Is UTX installed? Many terrain.dll ctd's reported with that installed. I had the terrain.dll ctd a couple of years ago while flying the PMDG737 into Wash DC in heavy weather (a hurricane was nearby). It crashed just before landing. I lowered by FSX settings and I never saw the problem again. I could tell early on I was going to get some type of crash as the sim was getting slower and slower. There was just too much load on the CPU. That was with an older system though and not with my current one. I doubt you have a OC problem other than maybe your memory is not configured properly in the BIOS. The frequency, timings, and voltage must be correct. You can run CPU-Z and check the Memory tab and see what your current settings are. Then look at the next tab, the SPD tab and make sure your memory freq, timings, and voltage are correct. You may have to enter the BIOS to see the voltage but, if your freq and timings are correct, most likely your voltage is too. You might want to make sure.

 

Best regards,

Jim

 

Jim,

 

Many thanks for your continued advice. I don't have UTX.

 

I've downloaded CPU-Z. I can't see anything untoward, but I'm not really sure what I should be looking for. I dumped the CPU-Z report to text file below.

 

Memory SPD

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

DIMM # 1

SMBus address 0x51

Memory type DDR3

Module format UDIMM

Manufacturer (ID) Team Group Inc. (7F7F7F7FEF000000)

Size 4096 MBytes

Max bandwidth PC3-12800 (800 MHz)

Part number Team-Elite-1600

Manufacturing date Week 51/Year 12

Number of banks 8

Nominal Voltage 1.50 Volts

EPP no

XMP no

AMP no

JEDEC timings table CL-tRCD-tRP-tRAS-tRC @ frequency

JEDEC #1 5.0-5-5-14-19 @ 380 MHz

JEDEC #2 6.0-6-6-16-22 @ 457 MHz

JEDEC #3 7.0-7-7-19-26 @ 533 MHz

JEDEC #4 8.0-8-8-22-30 @ 609 MHz

JEDEC #5 9.0-9-9-24-33 @ 685 MHz

JEDEC #6 10.0-10-10-27-37 @ 761 MHz

JEDEC #7 11.0-11-11-30-41 @ 838 MHz

 

DIMM # 2

SMBus address 0x53

Memory type DDR3

Module format UDIMM

Manufacturer (ID) Team Group Inc. (7F7F7F7FEF000000)

Size 4096 MBytes

Max bandwidth PC3-12800 (800 MHz)

Part number Team-Elite-1600

Manufacturing date Week 51/Year 12

Number of banks 8

Nominal Voltage 1.50 Volts

EPP no

XMP no

AMP no

JEDEC timings table CL-tRCD-tRP-tRAS-tRC @ frequency

JEDEC #1 5.0-5-5-14-19 @ 380 MHz

JEDEC #2 6.0-6-6-16-22 @ 457 MHz

JEDEC #3 7.0-7-7-19-26 @ 533 MHz

JEDEC #4 8.0-8-8-22-30 @ 609 MHz

JEDEC #5 9.0-9-9-24-33 @ 685 MHz

JEDEC #6 10.0-10-10-27-37 @ 761 MHz

JEDEC #7 11.0-11-11-30-41 @ 838 MHz

 

DIMM # 1

SPD registers

00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F

00 92 10 0B 02 03 19 00 09 03 52 01 08 0A 00 FE 00

10 69 78 69 30 69 11 18 81 00 05 3C 3C 00 F0 83 05

20 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

30 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0F 11 01 01

40 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

50 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

60 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

70 00 00 00 00 00 04 EF 00 12 51 00 00 00 00 90 27

80 54 65 61 6D 2D 45 6C 69 74 65 2D 31 36 30 30 20

90 20 20 00 00 04 EF 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

A0 10 12 12 14 01 9F 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

B0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

C0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

D0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

E0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

F0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

 

