Issues, Workarounds & Localization

This issue first talked about here

Hello everyone. For about two months now I've struggled with a problem of ever-increasing severity that is somehow connected to textures and icons, and system resource usage. Before I begin, let me preface this by stating that no other games I play seems to lock up like this: EVE is the only one.

Some background info: I have a Toshiba Satellite laptop with an Intel i5 processor and an integrated Intel HD Graphics card, 4 GB of RAM (3.8 usable). My hard drive also has plenty of space, and so ever since this problem has cropped up I've allocated 5 GB for Page File usage, thinking this was a problem with RAM.

Ever since I've bought this laptop, the "Entering Space" loading stage upon jumping into a new system or undocking causes issues. My display driver stops responding and the screen seems to power off, then "blink" back to being powered on (but displaying only black color). Sometimes it will recover to the game, other times it will simply stay black and I have to Ctrl-Alt-Del and bring up task manager and shut down exefile. So historically what I've done is minimize the game (I play in fullscreen mode) and wait for the "Entering Space" stage of loading to complete, and then go back into the game. This has worked fine for the past year and a half; this is an issue CCP is aware of with integrated graphics cards, particularly Intel HD. It's mostly a nuisance and doesn't hinder my gameplay too much.

The problem: Recently the above-mentioned trick of minimizing the game doesn't work. At the same time though, this problem seems a little different: upon jumping or undocking into system certain textures and models won't load, resulting in "ghost" ships, gates, stations, etc. The display driver reports no errors and does not crash, but the client does stop responding. Furthermore, simple things such as UI icons fail to load, particularly the icons in the "Selected Items" box. The client seems to try to load these things and instantly stops responding. So for the sake of being detailed I was sure to capture screenshots of both the problem and what my system resource monitor was telling me. Notice the timestamps at the bottom-left of the ingame screenshots; the amount of time my computer spends locked-up loading these things is incredible, particularly in a combat situation.

IImages, in chronological order of my testing

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Image 1 : First taken when I warped into a mission I was consistently having problems with. I had lost a much more expensive PvE ship due to this problem, so I decided to use my pod. Note the Selected Items box, where the "Approach" icon has failed to load. I theorize that there are a few different icons in this spot, an "Align", "Approach" and faded out versions of these icons, which must be loaded individually. So that icon failed to load.

Image 2 : Just seconds later when I clicked on a rat in my overview. While the "Approach icon" has finally loaded, note the lack of a preview image for the ship just above the icon.

Image 3 : "Show Info" window also fails to load an image for the ship.

Image 4 : The ship image finally loads awhile later.

Image 5 : My system resource monitor seems to indicate a spike in CPU activity during the slow loading periods, as indicated by the highlighted area.

Image 6 : I tabbed back into the game after minimizing to check the system resource monitor, only to find that the model for my pod had disappeared! Note the engine trails still working, but the pod's model is just gone.

Image 7 : The pod's model is still gone, and now the "Selected Items" box is acting up again, failing to load the ship preview icon.

Image 8 : I tab back out of game and monitor the system resource use again. Judging by the panicked red text, there is little doubt the EVE client is in trouble. The fact that my Maximum Frequency use is at or above 100% during some of these time periods confirms this.

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At this point I get very curious and continuously minimize and tab back into game. Each time more icons might load, or disappear. Very odd! Has anyone else encountered something like this?

Bump. I did some more flying, this time through Caldari space (From the Amarr system to the Jita system). As soon as I entered Caldari space the problem resurfaced, and it was a hell of a flight all the way to Jita. I wrestled with my computer for nearly three hours to get back to Amarr space; once I crossed the border the problem ceased to persist.

The problem was of course the same as documented above, with high CPU use and the like. Given that the problem was limited only to Caldari space and the Caldari-shaded rats, this MIGHT be some niche problem with Caldari shader files. CCP, any thoughts?

Huh, I've cleared cache via the EVE Client before but not manually as you describe. Do you know if the problem will come back up if the cache is allowed to build back up?

Also of note is the recently-released Retribution patch notes, in which it mentions a bug with NPC turret shaders. I wonder if it's related?

I just went into Caldari space again, and as with the previous two times my client began consuming massive amounts of system resources and the game generally disabled my computer. So much CPU was being used that I couldn't even Ctrl-Alt-Del to get Task Manager up. Luckily I live with another EVE player in real life and logged in on her laptop, thus usurping the connection from my own laptop. The client closed automatically, and Task Manager finally came up. System's all green at the moment, and I'm auto-piloting back to Amarr space on the other player's laptop as I type this update. My client seems to work fine there.

I suspect shader issues, really. Since my graphics card is integrated with my CPU, any time it struggles so does my entire system. Could something really be wrong with only a handful of shaders, specifically those found in Caldari space? Seems oddly specific for what sounds like a broad issue.