Supreme Commander crashes at max settings with new gfx card

[Golden Dragoon]

Ok, to clarify supreme commander used to run perfectly on my 256mb HD2900gt on med setings, now however I have gotten a 512mb HD4850 and run the game on high settings, and towards the end of large multiplayer matches it will randomly crash, dropping it down to medium quality will solve the problem.

Now I have looked this up (after first thinking the card was faulty or the drivers were messed up), and think that as I am running 32bit windows, the upgrade to a 512mb card and running higher settings is pushing the game past the 2gb address space allowed in 32bits, this article is the one that has made me think that: http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3034
And as I can recreate the crash by following the methods described, and using process explorer to see that the usage at the times of the crashes is about 1.8-1.9gb I assume it must be my problem.

Looking through that article, it would seem to me like the only option is to upgrade to 64bit (win7 rc looks tempting) or resign myself to the fate of running at med detail for the forseable future, unless anyone on here has any suggestions that could help me.

[Jasp]

Get the same problem on my laptop when playing this game and always put it down to a engine limitation but does seem like what you said, their is a hotfix on GPG net http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtop...t=2382&start=0 that alters the address space to 2.9gb but tbh is playing on medium settings really that bad?

Either way you have 8gb of ram in your system so to get the most out of windows you should be running 64bit, personally i'd go with the Win 7 RC 64bit, iv'e ran the 32bit version now for about a month and a half and in that time its been far more stable then my previous Vista install.

[danroyle]

i'd go for win7 too i am running the 64bit and it is pretty good have not tried sup comm on it yet but it is one of the games i do wanna try just to properly burn in my gtx260 and Q9550

[kalniel]

Ok, to clarify supreme commander used to run perfectly on my 256mb HD2900gt on med setings, now however I have gotten a 512mb HD4850 and run the game on high settings, and towards the end of large multiplayer matches it will randomly crash, dropping it down to medium quality will solve the problem.

Now I have looked this up (after first thinking the card was faulty or the drivers were messed up), and think that as I am running 32bit windows, the upgrade to a 512mb card and running higher settings is pushing the game past the 2gb address space allowed in 32bits, this article is the one that has made me think that: http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3034
And as I can recreate the crash by following the methods described, and using process explorer to see that the usage at the times of the crashes is about 1.8-1.9gb I assume it must be my problem.

Looking through that article, it would seem to me like the only option is to upgrade to 64bit (win7 rc looks tempting) or resign myself to the fate of running at med detail for the forseable future, unless anyone on here has any suggestions that could help me.

Yes that's the issue. But an interim fix is to modify the Sup Com exe to be large address aware and then make sure your windows squishes up to allow for 3gb processes - which buys you a bit of time. Alternatively (and simpler) install Forged Alliance, which is already large address aware.

[Golden Dragoon]

Either way you have 8gb of ram in your system so to get the most out of windows you should be running 64bit, personally i'd go with the Win 7 RC 64bit, iv'e ran the 32bit version now for about a month and a half and in that time its been far more stable then my previous Vista install.

The 8gb comes in handy for osx, I have put off going for a 64bit windows for a long time (I have had this same win xp install since mid 2003, kept good maintenece habits up and never really had any problems)
I have tried the 3/gb switch, and it is a no go, my system simply won't work with it so as I have had this xp system for so long and have it set up how I want, can I just put in the win7 disc and upgrade keeping all my installed programs as they are? or will I have to reformat and start afresh? also will installing 7 interfere with my iDeneb install, that was a right pain to get dual booting.

[kalniel]

I have tried the 3/gb switch, and it is a no go, my system simply won't work with it

What exact parameters did you use? Just using the /3gb switch on it's own probably won't work because of the graphics card memory size, you'll need to tweak the exact /userva amount to get it to work with your system (try 2600). Also try enabling 'memory hole' or something similar in your BIOS.

[Jasp]

The 8gb comes in handy for osx, I have put off going for a 64bit windows for a long time (I have had this same win xp install since mid 2003, kept good maintenece habits up and never really had any problems)
I have tried the 3/gb switch, and it is a no go, my system simply won't work with it so as I have had this xp system for so long and have it set up how I want, can I just put in the win7 disc and upgrade keeping all my installed programs as they are? or will I have to reformat and start afresh? also will installing 7 interfere with my iDeneb install, that was a right pain to get dual booting.

If i recall correctly win 7 has the ability to upgrade windows vista but not windows XP so it would mean a clean install, as to if it would interfere with your iDeneb install not a clue tbh.

Tbh if you happy with your install and settings just play the game on medium settings, not a perfect solution but you said yourself it works.

[Golden Dragoon]

Well I did a backup of my c drive, and installed win7 x64, seems pretty good, as expected it has borked my iDeneb install, and installing iDeneb borks the win7 install so I will just have to look for a workaround some place else and will stick with 7 for now.

One thing that is a bit odd though, my bios recognises all 8gb of my ram, but in windows I can only see 6gb of it, it will take a bit of extra work on my part to figure out what is going on there, tried moving the ram about to no avail, but still 6gb is more than was getting used before in windows.

[Jasp]

Curious it should quite happily detect all 8gb of ram, try Accessories>Run>MSconfig>Boot Tab>Advanced Options and make sure maximum memory is not ticked, if it is untick and reboot.

[thestjohn]

When you say installing one or the other of the operating systems mucks up the other, do you mean that you can't access it on boot? Have you tried using something like BCDEDIT to modify the win7 boot menu to display both options on boot?

[Golden Dragoon]

Curious it should quite happily detect all 8gb of ram, try Accessories>Run>MSconfig>Boot Tab>Advanced Options and make sure maximum memory is not ticked, if it is untick and reboot.

Thanks, solved the problem

When you say installing one or the other of the operating systems mucks up the other, do you mean that you can't access it on boot? Have you tried using something like BCDEDIT to modify the win7 boot menu to display both options on boot?

iDeneb uses it's own bootloader, which I can't get to recognise win7, and I don't know of any way to get the windows bootloader to even recognise hfs+ partitions, let alone boot from them lol, I will have to look about the iDeneb forums a bit tomorrow and sort it out then.