DIMM # 2

SPD registers

00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F

00 92 10 0B 02 03 19 00 09 03 52 01 08 0A 00 FE 00

10 69 78 69 30 69 11 18 81 00 05 3C 3C 00 F0 83 05

20 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

30 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0F 11 01 01

40 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

50 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

60 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

70 00 00 00 00 00 04 EF 00 12 51 00 00 00 00 90 27

80 54 65 61 6D 2D 45 6C 69 74 65 2D 31 36 30 30 20

90 20 20 00 00 04 EF 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

A0 10 12 12 14 01 9F 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

B0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

C0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

D0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

E0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

F0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

Run Prime95 for 2-3 hours (make sure you have it load all cores) ... if you get any errors during that process then you've got a CPU/RAM issues and you'll need to back down your overclocking until you can get Prime95 stable.

Run Prime95 for 2-3 hours (make sure you have it load all cores) ... if you get any errors during that process then you've got a CPU/RAM issues and you'll need to back down your overclocking until you can get Prime95 stable.

 

Thanks, will do. In fact I'll leave it running overnight as I'm about to get to bed.

 

I've also noticed that the exception offset is also the same for each crash caused by terrain.dll; not sure if that's significant?

I'm not really sure what I should be looking for. I dumped the CPU-Z report to text file below.

 

Your report above does not show the current timings. That will be shown under the Memory Tab. The timings must match one of the timings shown in the JEDEC Timing Tables. These are the only frequencies and timings your memory can handle. Usually the one to the far right in the JEDEC Timing Tables (JEDEC #7 in your case) is the best frequency and timings for your computer but you must set the BIOS Profile to X.M.P. If you are not familiar on how to do this, then you'll have to live with what you have. You have a Gigabyte MB and I'm not familiar with that BIOS but you should have a line for Ai Overclock Tuner (Manual or X.M.P.). Also, inside the BIOS, look at what your Memory Frequency is set at. If it's auto, select DDR3-1600MHz. Then look for something like DRAM Timing Control. Those would be the JEDEC settings under the SPD Tab in the CPU-Z. Then you need to look for DRAM Voltage and make sure it is set properly as shown in the JEDEC Tables under XMP. Mine is 1.65V and that's usually the highest and best setting for your installed memory. If you have other timings set though, the voltage must be no higher than 1.50 V.

 

Why I'm telling you this is that you appear to be having a problem with system memory and this is causing the CTD's.

 

Best regards,

Jim

I've also noticed that the exception offset is also the same for each crash caused by terrain.dll; not sure if that's significant?

 

Until you know Prime95 is good, everything else could be misleading. Just make sure Prime95 is cranking on all 4 cores, not just one core.

Your report above does not show the current timings. That will be shown under the Memory Tab. The timings must match one of the timings shown in the JEDEC Timing Tables. These are the only frequencies and timings your memory can handle. Usually the one to the far right in the JEDEC Timing Tables (JEDEC #7 in your case) is the best frequency and timings for your computer but you must set the BIOS Profile to X.M.P. If you are not familiar on how to do this, then you'll have to live with what you have. You have a Gigabyte MB and I'm not familiar with that BIOS but you should have a line for Ai Overclock Tuner (Manual or X.M.P.). Also, inside the BIOS, look at what your Memory Frequency is set at. If it's auto, select DDR3-1600MHz. Then look for something like DRAM Timing Control. Those would be the JEDEC settings under the SPD Tab in the CPU-Z. Then you need to look for DRAM Voltage and make sure it is set properly as shown in the JEDEC Tables under XMP. Mine is 1.65V and that's usually the highest and best setting for your installed memory. If you have other timings set though, the voltage must be no higher than 1.50 V.

 

Why I'm telling you this is that you appear to be having a problem with system memory and this is causing the CTD's.

 

Best regards,

Jim

 

Ah, this might be the problem then. DRAM freq is 800.8, but JEDEC tables show #4, #5, #6 and #7 as 609, 685, 761, and 838 respectively.

 

I've not had any problem with any other games, but then I guess FSX is fickle.

 

I can't report on Prime95 as windows update decided to reset my machine during the night, grrr. Will see how it gets on when I return from work.

I've not had any problem with any other games, but then I guess FSX is fickle.

