The inability to properly play Warframe - since October 2014

[Khunvyel]

(( First edit in orange))

I have struggled too long with the game to hope that my detailed reports and cooperation with tech-support will get a solution or a statement. It started here and never really went away since then. Sure, every now and then it was fixed to be playable for a while, but with each full update since U15 , things just got worse. The moment the relays have been implemented, things became unfixable and the game became a hit-and-miss to play, up to the point where I was denied to play and finish certain content. As a paying customer, I am no longer willing to waste my time on trying to play or promote Warframe as long as fundamental issues remain.

This is my last attempt to gather all information and streamline it into a single, conclusive abstract. I do not hope for a dev-answer, I do not hope any more the problem will be fixed. But I just have to get it off my chest to at least say "I did everything I could", and maybe, only maybe, there will be something found that was overlooked or you can finally find the problem on your end.

Your minimum system requirements say:
A) Windows XP, Service pack 3 (Yes, that's what I have)
B) Geforce 8600 GT (I had a Geforce 430 in use for the longest time until recently where it broke, and since then have tested several more cards that are of newer age than the 8600 GT including that particular one. For further information, please check my support ticket history, number 538008).
C) Intel Core 2 Duo Processor E6400 (Not quite, it's an Intel E5700, which is a dual-core that was released in 2010, whereas the E6400 was released in 2006. I know that doesn't mean much and I know the Core duo is of a later generation, but I had absolutely zero bottlenecks on my CPU, ever. In fact, Warframe doesn't even really max out my CPU due to the GPU throttling. Now it's your turn to tell me, which "thing" the E6400 has, that the E5700 doesn't, that it can't make a certain stretch to the GPU and so it goes poof).

Before you ask, no, I have ensured everything on my end to work. Looking into my tech support tickets will tell you that. Need more? Let me go down the topic that [DE]Dimitri stickified here:

Spoiler

1. Updating drivers, Bios and other hardware: check.
2. Spring cleaning: My problem is not temperature related. Also, I clean the insides of my case, the heatsinks, the backs of the fans, the mouse and the keyboard at the start of each month. Cleaning monitor as needed (which means more often). Let's just assume by now that I know how to deal with computers and their longevity.
3. Virus/Malware/Adware Detection: check. And just so you know; not even a fresh side-installation of my operating system fixed the issue.
4. Update your OS: There are no updates for my operating system any more, because it is Windows XP.
5. Missing or corrupt files: check, no problems.
6. Temperature: CPU never rises above 55°C and while some of the GPU's I tested spiked past 80°C, even the ones who went silky smooth with 60°C caused yellow textures and crashes. So no, temperature has never been an issue.
7. Power supply: It still has sufficient reserves for it's day and age and even for the graphics cards that I swapped around. Some of them actually requiring less power than the one I had in for years no. the PSU also doesn't get hot, so it does not lose juice through thermal dissipation.
8. Faulty Hard Drive: Not only did the test come up negative, but I had Warframe located on three different physical harddrives over time, and more than three different locations for trying to circumvent those possibilities. In turn, sudden yellow textures that are randomly applied and "insufficient video memory" crashes are not harddrive related. If it was always the same texture, THEN I would have pointed to a HDD failure first.
9. Underclocking: None of my hardware was overclocked, ever.
10. GPU Stress tests: Did not yield any anomalies, and neither did a VRAM checker. By the way, the link to furmark is wrong. You might want to fix that. You also might want to add a note how to avoid burning your GPU completely, using furmark. You know, it has happened.
11. Memory diagnosis tool: This does not work under windows XP, so you might want to include third party memory testing software as a link.
12. What Letter13 said about unparking my CPU; not required because windows XP here, and I have no issues with overloaded CPU. I actually even disabled multithreaded rendering on my computer to see if it had any effect on multiple occasions. Didn't change a thing. Actually I thought I even got a bit more framerate but considering how much it jumps across, it's more of a placebo effect I guess.

