Game Crash: Repeatedly Causes Gfx Driver To Crash

[HardWorkingMexican]

Just to share. After running warframe in windowed mode, the display driver crashes seem to have stopped. Played a couple of rounds earlier (3-5) without crashing.

[neonend]

I crash similarly ("Hardware Failure") typically on Endless Defense Missions, but some others (Including the new Raptor mission).

 

I've tried lowering settings, disabling PhysX, and rolling drivers back. I've got the following system:

 

Alienware x51

Intel i5 3.1ghz

8gb RAM

nVidia 660 eVGA OC 2GB Card (I've even disabled the overclock).

128mb OCZ SSD drive that Warframe plays from

 

Other games work perfectly fine, I've multiboxed games like EVE Online at full settings without issues, run 3 separate games on Steam side-by side. Skyrim, Deus Ex, Witcher 2, etc etc.

 

I've monitored GFX card heat and memory usage while playing with no spikes that correspond to the actual crash.

 

I've burn-in tested my GFX card, RAM, and Processor without any stability issues, despite this being bad for the hardware.

 

This happens VERY often when playing Endless Defense, but does happen occasionally on other missions.

 

I never get an error report/crash number as it simply hangs, but launches the browser exclaiming a hardware failure.

[neonend]

Just got the same crash about 4 times relatively back-to-back. I couldn't finish a single full game.

 

PhysX is turned off. I've uninstalled/re-installed. I've brought it from Full Screen to Borderless Windowed mode. Disabled my second monitor. Defragged hard drive. Re-installed nVidia drivers.

 

It's to the point of unplayable for me, especially considering there are no rewards when you forcibly disconnect.

 

While running GPU-Z on a secondary monitor, at crash time, GPU usage was 98%, only half the RAM was in use, it was at 90% RPM on fan speed (2030rpm) and the temperature of the card was only 84c (at load that's where it sits normally, starts bottlenecking at 90c).

[Sdoots]

I've turned every single option off, turned down to 32 bit mode, gone back to 64 bit mode, ran memtest on my RAM, pulled RAM, put the RAM in different slots, thoroughly dusted out my case, installed a fan card in addition the ridiculous amount of fans I already have, installed a new hard drive, reinstalled the program, done a clean install of my graphics drivers, and so on.

 

Nothing works.

 

I consistently get crashes with no message other than the hardware failure page and the graphics driver failed to respond message. I've done every fix listed on the Nvidia page, as well.

 

I'm running a Geforce GTX 660, an i5 3570k, Windows 7 64 bit, 8GB RAM, and 1TB HDD. Nothing is overclocked.

 

I'd really like to be able to build the stuff I've been grinding for, but I'm still at square one despite investing hours of gameplay.

 

 

UPDATE: I didn't notice the newest post from Dmitri when I wrote this. I've since done the Windows XP SP3 compatibility mode while running as admin fix and I was able to consistently finish missions that crashed previously. I've yet to try turning on any graphical features again, and doubt I will.

Edited July 22, 2013 by Sdoots

[Sancko]

GTX670-DC2-4GD5 card here.

 

I get some crashes to, but not as frequent, usually 1 at a random point every 3-5th mission with latest drivers and physx enabled. Hope this gives some help/insight. So i'm not too worried to revert back drivers as they don't crash on the same location again.

 

I do instant crash if I press the push to talk button, no mic enabled.

 

Also, tried this game on a GTX770-DC2-2GD5, but that make sit completely unplayable.

[LongDraw]

Gotta love this!

 

DEWill

WARFRAME Support

• Hi LongDraw,

  Your previous ticket was automatically closed after you did not respond to our pending request for over a week.
  You will find support works best when you think of it as a a 2-way street, we suggest things in order to resolve your problem and you followup with the results. Did you ever update those video drivers? While your drivers aren't too old, updating to most recent can help resolve many crashes or graphic anomalies and you never confirmed that you were able to or not or that you did or did not see any improvement in stability afterwards.

  However, your attached screenshot also shows that your system is actually below the minimum specifications for Warframe as far as video card performance goes, so we may not be able to help you solve all your crashing problems as it is an unsupported device, but we are willing to do our best and try and get it running for you but need you to followup with the requested information in order to proceed any further.

  Could you tell us what error you are actually getting when you crash? if it was an in-game crash the Crash Reporting tool will pop up letting you submit a crash report automatically and it gives you an error number that would look like WAR-####

July 18, 2013 12:00

 

LongDraw

• Well, I can't really help that the ticket was ongoing during the 4th of July weekend. Not to mention, because of the day that the 4th fell on, most businesses were closed for 4 days total. So once I got back to work on Monday, I had about twice the workload (I work as Corporate IT support, so I know how the system works).

  As for claiming that my system is below spec, I do not accept that as a reasonable justification for the game not working properly. While I may only have 64MB dedicated graphics memory on the processor, I also have 16GB of RAM on the system overall, not to mention I also have an i7-2600 processor which has the Intel HD graphics processing hardware. While I realize that Intel HD is not a complete substitute for dedicated graphics cards, it is by no means worthless.

