Guide: How I fixed constant crashes (Nvidia)

[Automatic12pro]

I see posts daily of crash logs, pleas to the devs, and those giving up. I've tried replying with what I did to fix my crashes but it mostly gets buried by non helpful posts and trolls. Like most I crashed often, multiple times per day every 5 - 30 minutes.
Around mid December I resolved the issue. Below are my specs and what I did to fix my issue (excluding the things that didn't work).
Yes I know this is an expensive system and don't expect this to apply to everyone but crashes like "purple Rain" and crashing while loading didn't care about how good the system was.

Specs
GPU: 4090 tuf edition
CPU: AMD 7900x
RAM: 64GB XPG Lancer DDR5
HD: 990 PRO 2tb m.2

Fix
Most important, find the driver that works. I tried many drivers. The only one I've found that worked so far for me is (Studio Driver 546.33 (rel. 12/12/23). I didn't know at the time but not all drivers work well with ARK. For example both versions of the Studio Driver before and after this version crash the game. Many of the Game ready drivers crash the game. You'll need to experiment with what driver works for you but I'd start with this one.
Before installing new drivers, use DDU to remove any video drivers first. I'd suggest this even if not troubleshooting your issue. https://www.guru3d.com/download/display-driver-uninstaller-download/
Install the driver without Gforce Experience. You don't need it and overlays can cause issues with ARK. This alone should improve stability if the right driver is found. The rest of this guide contains other things I did that may or may not have helped.

EDIT: Studio driver 551.61 installed via the new Nvidia app is stable. Tested this for the past 4 days and haven't seen any crashes. Also have noticed reduction in latency and frame stuttering.

Disable overlays. Windows has an overlay, Asus has one, even my freaking headphones have one. disable them all. The windows one was difficult as it involved some permissions settings but this guide helped
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfx5JYcg5BA&t=3s

Enable RBar. From your bios there may be a setting to enable Rbar. Enable this and once logged in download Profile inspector. I set my profile to globally enable. This guide shows you how to set it and properly calculate the memory settings. This boosts my FPS by 20.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/enable-hags-and-maximize-rebar-on-your-recent-nvidia-gpu.613671/

Steam game Run parameters. "-norhithread -useallavailablecores" without the quotes entered into the settings-properties-General tab at the bottom. there's a text box you can paste this into.

Nvidia Control panel. I have a gsync compatible monitor so I enabled that, set vsync to on, and low latency to Ultra

Run as Admin. No clue if this helped but too lazy to disable. Find the executable for the game right click to get into properties/advanced and run as admin.

Side note:
I'm not over or under clocking any components, any in game setting configurations have not crashed but I do turn inventory animation off because it's annoying. I also use image scaling (Nvidia control panel setting) with 2k in game resolution for the FPS's and have a few settings lowered for that same reason. Current FPS after recent updates are 80-90 in a large base and 110-135 flying around.

Game Settings:
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561199479371927/screenshot/2508011697565367987/
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561199479371927/screenshot/2508011697565367425/
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561199479371927/screenshot/2508011697565368348/

If I think of other things I've done I'll add to this post.

[Greyshadeknight]

Yea my game is crashing every 10 minutes. Very annoying

[Automatic12pro]

Originally posted by Greyshadeknight:

Yea my game is crashing every 10 minutes. Very annoying

Let me know if the above helped at all.

[udo]

we as users shouldnt have to jump through hoops just to get a game to work , devs have known about these crashes since release and yet they keep cropping up ,from patch to to patch some get the game working and stable then bang another patch and crash after crash again ,

the devs need to fix it not end user

[N0ma13]

Originally posted by udo:

we as users shouldnt have to jump through hoops just to get a game to work , devs have known about these crashes since release and yet they keep cropping up ,from patch to to patch some get the game working and stable then bang another patch and crash after crash again ,

the devs need to fix it not end user

We are willing and witting testers, not commercial end-users.
Finding settings like this will help the dev team figure out why the crashes happen - if they're posted in a place the devs actually look and not Steam forums.
If all you want to do is play the game and cba to adjust your system a bit, i'd recommend waiting until it's out of EA.
Yea, it may take years. Yea, it may never happen.
What I can guarantee will never happen though, is a dev that works for a large studio coming to Steam to read through forum posts looking for what the loudest are complaining about.

[Automatic12pro]

I look at it like this. You can either suffer through the issues, quit playing till it’s fixed, or fix it yourself. I have the skills to do the latter so wanted to help those like minded with something to enjoy it as well. Only thing that will ultimately fix an unstable game, engine, and driver are Nvidia, UE5, and WC.
ALL games have their issues upon release, this game has the added issues of being a UE5 port which only compounds the problem and make fixing all that much more difficult. Not apologizing for WC but that’s the reality, which wasn’t how it was sold to us or UE5 sold to them. I work in development. Releasing a mess sucks. I also see them releasing updates and retracting them hours later. It’s likely their devs and QA are way past capacity and likely burnt out.
I see a lot of people complaining that the devs don’t care. This just isn’t the case. A dev team that doesn’t care doesn’t iterate on improving the product, especially at the pace their going

[TargetOne]

Just an FYI, none of your screenshot links work.

