Crashing repeatedly on compiling shaders

[Zaphod]

Every time I start the game, it gets through the opening cinematic just fine and then the game menu, but as soon as I try to start a new game, it crashes right when it starts to compile shaders. An error message *occasionally* pops up VERY briefly, but when it does it disappears within a fraction of a second. I eventually managed to snag a pic of it on my phone after repeatedly booting it up and letting it crash. The message says that I don’t have enough VRAM, which makes little sense since I’m on a 4090 (and for the sake of full disclosure, a 13900k and 32GB of RAM).

Usually it’s just the game that crashes but a few times it crashed the whole pc. I’ve been on driver 537.58 for awhile since it seems like the last stable driver Nvidia has released, with a lot of unstable garbage drivers released since then. I tend to wait for stable Nvidia drivers to update them. After the first crash (and against my better judgment since a lot of people are having issues with this one, much like many of the recent driver releases), I figured I’d go ahead and update to the latest driver which is *allegedly* optimized for HFW. It didn’t help in the least. Windows 10 is fully updated, as are all my other drivers.

I’ve tried verifying integrity of game files, uninstalling/reinstalling the game, increasing the shader file size from within NVCP, increasing the windows page file size, running an sfc scan (which came up clean, but I went ahead and ran the three DISM commands checkhealth, scanhealth, and repairhealth anyway), and a couple of other things, all to no avail.

Zero Dawn is one of my favorite games, and I’ve been looking forward to the Forbidden West pc port since even before they officially announced it. I’m sure I’ll love it once I can actually get it to work, but atm it’s literally completely unplayable for me.

Is anyone else having this issue? If so, do you have a fix/workaround? My system has been 100% stable before now, and I’m not running any overclocks on my gpu or cpu. I even have game mode turned off in my bios, but I do have XMP turned on. Might try turning it off just to compile shaders, but I’ve never had any issues with this build at all before.

[The Jako]

same problem here wiith the Asus ROG Ally

[Josef Stylin]

same problem...i refund it and will wait 2-3 months.

[ringat]

Same problem. Game crashes as soon as shaders are loaded. NVIDIA GForce GTX 1650, Win 10.

[Arc]

Originally posted by Zaphod:

...a 13900k

Do you own any recently released game on Unreal Engine 5 ? (and i mean a game that didn't get just UE5 upgrade)

Are they running stable on your PC ?

Have you checked the list of motherboard/UEFI OC features in here ?
https://www.radgametools.com/oodleintel.htm

[kiki]

same

[Zaphod]

Originally posted by Arc:

Originally posted by Zaphod:

...a 13900k

Do you own any recently released game on Unreal Engine 5 ? (and i mean a game that didn't get just UE5 upgrade)

Are they running stable on your PC ?

Have you checked the list of motherboard/UEFI OC features in here ?
https://www.radgametools.com/oodleintel.htm

Looking through the list of games that use Unreal Engine 5, I don’t think I even own any of them. I’ll check my bios settings against the site you linked when I get home and see if I need to change any settings. I mostly have pretty conservative settings (e.g. leaving enhanced turbo boost off (I might not have the exact name of that setting right… going from memory) and leaving game mode off in the bios.

Edit: I can say that I had zero trouble (not even stuttering) with The Last of Us, Alan Wake 2, Hogwarts Legacy, Jedi Survivor, or any other recently released game, but those don’t use UE5.

[GuybrushJose]

Same issue here, 13900K and RTX 4090.

[longjohn119]

Try turning off your E-cores because from what I'm seeing this is likely a scheduling problem with Intel P-core/E-core architecture

It was flawless here on a Ryzen 5800X and only took about 30 seconds which is about 4 to 5 times faster than HZD is on first start up

[GCjream]

I actually got through the prologue and now it keeps crashing during shader cache right before the title intro cutscene after

[GCjream]

Originally posted by GCjream:

I actually got through the prologue and now it keeps crashing during shader cache right before the title intro cutscene after

So I lowered my texture quality to Low and it apparently worked

[Emig5m]

I only use the studio drivers any more and the game is running perfect on my 3080Ti.. not one crash or hiccup. Try the studio drivers.

[Faster With Feeling]

How is the gameplay on a rog ally? I want to buy one

[OZZO]

This SOLUTION worked for me.

Go to Steam to Horizon Forbidden West settings > Manage > Browse local files

Right click on HorizonForbiddenWest executable > Properties

In Compatibility tab tick Run this program in compatibility mode for > Select Windows 8 in drop-down menu

SORTED?

[Arc]

It would be much better if you fix the HW instability rather than trying to find workaround that disables certain HW features, APIs and whatnot.

[Denus]

Got the same issue: 14900KF & RTX4070 Ti Super and 64GB of ram.
Should be enough I guess, but even after I set the game on medium settings, the problem remains. I like the intro movie, but after 10 times, without the possibility to skip it, I'm done with this game.