  I am able to run the game in 1440 x 900 resolution with 15-25 FPS with 3% CPU load from the Evolution Engine. I do have most of the special effects and graphics enhancements disabled to reduce the load on my system.

  As for what happens when the game crashes, I am rarely getting the WAR# crash popup anymore (I would estimate it has been 3+ months since I've had it come up).

July 18, 2013 16:29

 

DEWill

WARFRAME Support

• Even at minimum graphics settings at that resolution Warframe still uses somewhere around 500M of video memory to work properly, and swapping to system RAM is not the same as having true dedicated RAM.
  If it is the game crashing the crash handler will pop up and that gives up something to work with. If not, next time it happens if you could attach an EE.log from a time your system crashed out of the game and that may give us something to work with.

July 21, 2013 00:20

Just to fill everyone in, here are my computer specs:

 

GA-H67A-UD3H-B3 (rev. 1.1)

Intel i7-2600 (with option to overclock despite not being K series) **Has 64MB on processor dedicated to Intel HD 2000**

16GB Patriot Series 5 RAM **This is Extremely Low Latency DDR3 RAM**

Western Digital Black 32MB cache SATA3.0 1TB Internal Hard Drive running OS

Win7 Pro x64

Seagate 3TB USB 3.0 External Drive running Warframe on USB 3.0 rear port on desktop

No dedicated graphics card

 

Now, before I started playing Warframe, I was playing Mechwarrior Online Beta.  I was using 1600x1200 resolution with the same graphics effects enhancements I use on Warframe, plus maybe one or two others that warframe doesn't support yet.  Now when I stopped playing MWO Beta, I wasn't having crashes on the game client at all.  I stopped playing because of their game mechanics changes and the fact their matchmaker was completely broken, meaning I couldn't play at all.

 

Now in Warframe currently, I run at 1440x900 resolution and only have color correction and dynamic lighting selected.

 

Now please explain to me how Warframe uses more resources than MWO Beta, but more importantly, how the heck could I be using 500MB of memory when the game is running if task manager (yes, I've gone to the performance tab while waiting inside a defense mission while a friend was afk for a few minutes) says I'm not using significantly less than half a GB?

Edited July 23, 2013 by LongDraw

[ShadeSWG]

Still a whole lot of nothing from me. Still just crashes my GFX driver, no WAR-####.

[mysoggyknee]

Just crashed again today.  Crashes definitely aren't happening as often but they are still happening.  

[Torreip]

Tried Olympus again today, crash on wave 4.  There is a change: the game is now closing completely in addition to openning the help page and I do not have to kill it through the process manager.

 

Still crashing though.

 

But no crash at all on the events map for the full week end. It really seems to be map dependant for me.

[Lulzes]

I've also been getting this crash, mostly without a crash report popping up (just a Windows task bar message saying the graphics driver has restarted).

 

My system is i5-2500K (NOT overclocked) with 8GB RAM and an Nvidia GTX570 with the latest drivers.

 

I haven't been playing with PhysX enabled, although when I did enable it at least I got a crash report (so it may be unrelated to the graphics problem) which was WAR-84306.

 

I've done most of the tips outlined here apart from the really desperate ones - asking people to re-install their OS just for one problem game? Come on! I play plenty of other games and this is the only one that causes crashes.

 

The crashes are especially frustrating because all progress in the mission is lost, and if playing online the session is lost as well. At least if we could re-connect to ongoing missions or at least have our mission rewards saved there would be some reason to keep playing, but at this rate there are better things I could be doing with my time.

 

EDIT: switched to borderless fullscreen mode, turned off all graphical effects, and still getting these crashes with no WAR-***

Edited July 30, 2013 by Lulzes

[MDrigz]

I would just like to add to this thread to keep up to date with everyone's issue. The first couple crashes gave me a War-##### but I didn't record them because I genuinely thought it was an overheating issue. But after monitoring this and even playing with my door off the case constantly checking to make sure the card is running cool, it happens pretty often. More often than not I am not getting a War-###### but it seems that with a majority of the people here that it's related to a GTX 600 series card. I've only really tried with a few missions but it's gotten to the point where it shuts off the moment I get to the battle with the Jackal. Maybe no more than 5 minutes between each crash. Its as if that particular part of the mission is too much for it. I've used this thread to attempt self remedy with the driver rollbacks/updates, lowering settings, windowing, and running in compatibility mode. However, the issue continues pretty frequently. This was not an issue when I was previously running the game on an onboard Radeon HD gpu. I made the switch this past weekend so the card is brand new. These are my computer specs below:

AMD Phenom II X6 1040T
8GB DDR3 2000MHz

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti 2GB
700W PSU
1.5TB WDC Harddrive 

If any suggestions can be made, please let me know. I truly enjoy this game and it would be a shame to drop it because of this issue. Also, if any other information is needed, please let me know about this as well. Thank you.