Now we got that out of the way, we can start with the actual topic.

I have written a support ticket about my conclusions but I want to write them publicly again.

A friend: Win7 64bit, 4GB Ram, Geforce 8800 GT (1024MB Vram)
My brother: WinXP 32bit, 4GB Ram (which means less, effectively), Geforce 240 (1024MB Vram), CPU: Intel Core 2 duo E6750
Myself: WinXP 32bit, 4GB Ram, Geforce 430 (1024MB Vram)

The friend doesn't crash when he tries to get into the solar relay. My brother and I do, rarely with a bluescreen and more often with "insufficient video memory" error. He is meeting all of the minimum system requirements as denoted by his CPU, and he still crashes going into the relay. But now let's take it one step further.
My Geforce 430 died a while ago, and so I dug into some replacement cards and tested to see if one of the cards gets the job done. Because I still had the thought that Windows XP does something wonky with the Vram which makes Warframe throw up and cause those errors. So I thought either less or more Vram might fix the problem. So here it goes, these cards have been in my system to test:

GF 8600 GT, 256 MB
GF 210, 512 MB
GF 9600 GT (And GF 430 back then), 1024 MB
GF 520, 2048 MB

None of these cards managed to get me into the relay or save me from randomly appearing yellow textures. I got the feeling that I lasted a few SECONDS longer with the 2GB of the 520 but that might have been just the luck of the day. So the funniest part is, that this friend I mentioned read the "available video memory" first as 2.7 Gigabyte. This is due to Windows 7 allowing unallocated system RAM to be used for Video RAM in case things get full. Windows XP doesn't do that. Quite the opposite actually.

Furthermore, I really tried EVERYTHING to try and lower my vram footprint. All settings turned off or low, reduced window size to less than a quarter of my resolution (so less than 640x480) when things were barely readable any more. Framerate was nice and high, but that didn't stop the game from crashing just when it wanted to. I even unplugged one of my RAM sticks to half the available memory, in hopes that would change anything. Because, again, minimum System requirements for Warframe are 2GB of ram.
I was even going full retro. Fullscreen with 800x600. It felt like playing Quake 2 all those years ago on a crappy computer. Framerate was nice and smooth... suddenly, crash.
Did any of that in any combination with each other change anything? No. A huge, flat, disappointing "nope."

This leaves me with the following conclusion:

We pretty much can nail that windows XP is the culprit in this scenario. I would like to know of other windows XP 32 bit users and what experiences of the game they have. Windows 7 or Vista users on 32bit do not interest me in the slightest because of the way how Vram is handled in anything above WinXP.
So do they get yellow textures (especially on more graphically intensive areas of the game, like Ceres or Orokin Moon or Uranus)? Can they enter the solar relays and wander around without issues? If so, post your specs please and talk about your own experiences with the game.

As long as Warframe has "Windows XP" as minimum system requirements, I keep knocking on this. It does not matter why I don't upgrade my system, that is none of anyone's concern or business. It doesn't matter if I already have a new computer or if I get one in the near future, as long as I want to play on THIS computer, and as long as the minimum system requirements for Warframe are windows XP and met on my end...? Then I want my game to run without game-breaking and content-blocking issues. Again, if there is any solid reason why my CPU should be the reason for why a video memory problem and texture issue appears? Please, by all means, enlighten me. But never forget, that my brother STILL crashes with all minimum system requirements met, and all things that could be questioned on his end, can be answered by the same way that I answered these questions in terms of scrutiny and [DE]Dimitri's topic, etc.

