Zinc, Graphics Chips, and You: A troubleshooting guide

This post is a long guide to why you might be having trouble getting Zinc to run, what you can do about it, and some general musings about graphics chips in general.

Updating your drivers

The most common Zinc problems can be solved by updating your graphics chipset drivers.

The vendors who build graphics chipsets write software drivers to make their chipsets work with your system, and they update their software to fix bugs and add new features from time to time. These fix most problems people have with Zinc.

The biggest vendors of video chipsets are Nvidia, ATI, and Intel. Here are links to get the latest drivers for these chipsets:

Nvidia - http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
ATI - http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx
Intel - http://downloadcenter.intel.com/default.aspx

Testing system OpenGL support

You can try these other sample OpenGL applications to see if your system supports OpenGL at all:

• http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_bubbledemo_home.html
• http://spaceinvadersgl.sourceforge.net/

If these apps don't work - then your system looks like it is having trouble with all OpenGL applications.

Try reinstalling your drivers, and if that doesn't work, your system manufacturer may be able to help you troubleshoot the problem.

If both of these do work, but Zinc still does not, the problem may lie elsewhere.

Which graphics chipsets do you recommend?

Consumer level chipsets usually are marketed in four segments:

• High end gamer cards - should work very well, but can be quite expensive.
• Mid level video cards - should work very well, and are reasonably priced. Cards in the $60-$100 range should run Zinc with no problem.
• Entry level video cards - should work reasonably well if it was produced in the last few years. Entry level cards from 3+ years ago might have some trouble running Zinc.
• The one that came built into your system - a very mixed bag. Sometimes these chipsets are decent, and sometimes they are simply awful.

If you're considering upgrading your existing PC with a new graphics card, or are planning to buy a new PC or laptop, look for a model with a Nvidia or ATI chipset brought to market in the last three years. These chipsets have much more mature drivers and are much faster than other brands on the market.

A quick overview of video chipset vendors

Here's a quick overview of video chipset vendors:

• Nvidia's GeForce line of graphics chipsets are generally excellent. Their drivers are very mature and work very well.
• ATI (owned by AMD) has had both its hardware and drivers mature a lot in the last few years. Chipsets made in the last few years (2007+) are excellent, top quality chipsets, and have great drivers. Before then, things were a bit sketchier, but there are a lot of older chipsets that work just fine.
• Intel graphics chipsets and drivers are, in general, less mature and less powerful than what Nvidia and ATI produce. That said, most chipsets produced in the last few years should be good enough to run Zinc.
• VIA, S3, and SiS chipsets are often built into special-purpose motherboards. They're relatively rare. Their drivers are generally not as mature as the big three (Nvidia, ATI, Intel). That said, we've seen a few of these chipsets run Zinc with only minor glitches.
• Workstation-class graphics cards are built for professional development, and are built a little differently than consumer-class cards. Nvidia, ATI, and Matrox all market lines these cards. I wouldn't recommend that you go out and buy one, since they are expensive and their drivers are built for a totally different style application. That said, if you have one, they usually have mature drivers and are fast enough for Zinc. (If anyone would like to report how Zinc runs on a $3000 graphics card, we'd love to know!)

Will getting a newer, faster graphics card fix my problem?
What kind of card should I get?

It might, but it's not guaranteed.

Graphics cards are a lot like cars, and cars are easier to talk about than graphics cards, so here's some true facts about cars:

• Newer cars generally run better than older cars. Not always, though!
• An expensive high performance car is more fun to drive than a modestly priced mass market car, but it's not necessarily more reliable.
• Some car companies generally make sturdier cars than other car companies.
• Some cars are built really well, and that makes them less likely to crash.
• If you modify your car, it's going to void the manufacturer's warrenty.
• Cars of the same make and model can have very different performance and reliability, depending a lot on where and how you drive them.
• If your garage door gets jammed closed, it doesn't matter what type of car you have, it's not going anywhere.
• Sometimes cars break down.
• Some cars are lemons.

You can take the same ideas and apply them to graphics chipsets.

So to answer the question more succinctly and generally:

• If you've got a card or system that was mass-marketed in the last 5 years, and you've got the latest drivers -the problem may be elsewhere, and a new card may not help.
• If you've got a older card, and you have the latest drivers installed, and Zinc still doesn't work, upgrading isn't such a bad idea.
• If you've got a very uncommon card or a specialty-purpose card (like a workstation class card, for example), upgrading isn't such a bad idea

Why does Zinc crash?

All applications, including Zinc, can crash for many reasons. Here are just a few of the more common reasons.

1. Bugs in the application
• No program in the world is bug-free, including Zinc. But we do our best to find 'em and fix 'em!
2. Bugs in your operating system
3. Bugs in your drivers
4. Bugs in your hardware
• Sometimes we can build workarounds for these bugs. Sometimes we can't. Updating your OS, drivers, or hardware can help with these.
5. System memory, disk space, or other resource availability
• Closing applications or clearing up disk space can usually solve these problems. Or you just might need more system resources.
6. Unexpected system configuration
• Things like security settings, operating system settings, missing essential files, BIOS settings, or graphics chipset configuration settings can cause problems. These are the often the hardest to find!
7. Applications conflicting with each other
• There are many, may applications that interfere with other applications. Anything from virus scanners to user interface modifiers to simply two applications competing for the same resource. These problems are identifiable when stopping a particular piece of software solves the problem. Finding out what the application is - and figuring out if and how it can be stopped - is often very difficult.
8. Environmental reasons (like heat)
• Zinc can use your graphics chipset's hardware acceleration and CPU a lot. Doing so makes these chips run hotter. If hardware gets to hot, it can cause strange effects and crashes. Solving these can be *very
• tricky, but they usually have one common symptom: it works for a while, then breaks, and it runs for longer when your system has been off (ie, cold) for a while.
9. "Broken" hardware or software
• It's rare, but sometimes failures are caused by plain old broken stuff. A spec of dust may have gotten in the wrong place in your hardware, or some files may have been corrupted on your hard disk. Even if the rest of your software runs fine, Zinc exercises some parts of your operating system and hardware that may not otherwise get used, so it may expose the problem.
10. Microscopic gnomes that live in your motherboard and steal your bits.
• The longer I work in this industry, the more I'm convinced they exist.

Figuring out the cause of the problem is usually the hardest part. So if you're reporting a problem, providing as much information as possible is essential. Every bit of information can help us rule out causes, or help us down a path of identifying causes.

All that said - the most common reason we see crashes is related to the graphics chipset and graphics drivers. We've tried dozens of chipsets here at ZeeVee, and have thousands of users who run Zinc successfully without any trouble, but there are millions of possible configurations out there, some of them will have problems. (If you're bothering to read this all the way through, odds are you've got one of them!)

Chipsets known to be incompatible with Zinc:

This is a list of chipsets that are known to have driver problems that prevent Zinc from running correctly.

• Via Chrome9: This chipset's drivers have a problem displaying Zinc, which results in visual "confetti". Luckily, this chipset is extremely rare.
• Really old chipsets: We've seen Zinc run on some pretty ancient hardware, but in general, if your graphics chipset is almost decade old, you probably should upgrade.

(Please note: this list is only for cards that are known to have problems on ALL systems.)