Crashing for AMD R9 380 still not addressed; what's your experience?

[Solid Liquid]

So version 1.2 worked fine for me. Even though frames went from 20-90 fps, the game was stable and playable. I didn't try the 1.3 betapatch, but once 1.3 official came around, my game started crashing after just a few minutes of gameplay. I've seen complaints from many other users with the same card. The crashes are seemingly triggered by specific spots in the game and are particulary bad in The Grand Palace (the level is unplayable). I updated my gfx drivers and downloaded the latest betapatch, but it's still broken. Even tried starting a new file for good measure. I really wish I could rollback to 1.2 and just play the game (not like the updates solved any framerate drops). Is anyone else with the same card having better luck? Anyone with a different card having the same issues?

[Dictent]

Originally posted by m_kotsis:

This is insane. i think R9 380 is mainstream GPU. Where the f... is the support?

Apparently nowhere to be found. Unless they see this thread. So keep it active, I guess. Still no fix after fiddling with the GPU itself on the motherboard. I'm getting desperate here. I probably should stop. Hahaha.

[Ouroboros]

There has been some improvement in my experience so I hope that is a sign that it is being worked on. Since the official release of the current patch I have been able to play for a 20 min period, a 35 min, and 45 min period of time between ctd's. That's worlds better than it was before.

[KaTHarsisT]

i need to forget this game....but i cant, iam so excited for a second run. Please Arx Fatalis Makers Arkane your roots was in pc gaming, please fix crashes with r9 380

[Mancubus]

ehmmmm....all my latest crashes happened because of my R9 380x ?... and not because of the latest amd driver 16.12.1 or the older 16.11.5 and 16.11.4 ?
also what's wrong with that game...it seems it doesn't like Amd software for sure....

[ACRaptor]

Bloody hell arkane, get your act together :P

[arkngt]

I have random CTDs, which thankfully are very rare. They seem to have crept in via the latest or next to latest patch, as I didn't have a single crash during my first play through. The first loading screen also takes a a long time now, much longer than before the latest patches.

Other than that, the game runs much better.

[Al3XD]

Crashes randomly with 980Ti as well.

[GunRunner51]

Anyone else noticed that when loading a saved game it can take forever to load? And that's off an ssd here.

[LazyAmerican]

Been playing relatively problem free outside of the microstutter/fps drops prepatch...now the framerate is far more consistent and I have had a grand total of 2 CTDs in the 100 hours of playtime. Both of them happen whenever I tried to load a save near the end of the game in the portrait world.

[Dictent]

*POTENTIAL FIX*

So I started fiddling with the Radeon Wattman Settings (16.12.2, latest drivers) and I came up with a potential fix. Note: I'm using a Sapphire R9 380 Nitro (4GB) with an AMD FX 8350 (no overclock).

So what you do is set the following:

GPU Frequency = Dynamic
GPU Voltage Control = Automatic

Memory Frequency = Dynamic
Memory Voltage Control = Automatic

You can leave the fan settings at default/automatic but I set mine to manual and with the following settings:

Speed (RPM)
Min = 1800
Target = 2800

Temperature
Max = 70 C

Power Limit is at 0.

At default settings, both GPU and Memory Frequencies were set to manual. 0% for the GPU Frequency and 1450 Mhz Max for the Memory Frequency.

Please try this and see if it works. I'm currently testing the game and I've been running it for about 30 mins as of the time of this post. I'm running it in windowed mode. I'm at Mission 2 (the notorious crash site) and I'm running around, exploring every corner to see if I can reproduce the crash. I'm also frequently pausing the game as this resulted in a crash before. Whenever I get spotted, I load an autosave to test that too. Everything seems stable for now. Will follow up soon.

Please let me know if it works.

[ACRaptor]

Originally posted by Dictent:

*POTENTIAL FIX*

So I started fiddling with the Radeon Wattman Settings (16.12.2, latest drivers) and I came up with a potential fix. Note: I'm using a Sapphire R9 380 Nitro (4GB) with an AMD FX 8350 (no overclock).

So what you do is set the following:

GPU Frequency = Dynamic
GPU Voltage Control = Automatic

Memory Frequency = Dynamic
Memory Voltage Control = Automatic

You can leave the fan settings at default/automatic but I set mine to manual and with the following settings:

Speed (RPM)
Min = 1800
Target = 2800

Temperature
Max = 70 C

Power Limit is at 0.

At default settings, both GPU and Memory Frequencies were set to manual. 0% for the GPU Frequency and 1450 Mhz Max for the Memory Frequency.

Please try this and see if it works. I'm currently testing the game and I've been running it for about 30 mins as of the time of this post. I'm running it in windowed mode. I'm at Mission 2 (the notorious crash site) and I'm running around, exploring every corner to see if I can reproduce the crash. I'm also frequently pausing the game as this resulted in a crash before. Whenever I get spotted, I load an autosave to test that too. Everything seems stable for now. Will follow up soon.

Please let me know if it works.

Somebody credit this man !
this extended my play time ?