 

I've always stated FSX should replace Prime95 and the IntelBurnTest programs. :lol: FSX is an old game. You put too much stress on it and it's going to crash if you don't have a capable system. I recently moved my LOD setting from the max (4.5) to LOD 9.5 just to see if I could make my system crash. I got over 30 fps and everything seemed smooth. Then I tried a flight from FSDT KORD to KSTL. It crashed halfway there (AI_Player.dll was the faulting module). I plan on doing more testing with this to try to pinpoint exactly what caused the crash (i.e., could have been AS2012 or another addon running in the background). Seems to me, if your system can't handle it, it should crash immediately. Since weather programs (default and commercial) are going on-line to update the weather every 15 minutes, I get suspicious of them. My crash happened about 30 minutes into the flight though.

 

The JEDEC 838 frequency is the best for your installed memory and I would take full use of your memory's capabilities. You will have to change your profile in the BIOS to X.M.P. as I explained above though. There are many examples of Gigabyte BIOS being overclocked in the Hardware Forum or you can try this link (which might be similar to your system) - http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1918/3/. You have your system overclocked to 4.4GHz and that's good. That's where my overclock is set at and I found it works the best. Unless you're an expert overclocker, I would not go above that figure. FSX runs great at 4.4GHz. The problem I have found with these new-fangled motherboards and bios is that they are finicky. They now have these automatic overclocking BIOS (UEFI) and that's a relatively new thing and anything new needs beta testing from people like us. They fix little problems found after release by updating the BIOS (if you haven't updated the BIOS, that should be done too if updates are available). When I first built my current system, I set my memory settings to Auto (or ASUS did it for me). Started getting unexplained crashes and ran IntelBurnText and Prime95 and no problems were found. Still got crashes ONLY when running FSX. Then I read that ASUS boards have problems reading the installed memory sometimes so I decided to manually set my memory (plus I wanted to use the XMP profile). No more crashes. This is why I think most of the crashes encountered with FSX is based on memory configurations and/or high fsx settings. I have never maxed my fsx settings and my graphics are all crisp and clear.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Best regards,

Jim

I've always stated FSX should replace Prime95 and the IntelBurnTest programs. :lol: FSX is an old game. You put too much stress on it and it's going to crash if you don't have a capable system. I recently moved my LOD setting from the max (4.5) to LOD 9.5 just to see if I could make my system crash. I got over 30 fps and everything seemed smooth. Then I tried a flight from FSDT KORD to KSTL. It crashed halfway there (AI_Player.dll was the faulting module). I plan on doing more testing with this to try to pinpoint exactly what caused the crash (i.e., could have been AS2012 or another addon running in the background). Seems to me, if your system can't handle it, it should crash immediately. Since weather programs (default and commercial) are going on-line to update the weather every 15 minutes, I get suspicious of them. My crash happened about 30 minutes into the flight though.

 

The JEDEC 838 frequency is the best for your installed memory and I would take full use of your memory's capabilities. You will have to change your profile in the BIOS to X.M.P. as I explained above though. There are many examples of Gigabyte BIOS being overclocked in the Hardware Forum or you can try this link (which might be similar to your system) - http://www.legitrevi...article/1918/3/. You have your system overclocked to 4.4GHz and that's good. That's where my overclock is set at and I found it works the best. Unless you're an expert overclocker, I would not go above that figure. FSX runs great at 4.4GHz. The problem I have found with these new-fangled motherboards and bios is that they are finicky. They now have these automatic overclocking BIOS (UEFI) and that's a relatively new thing and anything new needs beta testing from people like us. They fix little problems found after release by updating the BIOS (if you haven't updated the BIOS, that should be done too if updates are available). When I first built my current system, I set my memory settings to Auto (or ASUS did it for me). Started getting unexplained crashes and ran IntelBurnText and Prime95 and no problems were found. Still got crashes ONLY when running FSX. Then I read that ASUS boards have problems reading the installed memory sometimes so I decided to manually set my memory (plus I wanted to use the XMP profile). No more crashes. This is why I think most of the crashes encountered with FSX is based on memory configurations and/or high fsx settings. I have never maxed my fsx settings and my graphics are all crisp and clear.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Best regards,

Jim

 

As I mentioned earlier I bought my bare bones system already overclocked, as I've not had much success trying it myself in the past. Hopefully I can save the current profile before I change it and end up screwing something up!