Edited August 1, 2013 by MDrigz

[MDrigz]

I noticed in the new change logs that there was an APEX fix but it doesn't seem to be including this particular issue. Has there been any updates or advancements in what might be affecting the issue for GTX 600 series cards? I just got on and within 10min the game crashed again. No War-##### again.

Edited August 3, 2013 by MDrigz

[Lulzes]

It's not just GTX 600s, I'm running with a GTX 570 and I keep getting crashes.

[Nimfix]

There are a few things that help. 

I have an AMD HD6870. no problems for me. but my friends have Nvidia aswel and they seem to have some really extreme crashes aswel.

They have tried some things and it stops crashing. I'll list them:

Turn off Xfire, If you are using it. Xfire is known to cause crashes etc.

Run it in Borderless Windowed mode. 
Do "Not" I repeat DO NOT use the beta drivers of Nvidia as they suck.

Either Downclock your GPU or Overclock it. 

 

Last option "sadly" Reinstall windows. (not worth the effort for a game unless you are a fanboy).

[Lulzes]

Turn off Xfire, If you are using it. Xfire is known to cause crashes etc.

Run it in Borderless Windowed mode. 

Do "Not" I repeat DO NOT use the beta drivers of Nvidia as they suck.

Either Downclock your GPU or Overclock it. 

 

Last option "sadly" Reinstall windows. (not worth the effort for a game unless you are a fanboy).

 

Xfire is AMD, you mean SLI maybe? I don't have 2 GPUs

 

I am running in Borderless Windowed

 

I am using the latest stable driver release

 

I don't want to fiddle with my GPUs clock, a) because I don't want to mess it up and b) because :effort:

 

As for re-installing Windows... if I was having problems in other games then I might consider this, but I'm not. It's not Windows.

[Nimfix]

Xfire is a program.

It uses to track your games and hours.
one of the oldest game tracker I know of. 
Its similar to Raptr.

[Zweden]

Hi,

 

It would seem warframe has issues with SLI on certain cards or perhaps its the combo physx with SLI that crashes.

 

When i disable multi-gpu mode the game will run for hours on end without any issues, second i enabled multi gpu mode the game will crash 5 mins into any mission.

 

I get the "warframe has crashed" messaged follows by my nVidia drivers restarting.

 

on further testing it seems very plausible that its the combo, SLI with physx that is the cause of the problem disabling either will make (at least my issues) it much more stable.

Edited August 9, 2013 by gala72

[Minoumimi]

reinstall your nvidia drivers doing a custom install and doing a fresh install resetings all nvidia bios works...when i started playing too much with my resolutions and alt tab and this and that i could hear sound loops , everytime i did alt tab..so it is either the nvidia sound driver that gets mixed up or simply playing too much with settings messes everything up but ya..reinstalled the same exact driver doing custom install reseting everything works.

 

i used to have a 9800 gx2 with is a multi gpu card using sli and physX so Gala72 if you are using PhysX on a Multi gpu make sure your physX is on the Gpu you are not using or that it does NOT end up on your CPU..Multi gpu settings gets twangled up if you play too much with them so reinstall your drivers also.

PhysX on Cpu is most likely the problem to every display crashes.

If not its the warning sign of a starting hardward defect due to a overheat or old dusty card

[Zweden]

Thanks for the reply, tho its actually the opposite, its when i have physx on the gpu it crashes, when i put it on the cpu its ok (but then its also disabled in game options)

[Lulzes]

I submitted a ticket about my crashes, and apparently there's a fix coming in tomorrow's update - the GM said "the engine will now be able to recycle after a hard driver fault like this". Let's hope it works.

[Zweden]

Great news, not being able to use SLI (multi gpu mode) feels very awkward in todays games

[Kadilixr]

The fix for this didn't work for me - it still crashes me just like before, but I may have found the way to fix it. The link is for how someone fixed it for World of Warcraft, but it works the same for this game too. If the game still crashes for you then go here, and follow these steps. Job done.

 

The link:

 

http://www.ownedcore.com/forums/world-of-warcraft/world-of-warcraft-general/398001-how-did-i-solved-my-nvidia-drivers-stopped-working-has-recovered-problem.html

[Lulzes]

To be honest, I've not had a crash so far after the new patch. Might start turning on graphics effects to see if they now can work without crashing.

[mysoggyknee]

I just started crashing again after a few days of not crashing.

[emptyP]

Looks like the crashes are most frequent on the Nvidia GTX cards....GTX 650Ti here.

 

I am so GD sick of this crash BS.  Losing all my progress on wave 26 is really starting to piss me off.  I'm just adding myself to the list of people crashing.  I have tried every single step on your little checklist, by the way.  I have tried other workarounds and 'fixes'.

 

I've only found one way to stop crashing: stop playing.