Bug 4030 - a map can crash nvidia video driver via quake 3
Status: RESOLVED INVALID
Alias: None
Product: ioquake3
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Video
Version: GIT MASTER
Hardware: PC Windows Vista
: P3 major
Assignee: Zachary J. Slater
QA Contact: ioquake3 bugzilla mailing list
URL:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2009-04-04 21:01 EDT by Monk
Modified: 2009-04-16 16:26:13 EDT
1 user (show)

See Also:


Description Monk 2009-04-04 21:01:16 EDT 
zakk suggested I post this here and graciously agreed to host the map in question.

Running around on this map:

http://www.ioquake3.org/files/z-ts2-crash.zip

...near the cop car, q3 crashes.  The map is password-protected as it's a pre-release map not for public consumption; zakk or myself have the password.  It's about 67 MB in size.

On Vista, tested with a 8800 GTS 512 and 9600 GT, q3 will crash and Vista will report "Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered."  Latest drivers installed.

On XP, tested with a 8800 GTS 512, you get a bluescreen.  Latest drivers installed.

On XP with an ATI 3650, no crash.

On Linux with "nVidia Corporation GeForce 8600 GTS (rev a1)", the map causes Q3 to freeze for about 20 seconds and then it recovers just fine without crashing.  Normal load during Q3 is 1.89, during the freeze it goes up to 2.1, and after the freeze it falls back down to 1.89.  

In VirtualBox with XP, no crash (and 1 fps, ugh).

----------

I have had it take up to 5 minutes of running around before it crashes.  One other time I was at the initial spawn, not moving, and it crashed about 5 seconds after I popped ingame.  The mapper uses /devmap and showtris and some other thing, but I was able to get a crash with just a regular /map.

The map is a quick compile so it's all fullbright and not optimized for size.  Though it's for the mod rq3, it will load (and crash) in regular baseq3.  The only other anomolies you may notice will be a HOM effect for the sky (skyportals not supported in baseq3, I think) and you can walk through the cop car misc_model (map's not done yet).

You probably don't want to bother unless you have access to a Vista or XP box with a 8xxx or better nvidia card as you won't be able to reproduce the crash.  I have submitted a bug report to nvidia, for all the good that will do.  The question remains, though:

How the hell is Q3 sending something that crashes nvidia drivers only?

Any insight is appreciated!
Comment 1 Monk 2009-04-04 21:32:13 EDT 
Update:

http://screenshots.rq3.com/tti/cars-crash.pk3

Nothing special with that, just several misc_model cars.  Map is called "cars".  It's something with that model that is causing q3 to die horribly.  Load it up in baseq3 and watch the hilarity and/or crash ensue!

Also, it's 2.8 MB instead fo 67 MB!
Comment 2 Ludwig Nussel 2009-04-05 07:50:04 EDT 
No idea bug IMO invalid here. If an application such as ioq3 which runs as unprivileged user is able to crash the graphics driver then it must be a bug of the driver. The system must not crash even if the unprivileged app sends complete garbage.
Comment 3 Monk 2009-04-05 15:28:23 EDT 
Alright, some more info that may be of interest.  The cop car model is around 1200 triangles total.  However, in-game a single one is 2324 verts 10511/10614 tris.  On that map with 16 cop cars, there is about 131k more tris than there should be as the r_speeds get up into the 150k's.  No special shader effects are being used to multiply the tris or anything, either.

So the nvidia driver might suck, but the crash might be related to the engine popping up almost an order of magnitude more tris than exist?  Is that expected behavior?
Comment 4 Zachary J. Slater 2009-04-16 16:26:13 EDT 
On my macbook pro laptop (nvidia 8800 512 MB mobile) running SVN 1489 I had no issues with the test map at all.

Sorry Monk, this is a driver bug.