My Game Keeps Crashing All The Time - Solution

[D13_Michael]

Greetings,

If your game keeps crashing, please go into the graphics options and switch to DirectX11 for now. DX12 is causing some serious issues, especially with NVidia Cards.

[Los.Injurus.Bob.Blunderton]

Going to list (spoilered) system specs to get it out of the way:

Custom built machine in Fractal Define XL case w/dust filtering & sound deadening
Ryzen 3950x (stock clocks/volts), Noctua NH-D15 (one fan installed)
X570 Asus Tuf Wifi motherboard, 64gb (4x16gb dual-rank) 3000mhz cl-15 RAM, DOCP set.
RTX 3090, specifically Gigabyte model with 2x 8-pin power
Seasonic 1300w power supply
NVME & Sata drives to the tune of 10tb of SSD, plus a spinner (HDD) for backups.
Added blu-ray burner and Creative sound card.
Multiple fans, all air cooled no water cooling, cleaned semi-regularly
Tower is about 4.5 years old or so. First PC was a 486 when Doom (for DOS) was new.
Now, with that out of the way...
This game, for some reason, will work the computer harder in multi-core than any game I've yet come across. My game-dev machine here was ROARING to the nines here, I mean LOUD and it does not EVER get loud. Audible, yes, it'll do that when it's busy, but loud, no.
That said, I checked temps, which crept up into the 90~96C range on the processor, and mid 70's-C on the GPU.
Not even BeamNG Drive running lots of AI, or ANY benchmark stress tests, will get this thing as loud / toasty as this game does. Not even good old Prime 95 on small FFT's will do it.
Am I complaining? NO. Not one bit! No draw call lagging in sight THANK YOU.
DirectX 12 allows multiple threads of the CPU to feed the GPU. This enables your fancy GPU to not be waiting for a single threaded rendering like on Skylines.
In-fact, this is a testament to whoever is doing the coding. This is the complete opposite of Cities Skylines (I didn't even bother trying the 2nd one but hear it's worse!). This is EXCELLENT coding to the point where it's running my 3950x processor to the hills and back to the point it changed the temperature of the room the computer is in, in short order. Hitting 96C will cause the processor to drop it's turbo mode, reverting to stock clocks, for those wondering. I have it set to do that as a just-in-case additional fail-safe.
It was chilly in here. WAS.
If this game gets this computer THIS TOASTY, then I can imagine what it's doing to systems that haven't been designed to run full-tilt 24/7 like this.
Most store-bought systems will not fare nearly as well as a purpose-built game-development computer. Those systems will just BSOD from CPU overheat, shut off, or the video driver will crash (gpu core instability) causing 'GPU REMOVED' to pop up.
This is not a complaint, this is just user feedback from someone who knows a bit about designing his own computer, 3d models, textures, and game scenes. That - and trying to avoid games where the arch villain is the Draw Call Demon, as it's not my job to beat him.
So yes, that's why systems are crashing more often than in regards to game 'bugs' themselves. A lot of (especially cheaper) machines built today aren't going to be able to handle a real work-load and will get driver crashes, BSOD's, or even out-right shut off.
DX 11 ESSENTIALLY THROTTLES THE PC WITH SINGLE-THREADED RENDERING, causing less systems to run full tilt for less time, and less systems to then crash.
Seriously, well played Dev. I will recommend this game highly, you did great work here.
Now I'm going to definitely dust out the filters tomorrow, before firing up this game again.
Or I'll knock the tower over and throw a good steak on the CPU cooler before I run it.
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NOTE:
Users of AMD Polaris-based graphics cards on Win10/11 who get 'GPU REMOVED' crashes that aren't due to heat, please down-clock the core of your card by 25mhz increments using MSI-afterburner or your own choice of software and test the game again. Repeat the 25mhz steps down until it fixes the card and you don't get the crash anymore. 50~75mhz total fixes it for most everyone and will remove some of the hitching and the crashes too. For some reason, on Windows 10, the AMD GPU driver was clocking the core too high on an RX 480 8gb card I tested, causing random hitching and sometimes crashes outright. Downclocking the max core on the card fixed the crashing and hitching. You might have to do this each time Windows starts to make sure it doesn't happen again.
This does not involve Windows 7, as it did not happen under Windows 7 ever. I am unsure about if it happens in Windows 8 because I don't think anyone ever used that to begin with. If down-clocking fixes the card, it does not mean the card is defective, just that the driver is causing the card to go beyond it's specification automatically and causing it to *act* defective. I am unaware if AMD fixed this or not & it's not limited to just this game.
Polaris cards include (but not limited to) Radeon 400/500 series such as 470, 480, 570, 580, 590. More common on 470/480 due to lower core clock max than 500-series.