Fixed! Threaded optimization = Off in Nvidia Control Panel did the trick. The game keeps crashing on me at random times. I have tried everything suggested in other threads but it still keeps crashing. So far, only disabling anti virus real time scanner helped. But even that didn't solve it completely. With anti-virus running it will often times crash after a few minutes, if not seconds, disabling it only delays the inevitable. Matches that last longer than 25-30 minutes almost certainly end in a crash. Everything is set to low graphics quality/is disabled. I've even tweaked the 3D app settings in the Nvidia control panel to squeeze more performance out of it. I've also tried using defaults, still crashing. Everything else I've tried: - Relocating game files to various harddrives - Disabling steam in-game overlay - Using PA Launcher with Steam closed - Increasing page file size to 12GB - Even Windows ReadyBoost with a 4GB USB Stick - Setting PA.exe to a higher process priority - Running with the bare minimum of processes - Defragmenting my harddrives - Testing Ram with MemTest - Updating drivers (They are all up-to-date) None of the above had any noticeable effect. My PC: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit Intel Core2Duo E8200 @3.2GHz Nvidia GeForce 275 GTX 896MB Ram 4GB DDR2 800MHz Ram I realize these specs are very outdated, but it will be at least another year until I will be able to upgrade. And the game runs relatively smooth, when it isn't crashing. For instance, I was able to play on a 10 planet system without major framerate drops with countless units and 6 players. Of course it crashed a couple of times so I had to reconnect, but it worked. It also isn't related to system size. It crashes equally as frequent on single planet systems as it does on 5 planet systems. There doesn't seem to be anything specific causing it, in fact, the other day I played a sandbox AI and filled an entire planet with tanks (over 13000 units). The performance started to dip at around 5000 to 6000 units but it was still manageable to the end. I've even crashed the planet into another to kill off the commander sitting on it and it didn't crash. I've purchased the game in March last year, since then performance has gotten a lot better, but it just keeps crashing on me. I suspect it's my low amount of Ram is causing it, but I couldn't pinpoint the exact cause of the crashes. My question is, what is causing the Ram hogging? Are there multiple texture sizes for different graphics settings? If not, please, please include low res textures. It's incredibly frustrating to finally crack the enemies defences in Galactic War, sending your army through the teleporter only to crash a few moments later and attempt it all over again. I've included the latest PA-logfile and the dxdiag.txt, my Windows language is German, so there might be some unfamiliar terminology in there. I'll gladly translate relevant sections if needed.
This is one of well known crashes that developers actively investigating: http://crashes.uberent.com/report/index/296f39fd-e57c-4c0e-a8ef-360672150117 One suggestion of what you can do to avoid it: try to open "Nvidia Control Panel" and set "Threaded Optimization" to "Off" there. It's won't affect many games except PA because it's OpenGL-only option and there is very few games using OpenGL. Please post here if this will change frequency of crashes.
Alright, I've set Threaded optimization to off and thoroughly tested it. I have to be honest, I thought I would come back here following yet another crash to desktop, but after blasting my way through a quarter of an Uber sized Galactic War map in one go, I can conclude that the crashing issue is gone. I purposely turned Threaded optimization on previously, because it was suggested in many posts to combat visual bugs and performance problems, and I did notice the performance dip slightly, but it's something I can live with as long as I can play without interruption. Thank you very much for the help and speedy reply.
