i'd like to keep playing it, but every time i have to do a hard reset my character loses his most recent equipment and map exploration details, everything is shrouded again. Annoying!

Ideas?

[qeu]

it could be another problem with vista or your computer is overheating(my gpu is fairly cool because i felt my card before and it didn't even feel warm) because Tq uses of processing speed.You can try and clean the dust out of the computer or take the case off. Also it looks like a graphics problem but you could try downgrading to graphics card drivers.

Edit: i think that taking off the case will help the heat because my cpu went from 48 C with the case on to 32 C When i took it off.

[rottenbanana]

I doubt it's a heating issue, i've tested it quite extensively and neither CPU or GPU temps go too high. Also my case has a few dust filters in the air intakes, and this rig is only a few months old so i found no dust anywhere inside.

You could be right about Vista though, i've never tested TQ on XP since i see no point in wasting a load of cash on a gaming rig and not take advantage of whatever the few DX10 games have to offer.

About drivers, i've downgraded to and tested the earlier WHQL version of GeForce drivers, some random beta version, an even older version and then some modded Xtreme-G version. The problem remains.

Even disabling onboard audio didn't have any effect. Defragging hard drives, virus scans, ram tests, and all the other obvious means of checking are done.

Incredibly annoying this problem, everytime i figure a nice character build i remember i'll barely get to the first shaman boss before the first freeze. Then sometimes the game plays for half an hour without any glitches.

[Seahawk]

Could be a HDD problem. Check the hard drive for bad sectors. Also try removing and reinserting your RAM memory. Good luck

[rottenbanana]

I've already tested both 500GB drives with Western Digital's own diagnostics utility. Both drives report a good SMART status and neither has a single bad sector, using the full scan. Chkdsk also reports no bad sectors or any other problems.

I used to have 4x1GB sticks of RAM, but that combination gave me lots of headaches with this motherboard (memtest errors, random boots...), so they got replaced with 2x2GB sticks and now all those problems are gone. Except for TQ. Everything hardware-wise has been tested with either a program or by changing components; RAM, hard drives, motherboard, dvd drive, keyboard, mouse, monitor. Well, CPU and power supply i haven't tested, didn't find spare parts for those in my box-o-pc-junk. If the power supply were at fault, like random surges for example i'm 99% certain i would see problems with other power consuming games or applications.

I greatly appreciate the suggestions, but i'm slowly beginning to think it's just Titan Quest screwing up. After all, this isn't exactly the most bug-free game ever made. Fun and entertaining for sure, which is why it hasn't yet been uninstalled despite this.

I've also fiddled with nVidia's driver settings, filterings and anti-alias etc. and TQ's settings, but no matter if enabled or not, whatever resolution is used... it always does the damn thing.

[gorbs]

is your cpu a quad core at 2.66 ? so that would mean each core is 70mhz. or a core2duo. this game runs flawlessly on my c2d 2.6 laptop with an 8600gt and 2 gigs of ram. what type of memory is it ? a good quality gaming memory like crucial, ocz, corsair etc. if not that might be the problem.

i run xp on my laptop and gaming rig. gaming rig is an e6750 c2d cpu, 8800gt, 4 gigs of crucial tracer memory. i added the extra two for the bling factor (blinking led's) than any performance reason because the game ran fine on two gigs.

i do remember some talk of single cpu v/s duo core running this game thats why i asked about your cpu being a quad core. really i am grasping at straws to try to help give you other avenues to look at to get your game running because it is such a cool game and very graphics intensive. what other games are you playing ?

edit: how big is psu powering everything? again grasping here.

[rottenbanana]

Yes it's a Quadcore CPU @ 2.66 GHz. I had four sticks of OCZ memory, but they got changed to two sticks of G-Skill memory @ 1066MHz. There was a setting in some .ini file regarding multi-core processors, i changed the value to don't-remember-what but it made no difference.

The power supply is a 600W Zalman, ought to be good quality and powerful enough for even SLI setups, which i don't have.

Other games; S.T.A.L.K.E.R, Neverwinter Nights 2, Gothic 3, Oblivion, Dark Messiah and a handful of others that i've played since i built this computer. I don't have a single problem with any one of them (except game-specific bugs of course, like Oblivion's infamous CTD's), yet Titan Quest does this.

Other than the freezes, TQ runs flawlessly. High fps, no rubberbanding or any other graphical glitches.

I appreciate the help, doesn't seem to be a simple issue to solve. Might have to give up the game, just yesterday i lost an entire character. I've never managed to beat the game because of these.

+ edit: Although i have no real knowledge about how multi-core CPU's work, i somehow can't imagine it would be 700MHz each core. Most games don't know how to take advantage of multiple core technology, which means i'd be running most of my games on one or two ~700MHz CPU's. That can't be right... could it be 2.66GHz each core? Experts correct me.

[Starkrun]

this sounds like a GPU memory error, maybe a sector is corrupted. what you describe is what happed to me, a new graphics card solved my problem...

worth a shot; and on a bright note you can always return the GPU and get your money back if im wrong

[Seahawk]

I'm no expert but yes, your CPU has 4 cores each working a 2.66 GHz. The bad news is that very few programs know how to use all 4 cores. I myself had some problems with the game freezing, but I didn't lost any of the loot or ingame progress. When I restart I find myself at the last rebirth fountain visited. My problem with freezing seems to have been caused by a HDD on witch a had a swap file. Further testing required. Anyway, it's strange that you lose ingame progress. It shouldn't happen.

[rottenbanana]

Originally Posted by Starkrun

this sounds like a GPU memory error, maybe a sector is corrupted. what you describe is what happed to me, a new graphics card solved my problem...

worth a shot; and on a bright note you can always return the GPU and get your money back if im wrong

I actually had a 8800GT before, had it tested by the vendor i got it from. Came back with no errors so i gave it to my wifey and bought myself a new 9800GTX anyway. But the problem remains.

Originally Posted by Seahawk

I'm no expert but yes, your CPU has 4 cores each working a 2.66 GHz. The bad news is that very few programs know how to use all 4 cores. I myself had some problems with the game freezing, but I didn't lost any of the loot or ingame progress. When I restart I find myself at the last rebirth fountain visited. My problem with freezing seems to have been caused by a HDD on witch a had a swap file. Further testing required. Anyway, it's strange that you lose ingame progress. It shouldn't happen.

Sometimes i lost only map exploration details, everything was shrouded when i got back to the game. Then sometimes i lost everything. It's odd that TQ requires a swap file, i can play all other games without a swap file. I could of course try relocating the swap file to another partition, or maybe another drive alltogether. Never thought it might be about the swap file... thanks for the tip. Wonder what size should it be, mine is fixed at 2048 MB. I doubt TQ actually *needs* the swap space with 4 GB of RAM, but since it demands i have one, might as well set it to 50 or so megs. Testing required.