I do not expect to run high framerates and nice graphics. I even expect the OCCASIONAL crash. But as long as I am blocked from content that is barred away in the Solar relay, or with extensive graphic sets that break stuff so I can't even finish a mission without constantly crashing? I will voice it. And now I am at a point where I start to complain, for the first time since this problem persists. I have been patient, I was even bringing paying customers to the game, paid myself, brought detailed bug reports, feedback and suggestions worth the majority of my post counter.
Right now I just don't want to stomach it any more. I cannot enjoy the game with or without my friends, I cannot even enjoy the game in general. To throw a hyperbole; I can't even complain about the grindfest if I can't even properly PLAY the game to even GET to the grindfest. Don't worry, I won't complain about that because I don't exhaust myself on the game because I just do other stuff then. I leave that to others. But when I want to play the game, I want to play the game. And not crash constantly.

I leave you with a few images so you can see under which circumstances I was sometimes trying (or forced to) play:

Find me an enemy  -  Find me another enemy  -  Find me my font too  -  Not even my operator is spared .
I have dozens of those.

Again, it does NOT matter which graphic card I am using. It always happens, sooner or later. The "newer" the graphic set is, the sooner it happens, up to the point where I am unable to finish the mission because I crash midway. And it is a given that I crash when trying to get into the solar relay. The only thing I have not done is swapping the CPU. So if by some nasty surprise there is SOME command set in the cpu that does NOT like how Warframe handles the graphics card? Okay, then. ONLY then. I will admit defeat for myself, but on behalf of my brother who DOES meet all requirements, I will NOT for him. And he does have the minimum required CPU, so the game is back on again on Windows XP, and your support for it and how it is still listed as minimum requirements. Make it work then. I don't know what other information the tech-devs could possibly need, but if there is a chance for you to fix it? Talk here, and let us / me help.

Or remove the minimum requirement being windows XP.
And if you do, a little "farewell until your next computer" or "We're sorry for the inconveniences" present in our account as reimbursement for those who struggled with these problems for over a year now would be much appreciated. If you catch my drift...

Edited March 12, 2016 by Khunvyel
Information about

[Khunvyel]

If one of the moderators could please move this to "PC Performance" which where it should have originally been intended to be posted, please? I had too many tabs open and proceeded to write the entire thing in the wrong one :\

[ThunderKitsune]

You need to update your hardware. It's too old to play games now. Newer hardware isn't really compatible with the old hardware you have. Also Windows XP is no longer supported by Microsoft so it's not getting the updates it needs to continue playing games like this and to work with the newer drivers for the graphics cards. Anything over 10 years of age needs to be replaced.

[pikaseechu]

Upgrading is the least of their concerns - if DE states that minimum requirements are Windows XP, then it should in fact work on Windows XP. Or DE should fix the minimum requirements for other players to see that they in fact need to upgrade their hardware to play.

 

Regardless getting better hardware would avoid problems of this kind in any game. Had to do the same when half of my Steam library could not be played due to my old computer's inability to display proper textures anymore.

[Khunvyel]

Warframe is the ONLY game where I have these problems. Other games that I play including ones that use PBR (Physically based rendering) do not crash at all. Warframe is the only game that behaves that way, with texture glitches and with crashes. . Other games that have higher minimum system requirements might not run as smooth, but they don't crash either. I was always praising Warframe for their high framerate on lower end systems, but newer graphic tiles ate more performance, and then we got all the crashes I mentioned above.
Also, I guess I have to myself that again:
 

Quote

As long as Warframe has "Windows XP" as minimum system requirements, I keep knocking on this. It does not matter why I don't upgrade my system, that is none of anyone's concern or business. It doesn't matter if I already have a new computer or if I get one in the near future, as long as I want to play on THIS computer, and as long as the minimum system requirements for Warframe are windows XP and met on my end

It is true, the official microsoft support for windows XP has ended, at which point the requirement for companies to make their products windows XP compatible has been removed. BUT!
That doesn't mean these companies HAVE to neglect windowsXP support. It is their choice if they do or not. In the case of Digital Extremes, they still support it as per their minimum system requirements.

