Problems Rendering with X5

[Beaver Building]

I am a new user to X5 love the forums and helpfulness of discussions. Love the program. Somewhat frustrated with my problem...

My operating system is Windows 8.1 Pro. The processor is an AMD FX-8120 Eight-Core processor with 24GB installed RAM. My Video Card is an AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series with the latest driver (updated since migrating to 8.1). It has 1GB dedicated RAM.

Every time I render in any way except Perspective Framing Overview, I get the following message:

I have submitted a Support request, but am waiting for a reply after the first contact which suggested I update my driver (already done).

I have tried resetting the plan position to 0, 0, 0 as suggested in a previous thread. I can't find a way of altering my 'Render Window'.

A typical view generated after the error message looks like I am somewhere out in orbit. This view cannot be zoomed down or otherwise manipulated.

[Beaver Building]

I have found a sort of solution which is to turn off Optimizations. However, I am not sure why my video card memory is exceeded so easily. Any suggestions?

[Alaskan Son]

I know little to nothing about video cards, but perhaps your video card itself is actually bad.

[perryh]

I would try, leave optimizations on and turn off Hardware edge smoothing. Sometimes that setting causes problems with those ATI cars.

[Doug Park]

Turn off optimizations. It looks like some ATI cards are incompatible with 8.1. Keep an eye out for a driver update. Hopefully they get a fix soon.

[zt730]

I'm running a Radeon 7970 in one machine and a Radeon 6970 in another. This has been a problem for almost a year now. It is just now apparent to most people in windows 8.1 because it ships with a feature enabled by default that automatically installs the latest drivers for your hardware. I'm guessing most people typically don't upgrade drivers if their current version works. I have had zero problems with any other software in windows 8 or 8.1 with the latest AMD video drivers. It would be nice if Chief Architect and AMD could talk to each other and figure out exactly what the problem is.

As a work around on my work computers, I disabled the automatic driver updates (Control Panel->System->Advanced System Settings->Hardware->Device Installation Settings->No, let me choose what to do->Never Install driver software from Windows Update) and rolled the video driver back to version 9.2.0.0 Dated 9/27/2012. If you have automatic windows updates turned on, it will still try to install the new drivers through there as an "Important Update". In that case, after uninstalling the newer drivers, you can check for updates in Windows Update and when it comes back with the availability of the new driver in important updates, right click on it and select "Hide Update". This old driver doesn't run as fast as the new driver with optimizations on, but it also doesn't crash when you view larger projects. Leaving optimizations off on either one is even slower.

[Beaver Building]

I'm running a Radeon 7970 in one machine and a Radeon 6970 in another. This has been a problem for almost a year now. It is just now apparent to most people in windows 8.1 because it ships with a feature enabled by default that automatically installs the latest drivers for your hardware. I'm guessing most people typically don't upgrade drivers if their current version works. I have had zero problems with any other software in windows 8 or 8.1 with the latest AMD video drivers. It would be nice if Chief Architect and AMD could talk to each other and figure out exactly what the problem is.

As a work around on my work computers, I disabled the automatic driver updates (Control Panel->System->Advanced System Settings->Hardware->Device Installation Settings->No, let me choose what to do->Never Install driver software from Windows Update) and rolled the video driver back to version 9.2.0.0 Dated 9/27/2012. If you have automatic windows updates turned on, it will still try to install the new drivers through there as an "Important Update". In that case, after uninstalling the newer drivers, you can check for updates in Windows Update and when it comes back with the availability of the new driver in important updates, right click on it and select "Hide Update". This old driver doesn't run as fast as the new driver with optimizations on, but it also doesn't crash when you view larger projects. Leaving optimizations off on either one is even slower.

Thanks very much for that suggestion. I have noticed a stuttering slowness with the optimizations off. I will try the older driver and see what happens. If money grew on trees I would change my video card...

[zt730]

In case anyone is still dealing with this, I downloaded and installed the new Catalyst 14.1 Beta drivers from AMD's website a few days ago, and so far no more problems with optimizations on in Chief.