 

Thanks for the advice (again!), I'll see if I can tweak the memory.

 

Oh, and Prime95 didn't find any errors.

Changing the Profile to XMP should not interfere with the rest of your overclock but I have an ASUS board with the UEFI BIOS and the last page is Tools. I can save my BIOS settings there. I can also also go to each page in my bios and click on the F12 and it will take a picture of the page which is displayed. I then scroll down and get the rest of the page and click on F12. I do this for every page. Then, if I ever have a problem, I'll insert a Flash drive into my laptop (or I could also save the pictures to my harddrive and then transfer them to a laptop) and I'll have every page of my BIOS where I can reset things.

 

Best regards,

Jim

Oh, and Prime95 didn't find any errors.

 

That's positive news. I don't use XMP myself, especially with Asus ... I've not had much success with it. I hate to suggest this since it'll cost you $50, but I highly recommend you get SiSoftware Sandra 2013 ... they do a burn in test that is very exhaustive, if your system (as a whole, not just CPU/RAM) is marginal anywhere, this will catch it. Also, if you are doing any sort of RAM timing changes and/or overclocking Sandra 2013 will show if you are actually moving in a better direction ... overclocking can be a double edge sword and something that might seem to overclock well is actually performing slower in some areas ... specifically CPU Cache which is ECC (even if your main RAM is not) ... so you may end up with many cache errors that are corrected but you loose clock cycles but you never see any "failures".

 

SiSoftware Sandra 2013 Burn in test (will link image rather than inject them):

http://robainscough....d5212499f92.jpg

 

Sandra 2013 Benchmark tests:

http://robainscough....ef0432ed794.jpg

 

RAM Tests:

http://robainscough....caff36308a8.jpg

http://robainscough....90dd21e750a.jpg

http://robainscough....6b502a38dbf.jpg

 

Intel SSD 520 Series tests:

http://robainscough....3f01973783b.jpg

http://robainscough....e3e586ede48.jpg

 

OCZ Vector SSD Series tests:

http://robainscough....50260153853.jpg

http://robainscough....d268f61bca3.jpg

 

GPU Tests:

http://robainscough....32f9bee9d3a.jpg

http://robainscough....79524b3534e.jpg

http://robainscough....0f5eafcd5e3.jpg

 

And I'm not trying to sell SiSoftware, it's just over the years it has been a very good single tool (beyond the freeware like Prime95) to validate my PC and it's performance. SiSoftware Sandra user interface isn't the best (ok, I'll even say it's pretty bad) but it gets the job done. Just don't use your scoll wheel in the UI as it'll move the hardware item selection and automatically start a benchmark test leaving you thinking it's locked up, when in fact it's not ... it's just a horrible UI, but if you can get over the UI, it's a great tool.

 

EDIT: Note the Intel vs. OCZ SSD ... the OCZ has higher Bandwidth but the Intel unit is MUCH faster at Random Access.

I tweaked mem frequencies which caused the PC to immediately hang on start up, so I had to reset the CMOS, thereby losing my overclock...

 

 

...which seems to have solved the problem! I actually managed to complete a 2.5hr flight yesterday. So I'll have to see if I can gradually increase clock speed again.

I tweaked mem frequencies which caused the PC to immediately hang on start up, so I had to reset the CMOS, thereby losing my overclock...

...which seems to have solved the problem! I actually managed to complete a 2.5hr flight yesterday. So I'll have to see if I can gradually increase clock speed again.

 

Great news Jordan. Looks like you got it fixed. There are lots of information around the Internet on how to successful overclock your system, even on the Gigabyte website. Just take your time. Thanks for posting your solution here.

 

Best regards,

Jim