Screen freeze with DirectX 10/11

[Shiroi-Tsuki]

So, I probably should have made a post about this prior to the game no longer supporting DirectX 9, but I guess I was kinda hoping (foolishly) that maybe the patch that got rid of Dx9 would also optimize Dx10/11 for those of us with potatoes.

The gist of my issue is this: Sometimes, the game screen will freeze while I'm playing. I can still hear sound and even interact with the game (I click my mouse to fire, and I'll hear my gun fire, for example), but the game screen itself will stay frozen, like a screenshot. I've tried waiting several minutes to see if the game will "fix" itself, but in the end, I almost always have to resort to alt-tabbing or even the Task Manager in order to close the game and go back into it. However, if I was in a mission when this happens, I'll have been booted out and lost any reward I may have garnered.

The most frustrating part is it can be very random when exactly this happens. It does sort of seem more likely to occur when there's a lot of stuff going on in the game (I first really noticed the issue when I started doing Sanctuary Onslaught, and most recently had it happen to me twice while attempting to do an Infested Extermination Void Fissure), but there have also been times where I've had it happen where almost nothing is going on, where I'm just browsing my inventory on the Orbiter or on the mission select screen in Navigation. Likewise, there have also been times where I've done multiple, long-running missions in row where things were dying and exploding, and not had a problem.

Now previously, when attempting to figure out how to keep the screen freezes from happening, I tried turning off both DirectX 10 and 11 in the launcher, thereby forcing the game to run in DirectX 9, and sure enough, not only did I no longer have the screen freezes, but the game seemed to run better in general. This was most notable on the older, simpler tilesets, like Grineer Galleon or Corpus Shipyards, where I suddenly had crazy good FPS, even in the middle of heated firefights. Unfortunately, with the removal of Dx9 support, this solution no longer seems to be available to me.

I will admit that, normally, I run the game at the Medium graphics preset, with certain things turned off primarily out of personal preference (I've never liked Motion Blur and found the updated Glare to be annoying). I will, however, turn everything to the Low preset (with only Character Shadows turned on, so objects don't look quite so disconnected from each other ) when running missions on the Plains or the Vallis, in order to decrease how much my computer chugs otherwise. However, I also tried turning everything to Low back when I first noticed the screen freeze problem while playing ESO, and I'm fairly certain that I still occasionally had a screen freeze, it just happened less often. That leads me to believe the problem is derived primarily from an issue my computer or graphics card has specifically with DirectX 10/11. I'm not necessarily adverse to the idea of trying to continue running my game at Low settings (again, I already do so in certain parts of the game, and I actually think it still looks pretty good), but I'm still worried that I'm merely decreasing the chance of it happening, rather than completely solving the problem.

I know that random crashes may not seem like that big of a deal (as opposed to the game not running at all) but it really mars my experience, even when things are going well, since the concern that it can suddenly freeze at any moment- thereby screwing me out of a reward and meaning I had wasted my time up until that point -is constantly in the back of my mind while I try to relax and play. The release of Nightwave has only further exasperated this anxiety, as I now have to worry about things like hour long survivals, where having the screen freeze at the 40 or 50 minute mark not only means I have to attempt the whole thing all over again, but if I'm grouped with a friend, I may end up screwing them over as well, depending on what my role was. I'm also positive, based on the Nightwave challenges we've had thus far, that we are almost certainly going to get a Profit Taker Orb or Conclave related Weekly/Elite Weekly, where it would also majorly suck to have a screen freeze. Which is why I don't want to already make a point of skipping Elite Weeklies; I never know when the following week will be even worse, and apparently I still need to occasionally do an Elite Weekly if I'm hoping to achieve the bare minimum of Rank 30.

So, with all of that being said, I've come to ask this: Has anyone else ever had or heard of similar issues? Did you ever find any sort of fix or workaround? Is there a way of "forcing" the game to run in DirectX 9, even though it is no longer officially supported? Any sort of advice would be appreciated, at this point.

In the end, I think it just comes down to the fact that my computer and/or graphics card has just gotten too old to play the game without any hiccups, and probably the best fix (and perhaps the only fix) would be to either upgrade my current computer or buy a new one. While I do plan on (hopefully) saving up money to eventually get a new computer, that is unfortunately just not an option for me right now financially, so I'm trying to made do as best I can with what I got.

Edit: I forgot to mention, all my graphics card drivers are up to date as well, so I don't think that's the issue. I know because they stopped updating automatically at some point, so I've been having to do so manually. I updated them recently, not too long after the removal of DirectX 9 support.

[Shiroi-Tsuki]

I also posted this on the Warfame reddit, and someone there directed me to an old post about a similar issue.

Giving the TDR fix suggested in that post now; if anyone else is having similar issues, I would suggest giving that post I linked a look as well.