I just got a new video card - an eVGA GeForce 6800 GS CO SE, 256MB - a few days ago.
I also just got Galactic Civilizations II a few days ago as well. Cool game. I'll probably spend as much time on it as I spent on SimCity over the years.
Well, the game would crash after playing for 10-15 minutes. Not a BSOD which might tell me something;; but the video would turn into several columns of greenish yellow lines - totally locking the computer so I had to turn it off to reset it.
I tried the usual stuff like turning of background tasks, which did not help. The computer is new as well and I have checked for newer drivers. The video drivers were downloaded from Nvidia's site - version 81.98, and I uninstalled the old drivers before installing the new.
I had also overclocked the eVGA card using the coolBits tweak by letting the driver find the best OC rate.
There was one main problem that seemed to clear up the crashing issue, and possible one minor one.
The minor one was the overclocking, because an hour or so into play it had locked up again.
The major issue was solved, I believe, by following the installation intructions more closely.
The installation instructions state that any virus checkers need to be disabled before installing, otherwise the drivers would not configure themselves correctly.
So, I disabled the virus software, then uninstalled the drivers using Add/Remove Programs, rebooted, and with the virus software still disabled, reinstalled the drivers. After that reboot I enabled the virus software and used the computer normally, including setting up the overclock.
Like I said, I did crash once after that, after about an hour of play. So I disabled the overclock and went back to default frequencies.
I played from probably 3 in the morning until 6 or so this evening without a single crash.
This game is addictive, for sure. But, 15 hours of near continuous game play without a single crash, and the problem may be as simple as turning off the virus software before installing the drivers.
I'll let you know if I start crashing again. I get a few hours of sleep and I will be back on it all night again, I'm sure.
