DRD Team

A few months ago, I posted a report on how GZDoom kept repeatedly freezing during gameplay. At the time, I didn't know the exact cause.

However, yesterday, while playing, it kept doing it and it wouldn't resume, and finally Windows Bluescreened with an error in my video driver (nv4_disp.dll), which is nVidia Forceware, version 94.24 - the latest, IIRC.

As it's apparently not caused by Virus Scanners or badly programmed background tasks, I'm simply requesting a re-examination, as it's down to either nVidia's drivers not playing nice with GZDoom, or GZDoom is doing something that my 6800 GT isn't liking. Other OpenGL-based games I routinely play (Unreal, Unreal Tournament) have no such issues.

For a refresher, my system specs:

OS: WinXP Professional 5.1 SP2 (Build #2600)
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 3000+ (Barton), 2.17 GHz
Video: NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT (1024x768x32bpp 100Hz)
Soundcard: SB Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro
Memory: 1024 MB/1 GB

Please note, I'm trying not to be an ass about this. I love GZDoom, and it's one of the better ports out there, but the freezing makes things simply unplayable, especially netplay, as it locks my whole system until it either resolves, or BSODs as above.

If I can help test anything at all, I'll be glad to do so.

This is most likely a driver bug.

2 years ago I had reports of random crashes on ATI drivers that turned out to be caused by improper handling of destroying uninitialized texture IDs.

However, I can't invest the time to track down the specific cause. I also stopped updating my drivers since version 77.77 because I really don't have any desire to be bothered by newly introduced bugs which already made my system inoperable more than once and required a system restore.

Hm, this never happened to me, and I have the latest drivers installed. Everything works perfectly, just like clockwork.

Funny. The latest version of ForceWare for me is 158.24

Latest for GeForce 6 and 7 series is 94.24. Only GeForce 8s go to the triple digits.

So I guess until they fix it (or unless you can confirm without a doubt that those drivers will work flawlessly on my line of cards) that my use of GZDoom is going to be severely limited.

(EDIT 1: Which it won't... "Please note that this driver currently only supports GeForce 8800 series. If you need a driver for other NVIDIA GPUs, please visit http://www.nvidia.com/drivers and select the driver for your product." Translation: I'm stuck with 94.24.)

About the only other thing I can try is a complete uninstall and reinstall of the drivers... but if it's a driver issue, then there's nothing I can do till they fix it or there's a workaround for GZDoom.

*Sighs and can't wait until he gets his new computer*

EDIT 2: I played a bit of Skulltag, as it now uses GZDoom's rendering code apparently. It does the exact same thing, freezing eventually and BSODing if I continue further play if I do let it continue. Since it does take awhile, something's not getting cleared out or something...

I stopped updating the drivers for my 6800 at 84.21. I did get newer drivers but they were causing all sorts of problems with a variety of programs so I went back to the last stable one that I'd had - 84.21 - and I stayed there.

Enjay! I've heard of you. Nice work on several of your WADs.

I might try getting that version then, if I can find it...

A big reason why this is crucial for me to fix is I plan to use GZDoom for a WAD project I'm doing on-again, off-again. It's EXTREMELY annyoing and frustrating to test all this work, however, when after some time of playing (A level, maybe half of one... it does seem to become more common as time goes on, meaning something probably isn't cleared or something... not sure) that this occurs. My only solution is to exit the game, and relaunch it... I'm sure I sound like a broken record at this point, but it's highly frustrating.

Hopefully older drivers will work without too much of a performance kill or something... otherwise I have to wait until nVidia fixes it (Good luck, now that they're focusing more or less solely on GeForce 8x00 Cards) or Graf Zahl investigates the cause and possibly does a workaround.

A rollback to a slightly older version didn't work, but those ones Enjay mentioned seem to have worked. I've been playing for awhile now and usually it would've triggered by now. So that does, indeed, confirm a driver bug.

Sadly, now I have to bitch at nVidia to do a fix. Unless anyone feels like figuring out a workaround...

Well that was short lived... it simply took longer for it to occur, on the order of about half an hour this time. I tested many WADs to see if it stopped, and it had, and then it only took half an hour of Knee Deep in ZDoom for it to show up again. Sigh...

What do I have to do, get an ATi card to free myself of this? (Good luck with it dominating the dual-card market...) Lord forbid nVidia's gonna update their drivers for a fix... and Graf lacks the time (understandable) on examining things. Guess I just have to deal with it, or use a different port (or non-accelerated ZDoom, which works 100% fine... but it's quite ugly.)

It can be that your graphics card is broken. KDiZD occasionally pushes rendering performance to the absolute limit so that the card may overheat or cause other problems with your computer that result in a BSOD.

3 years ago my last computer started becoming unstable when running at 100% system performance and over time it got so bad that I couldn't do anything with it anymore that required a high amount of CPU power. I eventually had to dump it.

Maybe it's something similar with yours.

My card's never overheated... Idle it's running at about 60c, but the core slowdown threshold is about 120c. Though yes, my system is a bit over 3 years old (Hopefully I'll be getting a new one soon... just as soon as I find out if I have to pay for college grants - which I hopefully won't. I'll need a new machine for Unreal Tournament 3. )

Still, older drivers seem to have made it more "accepting" to GZDoom, so at least I can work on my project again. If anyone else has any other suggestions for me, I'm still quite open to them.