[Dictent]

*UPDATE*

I found that on default settings, the GPU runs on full load in Dishonored 2. Both GPU and Memory frequency runs on max (1010 Mhz core clock, 1450 memory clock). This causes the card to run really hot and maybe cause it to lock up. In my case, since my room isn't air conditioned, idle GPU temps are around 50-60 C. When it runs of full load, it goes up to 70-80 C. I figured that's what causes the frequent crashing to desktop. That's still not taking the CPU temps into consideration.

The card is factory overclocked, so I had to manually adjust the settings.

Here are my settings now:

GPU Frequencies (Dynamic)
State 1: 550
State 2: 650
State 3: 740
State 4: 820
State 5: 895
State 6: 940
State 7: 980

The memory clock can't be lowered as the 1450 Mhz clock speed is already the lowest base. I also had to raise the fan RPMs (min and target) to counter the heat (yes, this makes the card noisier especially on 3000 RPM but I play with headphones so it doesn't really matter).

So far, I played a total of 40 mins straight before experiencing a CTD. Yes, this is not a total fix for me, I hope it is for you guys. But I got more play time out of it compared to my previous play times of 30 seconds to 5 mins max.

I also concluded that when the GPU reaches the max frequency of 1010 Mhz, there's a very high chance of CTDs and black screen crashes. This could mean that the game's engine (Void Engine) is not utilizing the 380's resources efficiently. Maybe it has something to do with the card's architecture. That's why you'll notice I lowered the clock speed for State 7 above to counter that.

I'm not using MSI Afterburner anymore if you're curious about that. Before I did a fresh install of Windows, I used to run MSI Afterburner to control the fan speed and enable a setting called "Force Constant Voltage". This helped with games not running consistently on a steady clock speed, or games that make the GPU performance spike a lot. But I'm curious to see if this will help make the game more stable in addition to the fix I mentioned above. You're welcome to try this too at your own risk. Let me know what happens.

I'll keep testing to see if I can get a stable playthrough for more than 40 mins.

[Dictent]

*ANOTHER POTENTIAL FIX*

For those of you with the same card as mine, or if you have a Sapphire card, this may or may not work for you. DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK.

This is a weird fix as it totally contradicts the first one I mentioned above. It involves overclocking. Still using the latest AMD driver (16.12.2).

Make sure that the Radeon settings are at default. If you have MSI Afterburner installed, set it to default as well.

So what you do first is install the latest version of Sapphire TRIXX from their website. The latest version is 6.3.0.

Next, do the following with caution:

Set the fan speed to fixed; its value to around 70-80%.
Increase the GPU voltage to around +20 to +30 mV.
Set the power limit all the way up to 20%.

At this point, you may choose to overclock or leave the clock speeds at default. For me, I overclocked it a little bit.

GPU Clock Speed:
From 1010 Mhz to 1030 Mhz

Memory Clock Speed:
From 1450 Mhz to 1465 Mhz

You may find that the clock speeds revert back to original settings on their own. If this happens, ignore it and just leave the clock speeds at default values.

You can save the settings as a profile. Just click the profile numbers on the right side, and just save.

As an additional measure, enable the following in the settings menu:

Synchronize CrossFire Cards
Set Clock on Change
Save Fan Settings with Profile
Disable ULPS
Loan on Windows Startup
... and start minimized

Again, do this at your own risk. If it does not work the first time, immediately stop doing it and revert everything back to defaults.

The reason for overclocking it is I figured that if you give the GPU some extra headroom to work harder, it could keep up with Dishonored 2's demanding engine. Not sure if I'm making sense here, but that's what I observed.

I'm already on Mission 3. With 1 crash during the whole mission so far. Played for about 1 hour. Again, it's not a total fix for me, maybe it is for you guys. In which case, glad I could help.

*IF ALL ELSE FAILS*

As a last resort, completely uninstall the current AMD driver using DDU in safe mode and install an old driver: 15.11.1. I've read from a lot of forums that this worked best with the R9 380s in general as it completely made the card run stable. I haven't tried this as my main focus right now is to find work-arounds for the latest drivers. Some of us don't want to go back to an ancient driver just for this one game.

Let me know if this works as well.

[Naked Cosmonaut]

Dictent, I appreciate the effort but for me at least, also on a R9-380, it still won't run for more than a minute or so. Sometimes less than that. I haven't tried the 'At Your Own Risk' fixes, only the Wattman solution. Like many of you it's functionally unplayable now, just made it to Karnaca after finding some initial success with other tweaks in the previous level.

[Dictent]

Originally posted by Naked Cosmonaut:

Dictent, I appreciate the effort but for me at least, also on a R9-380, it still won't run for more than a minute or so. Sometimes less than that. I haven't tried the 'At Your Own Risk' fixes, only the Wattman solution. Like many of you it's functionally unplayable now, just made it to Karnaca after finding some initial success with other tweaks in the previous level.

The risky fix works a lot better than the Wattman fix. I was able to play for 2 hours until a CTD. It's still not a total fix. But I did get 2 hours of play time and I'm now on the Mansion level.

You can try rolling back to 15.11.1. See if that works for you. Use DDU in safe mode to get the best results.