PC Freezes with new Patch 1.1.0

[Hyper.nl]

I updated my nVidia driver to version 270.61 WHQL (Just released), but nothing changed to the 3DMark Vantage problem.

I launched the benchmark and it immediately crashed after loading the first scene. I waited over 5 minutes for the first scene to start, but it did not. I pressed <esc> but nu response. CTRL-ALT-DEL did not respond and a soft shutdown (Shortly pressing the off button) did not help.

Again, all other benchies work nicely, so I think it is purely related to 3DMark Vantage.

Still, I find it strange that any user-mode application can destabilize the system so much. This is against what I learned about Windows NT (2000, XP, Vista, 7) which has a robust kernel that protects against user-mode programs crashing the kernel.

specs

[flyinion]

Still, I find it strange that any user-mode application can destabilize the system so much. This is against what I learned about Windows NT (2000, XP, Vista, 7) which has a robust kernel that protects against user-mode programs crashing the kernel.

specs

Agreed, especially since it's a 32bit app running on a 64bit OS. I thought 64bit versions of Windows were supposed to sandbox 32bit apps to prevent this type of behavior from happening. So something is going seriously wrong for those of us with the problem.

EDIT: one thing I forgot to mention that might help track down where the problem is coming from is that I noticed that the previous version wants to disable parts of the Windows Aero interface when it runs. I.e. transparent bars and windows are no longer transparent and the taskbar doesn't show window previews. The NEW version of Vantage seems to have been modified to fully support Aero. Perhaps there is some kind of random bug (as far as who it affects) in the code for that area of the app.

[Jarnis]

The application actually cannot hang a system like that.

The video driver (and any other kernel-level driver), on the other hand, can. At this point we do not know if this is something caused by our code or something specific in the drivers. The odd bit is that there are reports from both ATI and NVIDIA based systems which would rule out a simple driver bug.

We are still investigating but this is a hard problem to figure out as we have been unable to reproduce it in-house.

[maxxx40]

I just updated to this patch version. 3DMark Vantage now crashes on the 1st CPU test. Gives me stop code 0x0000124 (QPI/VTT/Vcore related). Note that the computer is running stock.

Uninstalling and doing a clean install of v1.1.0 does not solve the problem. Uninstalling and reverting back to v1.0.2 fixes this problem.

For comparison, I have 3DMark11 and 3DMark06 running just fine. Its just Vantage v1.1.0 which causes this and its not ramdom.

MSI N580GTX Lightning
ASUS Rampage III Extreme
Intel XEON W3680
Corsair Dominator GT 2000Mhz C7

[BlackZero]

Same issue here, crashes the system when loading any of the graphics tests and a crashes a few seconds into the physics test. Worked fine before the 1.1 update, and 3dmark06/11 all work fine. Going back to previous version fixes the issue.

HD 6950
Q6600
Striker II 780i
4GB RAM

[tz00k]

Same problem here, have to force a restart.

[picommander]

The odd bit is that there are reports from both ATI and NVIDIA based systems which would rule out a simple driver bug.

This is indeed odd, even more then you might think. I've got a brand new PC, just a few days old, and at first vantage ran fine. A bit lower than expected but at least no crash. But then vantage (not the system!) began to freeze. Fortunately I found this thread before I started to suspect any hardware issues. As a sidenote, 3D Mark 06 and 11 always ran w/o any problems.

Then I installed the recommended older version of vantage and to my surprise it still crashed, no difference at all! So there was only one conclusion left to me (unless no hardware was broken): The only thing I've changed soon after the first successful runs was the update of my nvidia drivers to the latest 270.61

Despite of what you've said about the ATI users I decided to downgrade to the latest available whql drivers bevor the 270.61, to 266.66

No crash anymore, whether with the old vantage version nor with 1.1.0
Though both the old and the new version of vantage don't accept these drivers (at the end of benchmarking in a message), threw out astronomical scores like P21280 (old vantage) and 17621 (new vantage), but also "your score is Low Compared to Similar Systems". The old vantage seems to execute the last physics test on GPU only with ~ 215 ops/sec (old vantage) which is usually something around 23 (new vantage, even with the old nvidia drivers). The lower number seems to be related to CPU execution which is how its meant I guess.

That's all I can say for now. If now ATI users would also fix their vantage problem with downgrading their drivers we have some serious voodoo here!
Or maybe some secret technology transfers or (for the conspiracy theorists) even a serious case of industrial espionage... [rofl]

[picommander]

The odd bit is that there are reports from both ATI and NVIDIA based systems which would rule out a simple driver bug.

Downgrading from nvidia 270.61 to 266.66 did the trick for me. Benchmark runs through w/o any freeze but with astronomically high scores and a warning in the end about vantage not accepting this driver version.

[picommander]

Got something what at first looked like a solution: downgrading nvidia drivers to v266.66 (the last whql before the most recent one). Vantage went through all tests but showed very *interesting* scores at the end, with a warning about not accepting this driver. The last physics test seemed to work on GPU only (with much higher results of course). That was with the older version of vantage. After installing 1.1.0 vantage ran exactly 1 time and after that froze again.

System is Intel Core i5-2500
8 GB DDR3 Mushkin 9 @ 667 MHz (huch, is this correct? Shouldn't that be 1333MHz instead?)
nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti

[picommander]

Vantage is running stable now! In my case it was a broken memory module that caused the whole mess. [cursing]