My game is “broken” after a crash

[FlyingFish]

For a month now I’ve dealt with crashes, thinking it would be fixed in an update. Most of the crashes happen when an error states I have low memory. Not likely with 16gb of ram and a new 500gb ssd just for games. I knew the low memory problem was happening to other people so I was not too concerned.

But the crashes have gotten worse, with the image becoming super pixelated and stretching my screen’s image. I would have to force quite the game and restart my computer because Ark would cause everything on my computer to become pixelated, and I would not be able to close applications like google or office. Sometimes the game would freeze and both of my monitors would could dark and I would have to unplug my pc.

Today it crashed again (five times actually, but it was the fifth that destroyed everything) The screen went blue with a ‘critical windows error’ image, then the pc restarted. Now when I launch the game bars are on the screen, the menu is pixelated, and I can only access options. When I go to options it has downgraded from high settings (I have a NVidia gtx 1080) to medium and won’t let me change it or any other options. When I restarted the game again, the black bars on the side are bigger and now I can’t access anything in the menu aside from choosing a server to play on, and even that screen does not look normal.
Other games are fine, it’s just Ark that is the problem. I verified game cache, and it said three files needed to be redownloaded, but nothing happened.

I really doubt my pc is the problem, I’ve been playing on high settings without issues (aside from the 1-3 crashes a day concerning low memory), and without lag. I upgraded my pc a few months ago, all new parts, even a new case.

I7 6700K 4.0Ghz (not overclocked)
Gigabyte NVidia GTX 1080
16Gb Ram
Multiple SSDs, steam is stored on my 500gb Samsung evo
Monitor 1 Samsung 4k
Monitor Samsung 1080p

I am at the point of not knowing if its ark or something else. If its ark I would be grateful for help, if its something else I would re-post on tom's hardware.

[Astellin]

sounds like a hardware issue have you monitored how hot your system is getting?

[DarkSurvivor]

What's your ssd brand? Some have low cache memory or something like that a can cause some crash while clearing the cache (im thinking cheap ones like Adata)

[FlyingFish]

Originally posted by Astellin..:

sounds like a hardware issue have you monitored how hot your system is getting?

It's only Ark that does this, every other game is fine, even subnuctica. Right now the temps are ranging between 80-100F, and this is after playing for a few hours. I have a corsair h100i 2.0 liquid cooler too.

[FlyingFish]

Originally posted by 399:

What's your ssd brand? Some have low cache memory or something like that a can cause some crash while clearing the cache (im thinking cheap ones like Adata)

I only use samsung. I spared no expense when I rebuilt my pc, there are no cheep parts. (my logic was build expensive pc= no more issus. Didn't work out too well)

[Astellin]

umm this is 100F and not 100C right because that would not be good. 100f would be like 37c which is crazy cool if your card is pushing a game the other way around would be 212f which is not good lol. just making sure that is correct. 60-80c is pretty good anything over 80 isnt that good.

[Landron]

Sounds Like A dead or dying Video Card. It happens, the Blue Screen error sort of gives it away.

Just had this happen to my GTX 780 a week ago, now I'm limping along with a GTX 580.

Check your Windows event log, there should be an entry with the blue screen error details there somewhere.

[FlyingFish]

Originally posted by Landron:

Sounds Like A dead or dying Video Card. It happens, the Blue Screen error sort of gives it away.

Just had this happen to my GTX 780 a week ago, now I'm limping along with a GTX 580.

Check your Windows event log, there should be an entry with the blue screen error details there somewhere.

It's a brand new gigabyte GTX 1080. And this wasn't a normal blue screen. It was a 'blue' screen, but with windows written and a % bar stating windows was gathering information and would restart soon. I replaced my GTX 1070 with the 1080, and the crashes were happening on it too.

[Astellin]

that cooler only really keeps your cpu cool but if your gpu is constantly running 100c then its gonna burn out.

[FlyingFish]

Originally posted by Astellin..:

umm this is 100F and not 100C right because that would not be good. 100f would be like 37c which is crazy cool if your card is pushing a game the other way around would be 212f which is not good lol. just making sure that is correct. 60-80c is pretty good anything over 80 isnt that good.

It's in fahrenheit, and it's now at 82F/28C and still going down since its been some time since the crash and there are no games on.

[Astellin]

is not one of those evega ones that have been overheating is it? evega 1070 and 1080 have overheating issues. or at least did .

[Astellin]

oh ok lol

Originally posted by Cyprian:

Originally posted by Astellin..:

umm this is 100F and not 100C right because that would not be good. 100f would be like 37c which is crazy cool if your card is pushing a game the other way around would be 212f which is not good lol. just making sure that is correct. 60-80c is pretty good anything over 80 isnt that good.

It's in fahrenheit, and it's now at 82F/28C and still going down since its been some time since the crash and there are no games on.

oh ok lol just wanted to make sure.

[crimsondrac]

Just because the equipment is new does not eliminate the chance that it could also be defective. Honestly sounds like a video card issue to me. Have you tried updating the drivers with the newest from the nVidia site? And you have to know that Ark consumes much more resources that just about any other game on steam right now. It could be that Ark is trying to access a bad chunk of RAM (or even VRAM) that normally does not get touched by other, less demanding, games.

If I had to troubleshoot this on my system, these are the steps I would probably try, in order.

1. update video drivers (completely uninstall old drivers first)
2. Try a different video card, even an older model, just to test if you get similar results.
3. Run a RAM checker like memtest x86.

If all that checks out, start looking at operational temps.

However, keep in mind that if the game crashed in the middle of you playing, the saved game itself may also be corrupt and beyond recovery. Do all your tests with a new, uncorrupted save game.

[GORESPLASH]

Did you verify game cache integrity? Obvious question but sometimes the obvious gets overlooked

[FlyingFish]

Originally posted by crimsondrac:

Just because the equipment is new does not eliminate the chance that it could also be defective. Honestly sounds like a video card issue to me. Have you tried updating the drivers with the newest from the nVidia site? And you have to know that Ark consumes much more resources that just about any other game on steam right now. It could be that Ark is trying to access a bad chunk of RAM (or even VRAM) that normally does not get touched by other, less demanding, games.

If I had to troubleshoot this on my system, these are the steps I would probably try, in order.

1. update video drivers (completely uninstall old drivers first)
2. Try a different video card, even an older model, just to test if you get similar results.
3. Run a RAM checker like memtest x86.

If all that checks out, start looking at operational temps.

I've done 1 and 2 already. As for the ram, its corsair and I've replaced two sticks of ram already. I had the same crashing with my 1070. I've replaced 2 msi motherboards (don't buy them, they are all defective) and had a pc repair store check my pc to make sure everything was working because I was tired of buying parts. The ram was good, though the test was a few months ago.

[Astellin]

you can go into Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer and look round for the BSOD event. or just type event viewer into the windows search lol.