[Automatic12pro]

LOL, well hell. Try these
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3160402376
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3160402338
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3160402401

[Automatic12pro]

Update:
In this step,
“ Steam game Run parameters. "-norhithread -useallavailablecores" without the quotes entered into the settings-properties-General tab at the bottom. there's a text box you can paste this into.”

Only enter ‘-USEALLAVAILABLECORES’ without quotes all caps. Now my game runs without micro stuttering and even higher FPS

[Automatic12pro]

Update:
So I was testing spanning my 2 monitors to make 1 huge monitor and play ark at a ridiculous screen size. Didn't go well and had a crash. When I reverted my game settings and un spanned the monitors Ark was F'd. Crazy stuttering and crashes. No setting adjustments fixed it. I used DDU to remove drivers and reinstalled Studio Driver 546.33 and everything was back to normal. I also enabled a few setting in Nvidia CP as well.

Antialiasing transparency = Multi sample
Shader cache size = unlimited

This fixed some remaining micro stuttering I was experiencing

[RetroTekGuy]

No one will like this because they prefer having nice graphics vs being able to actually play the game without crashing BUT!, this command line fixes the crashes, For em anyway.

r.VolumetricCloud 0 | r.Lumen.AsyncCompute 0 | r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.RadianceCache.ProbeResolution 8 | r.DynamicGlobalIlluminationMethod 3 | r.Lumen.Reflections.Allow 0 | r.Lumen.DiffuseIndirect.Allow 0 | r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.DiffuseIntegralMethod 1 | r.Shadow.Virtual.Enable 1 | r.Shadow.CSM.MaxCascades 1 | r.AntiAliasingMethod 2 | r.Nanite.MaxPixelsPerEdge 2 | r.lightshaftquality 0 | r.LightShaftDownSampleFactor 1 | r.BloomQuality 0 | r.shadowquality 0 | r.contactshadows 0 | foliage.DensityScale 0 | grass.enable 0 | r.Streaming.PoolSize 0 | stat fps | r.VolumetricCloud 0 | grass.enable 0 | r.Fog 0 | grass.densityscale .05 | grass.sizescale 0 | r.grass.DensityQualityLevel low | r.contactshadows 0 | r.VolumetricFog 0

[Maverick81PL]

Originally posted by Greyshadeknight:

Yea my game is crashing every 10 minutes. Very annoying

spec? logs? anything that help investigate?

ohh wait just post crap and do nothing xD

[Highway]

Speaking as a Nvidia 4090 user, the biggest single cause of crashing for me is using any form of DLSS and Framegen especially, with that all off it never crashes even after 16 hours solid testing. My personal fix to get the performance back is to use the AMD version mod that injects into a seperate dll file that can be used instead of the official Nvidia one and works pretty much without issues.... its found over on Nexus mods.

[JB-emmanuel-Zorg]

RTX 3080 here, i had very much crashes, so i manually saved all the 3 minutes or sometimes all the minutes, my 80% crashes were when i opened an inventory, it had been a little better as i deactivated the menus transitions but i was at a crash all the 10 minutes... I saw the post of "Highway" just before mine, i deactivated the DLSS in the game... my FPS received a slap, but... only ONE crash in 3 hours! (and it was'nt on an inventory)

[Highway]

Originally posted by JB-emmanuel-Zorg:

RTX 3080 here, i had very much crashes, so i manually saved all the 3 minutes or sometimes all the minutes, my 80% crashes were when i opened an inventory, it had been a little better as i deactivated the menus transitions but i was at a crash all the 10 minutes... I saw the post of "Highway" just before mine, i deactivated the DLSS in the game... my FPS received a slap, but... only ONE crash in 3 hours! (and it was'nt on an inventory)

Good to hear, did you also try the AMD to DLSS framegen mod? works with 20-30-40 series GPUs On the issue of Nvidia DLSS, save yourself some time, I tested every single Nvidia driver for the last 12 months (studio and game ready) nothing made a difference to the crashing other than disabling Nvidia DLSS features..
Here is my video on the subject.
https://youtu.be/m-VfICypTlA?si=M4y7E14Gcg-KsSPL

[JB-emmanuel-Zorg]

Originally posted by Highway:

Good to hear, did you also try the AMD to DLSS framegen mod? works with 20-30-40 series GPUs On the issue of Nvidia DLSS, save yourself some time, I tested every single Nvidia driver for the last 12 months (studio and game ready) nothing made a difference to the crashing other than disabling Nvidia DLSS features..
Here is my video on the subject.
https://youtu.be/m-VfICypTlA?si=M4y7E14Gcg-KsSPL

I didn't try the mod on Nexus, i'm going to wait a "native" solution from N'vidia or WC, thanks to have tested all the drivers of the last 12 months and for the video! 😉