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The infamous CTD *crash to desktop*

Loaded_Glove
Level 7
Perhaps the thread title is a little dramatic, but this phenomenon has always baffled me. I am running Windows 10 pro 64 bit and have experienced CTD's with a number of games over the last couple years. Rather than assume it was ever any particular game, I considered that it seems more like a general system issue and about creating the right conditions to give rise to it happening. Was using older video drivers for awhile and recently updated to the latest nvidia for my 1080 and now Sniper Elite 4 has had it happen 3x now, very randomly. I finally may have a clue. While playing I had msi afterburner open and after the game crashed to desktop, I paused the monitor and reviewed all the information. One thing immediately stood out to me. The cpu speed was locked into intel turbo boost (all core sync on asus board) for my non oc'ed 6700k and it appears as though the moment of this event the cpu speed dove instantly to the base speed step frequency of 800mhz. The reason I find this odd is because speed step usually settles gradually rather than instantly dropping. Like if I had exited the game normally, the cpu speed probably would have taken awhile to get down to 800mhz and probably only if I didn't touch the mouse and keyboard for a solid minute after it was closed. Temps appear fine and hwinfo shows no irregularities with the psu voltages. Also, the pagefile usage dipped dramatically. It looks to have been sitting around 15gb and dropped to about half of that just a moment before the cpu speed dropped. I have 32gb of ram (16x2). Any ideas?

My system specs are in my sig.
2,099 Views
8 REPLIES 8

Arne_Saknussemm
Level 40
Sniper Elite 4 has some problem I think...it's the only DX12 Game I've tried that hasn't run flawlessly.

Not sure if it's because of windows or Nvidia driver or what but I gave up on it because it CTDd repeatedly....

Loaded_Glove
Level 7
I played almost 100 hours before and it just started doing this. I was using an older nvidia driver 398.xx
After getting the latest and also windows did an update the same day and now it CTD.

Arne_Saknussemm
Level 40
Hmmm...well, I only fired it up a week or two ago...on whatever was latest driver and updated windows...

Loaded_Glove
Level 7
What do you think of the details I mentioned though? About the way the cpu clock speed instantly went from 4.2 to 800 and how the pagefile a few seconds before that went from 15gb to around 7-8. That whole series of events seems strange and something that may not be a problem with the game, but rather the game is loading my system in a way that is exposing a flaw/instability in my system environment.

Arne_Saknussemm
Level 40
Not sure...what's cause' what's effect.

If you were running fine before driver update...and that changed or before windows update...I'd look at that first...just on probabilities...

Loaded_Glove
Level 7
Deffo fine with this particular game before driver and windows update, but as I mentioned, other games have exhibited CTD's in the couple years I have owned this particular PC build. DOOM, Dishonored 2 and a few others. Maybe I'm kidding myself, but I have always believed a truly solid system build shouldn't have issues like this and that blaming the game is a reach because of how many people DON'T have the issue vs how many do. This build also has a few other issues that I could never escape, like performance issues on some games which I believe may be related to a more general overall system issue. An inconsistency or flaw if you will.

Arne_Saknussemm
Level 40
Sure I get what you're saying...have you tried setting F5 defaults and disabling MCE? That would get you as stock as possible...

Other thing to do would be a clean install of OS...

Games crash...always have...always will...I've been loving DX12 for zero problems...until I tried SE4...my system is solid on everything else so I really think something is up, with something non hardware there...

Loaded_Glove
Level 7
The main reason I care is because I plan to upgrade this year and I want to be sure that any parts I plan to keep are indeed working fine and not going to fail any time soon. Like my psu for example, hwinfo shows very strong numbers, but it has a little coil whine and I wonder how reliable and stable it really is. Also my memory has gone through an error free 24 hour run of memory test, but that was 2 years ago.

The upgrades I want are cpu and gpu, but probably only cpu this year. I'm hoping to be able to get my first AMD chip in the form of the upcoming 3700x. If all I'll need is the chip and a board, it would be great to be able to use all of my other parts as is.