Warframe just has some weird performance behaviours. For example; when I start the game and sit in the starting room (at least with my old GF 430), I have almost 60FPS. Granted, it is a bit less with the newer tilesets, but let's just say I'm talking about the older ones, being Grineer Asteroid + Galleon and Corpus outpost + Ship. I could usually play the mission at around 40FPS with plenty of enemies around. Here is the kicker though:
For every player that is in my game, the performance drops drastically. In the past I thought that was due to the higher number of enemies and effects, but dig this:
I let three friends join my game, in an older tileset and told them to not move until everyone is fully loaded. My framerate dropped down to mid 20s with only three additional warframes and their companions in sight. My friends didn't even use stuff like syandanas or extra armor. It gets even worse when people use that.

Another thing that people must not forget is, that some people use lower settings on more powerful machines to get a guaranteed smooth and stable gaming experience. That also removes certain framerate dips when some effects which are either poorly optimized or not meant for different brands of graphic cards. The discrepancy between ATI and GeForce chips still exists and is slanted towards one game or the other.

I don't know how many windowsXP users are still playing the game, only DE has these statistics. Because not everybody is playing the game via Steam, so relying on the Steam statistics is not sufficient. But I'm dead certain me and my brother are not the only ones. I am willing to provide all the information I can to find the culprit that makes the game unplayable on windowsXP due to certain things. I would also bet, if I install windows XP on a top-geared system, I'm still going to crash.

So in the end, it's really been long enough that this problem was allowed to persist. DE needs to decide if getting rid of the WindowsXP minimum requirement is worth the potential loss of "a few" customers. And if not, then reaching out to the windowsXP userbase maybe and see what can be done to improve that. I would guess that every optimization done that way would only benefit the other systems as well, at least the other 32bit systems of Windows Vista and 7 that are still in use due to RAM limitations.

I'm still willing to help, despite my rising frustration. That is why I put in all that effort to have written so many support tickets with detailed information and now finally got to the forum about it.

[ThunderKitsune]

We need to find some one with a high end PC with Windows XP on to see if they are having the same problems. Also may I ask what brand your mother board and ram are? There maybe a compatibility issue there.

[Khunvyel]

It would be interesting to try, yes. It's not that much of a hassle to install winXP on a win7 machine for example, but it is a bit cumbersome. The question is if someone who runs the WindowsXP virtual system inside Win7 professional (because that's what it can do by default) gets these issues too or not.

Trust me, there is no compatibility issue. The board is compatible with the Ram, I have nothing overclocked (as listed in this topic), I have even swapped ramsticks once (with lower clock speed) and removed one of them altogether. Nothing changed. If it was a System RAM issue, then I would receive bluescreens of a different type, and I hardly get bluescreens at all, and if, they're nv_disp.dll and ONLY relatd to Warframe. But the last one was quite a long while back actually. I get "insufficient video memory" and yellow textures. I get that with every single graphics card I have tested, as I reported. I have ruled out everything on my end, so I pinpoint the issue at Warframe, until someone can tell me why and how my E5700 processor would cause that. Especially when, again, no other game had these problems at all. Never had.

If my hardware had any issue with it, then synthetic stress tests would show that. They don't. Other games that tax the system even more than Warframe does would pitch similar fits, but they don't.

Edited March 14, 2016 by Khunvyel

[ThunderKitsune]

Not all graphics card are compatable with all mother boards. It's the only reason I asked. I can't think of anything else. The only thing I can recomend is upgrade to the recommended requirements. I've also look on Intel's website and it says your processor's status is end of life, I'm going to take a guess and say that means they don't make them any more.

[Khunvyel]

My processor was listed for 2010, the processor listed as minimum requirements in warframe is listed as 2006, but that one is still produced or rather, is still around selling. End of life doesn't mean much at all. The processor is the only thing that does not meet the minimum system requirements on my end, but on my brother's end he meets it.
The motherboard is a non-issue. Graphics cards are downward compatible in terms of PCI-e standard 2.0 and 3.0. The only thing it does would be slowing down the card in case it would reach a higher through-put than the lanes can take, but since the mentioned cards are not exactly powerhorses, that is again a non-issue. Look again at the generations of graphic cards tested. Even with the 8600 GT which is a PCI-e 1.0 card.

