Heavy graphics corruption in new Quake3 engine games and mods

[wossName]

Hi,

both the Quake3 (1.29h) mod Urban Terror and the Wolfenstein multiplayer test cause heavy screen corruption on my G400, driver versions 6.51 and 6.71 beta. Screenshots of this are linked to from a thread on the Urban Terror forum: http://pub4.ezboard.com/furbanterror...icID=789.topic
I'm getting exactly the same effects as seen on the first two screenshots.
This problem does not appear in any other Quake3 mod I've tried, nor in Half-Life or Operation Flashpoint for example. In Wolfenstein, looking at the ground usually makes the problem go away after a while, which could indicate that the problem is caused by a heavy load, polygon or texture-wise. Urban Terror also has a lot of eye-candy.
In addition to the weird polygons, I'm also sometimes seeing what looks like a source bitmap for the game font, all letters and symbols in a square area.

Does anyone else have this problem ? Is it a driver or engine bug ? Or is my G400 simply getting too weak for modern games ?

[DuRaNgO]

A little system information would be nice

[wossName]

Ok, here we go:

1 GHz Thunderbird FSB133
Epox 8KTA3 board
256 MB 133 MHz DIMM
IDE HD in Ultra DMA mode
PS/2 keyboard and mouse
G400 SingleHead 16 MB

In the PCI slots:
Adaptec AHA-2940
NIC with Realtek 8139 chip
Soundcard with Trident chipset
Hauppauge BT848 TV card

Drivers are all up to date except for the G400 BIOS, but someone in the other thread mentioned upgrading won't solve this.
I just noticed that one person has this problem on a Geforce 1, so it might be a problem in the latest Quake3 engine build, but then again Nvidia drivers probably have bugs too...

[c0met]

Me too

I'm getting the same thing when an Airstrike or alot of explosions (and flamethrower) hits in The wolfenstein castle multi demo.

i noticed if i look away it clears up. only when i'm looking at it does it mes up that badly.

[drzaius]

when i look away, there are tons of hot women on my screen, but they run away whenever i look back

anyway, i have that same corruption on Q3 too, but it happens so irregularly and quickly that i dont have time to hit the print screen button. it doesn't bother me too much anyway, because i don't play Q3 that much.

i only noticed it doing that after i installed the newest non-beta drivers, 6.51 are they?

try an earlier version and see if that clears it up.

[impact]

Are you overclocking your card?

[wossName]

No, and the CPU is running at its original speed as well.
I have not been able to take screenshots of this myself, as for some reason the mess clears up before the screenshot is taken.

[c0met]

Hope this works:

That's what happens on airstrikes... etc

no overclock. (none of those women either,)

[wossName]

Exactly. This usually means you'll be dead shortly, unless you manage to manage to find your way into some safe corner until it goes away. Makes the game really challenging, unfortunately that doesn't go into your score.

[Chasbo]

I was having almost the exact same problem in Quake 3 using the latest drivers for Windows 2000. Once I went back to the latest WHQL certified drivers the problem went away. Give that a try.

Chuck

[KeiFront]

I also had the same problem under win2k with the 5.52 drivers. Now I use the 5.71 beta drivers and these drivers seem to fix the problem for me.

[USS-Spectre]

I have the same problem with GTA2 and my G550. I haven';t been able to fix it yet. I have just one stupid line at my screen which corrupts.

[Arsa]

Same problem here.
Could somebody verify that new drivers fix it? It anoys me very very much ;-)

[wossName]

I was using the newest drivers and it didn't help. If I forgot to mention it, I'm running Windows 98. I have tried the 6.22 WHQL drivers and so far the problem did NOT appear ! I'm going to test them a little more to verify it. These drivers are the stone-ages of course, so I'd rather see a more satisfying solution. I've noticed similar threads on Matrox' own forums (http://forum.matrox.com/mgaforum/For...ML/003428.html)
so maybe we should get their attention ?

[Clevor]

The 6.51 and 6.71 Beta drivers are fast! I just bought a used G400 MAX and was using these from the getgo and figured geez, this card is not as slow as I thought. But they can't handle the QuakeIII engine stuff too well.

It's the typical situation where the 6.22s have stability over speed.

Yes, someone should bring it to Matrox's attention. I'm hoping they come out with even faster G400 drivers that have solved the graphical corruption before the G800 comes out. Because I don't think they are gonna spend much time on the G400 drivers after that.