I repeat myself again, since my brother meets all the requirements with his processor and reaches the same motherboard compatibility standards while he has the same issues of crashing, the issue remains structured towards Warframe. Because again, he and I can play every other game without crashes or glitches. Granted, a bit slower sometimes, but at least functioning.

One thing I can think of is that Warframe somehow thinks that a minimum data rate is required to load certain things. That is, if too many things want to be loaded at the same time, and the system can't follow for whatever reason, maybe even on a hard-drive level, instead of slowing down it starts skipping stuff and gets that error. But that again would be not a problem of me, but a problem of the game, because my HDD stresstests suggested everything is still within normal parameters.

There are really only two ways to go from here. Either remove the windows XP minimum requirement and put Windows Vista as minimum system, or work around how the Vram memory allocation of Warframe is done. Because it can't be that I'm getting insufficient video memory errors with the lowest settings possible and a window that is approximately 640x480 on a video card that has 2GB of Vram.

[ThunderKitsune]

Your processor is fine, it runs with about 3GHz when the minimum needed for Warframe is around 2GHz. When was the last time you looked at the ingame settings? Some times an update can reset some setting, not only that, they have added some new ones recently. Such as displaying an enemies health above their heads.

Edited March 16, 2016 by ThunderKitsune

[Khunvyel]

I look at ingame settings fairly often, especially since I once double-checked a couple of months ago for Zendesk support to verify that my settings are all on lowest. At that point I realized that sometimes Warframe resets things, which is either due to the crashes or due to SOMETHING else. It never changed much though, like, maybe the texture quality was set to medium which is not instantly recognizable. Usually when they bring new settings, they are on by default for me, like the tacked on health bars you mentioned (( my god was I GLAD about that addition. Sadly certain specials of enemies are unreadable because of it though )). The same is with other display settings, they usually come "on" by default when they are introduced so I have to turn them off again. This is sometimes bothersome, especially now that everything has something like an "ambience fog" due to the new lighting and stuff. The same ambience fog existed when Depth of field and/or Motion blur was turned on, so now that I can't affect that anymore, everything looks like the air is super dusty or foggy :\

However, something to note here that I haven't noted with tech support;
I realized that my graphic settings actually don't matter. It doesn't matter if I play on highest and hurt my framerate hard or lowest or some middle ground that doesn't affect performance. The crashes in the relay and the yelow textures do not come faster with added settings. To keep tech support happy though, I've kept it low. I'm used to it anyway. Granted, I did not test it with the other graphic cards I put in, but those have been extensive tests done with my older card.

[ThunderKitsune]

I can't really think of anything else. I'm not sure what the issue is.

[Khunvyel]

On 16.3.2016 at 10:01 PM, ThunderKitsune said:

I can't really think of anything else. I'm not sure what the issue is.

Which is why the issue points towards Warframe's memory management on Windows XP.

[Khunvyel]

A spanking new Geforce 750 TI fresh from a retailer was put into the system.

Every game is operating at above 60 FPS ( to the cap of 75 vsync ) using many details at max (except anti-aliasing, remaining off).
Except Warframe...

Warframe still causes yellow texture glitches after the engine stopped working and needed to reload. It worked silky smooth in perfect fashion until that point. Even with pulling the details back down again, there was no getting around Warframe to keep acting up again.

So we're back again at the system requirement of Windows XP NOT being sufficient.
OR, as mentioned above;

On 14.3.2016 at 1:37 PM, Khunvyel said:

One thing I can think of is that Warframe somehow thinks that a minimum data rate is required to load certain things. That is, if too many things want to be loaded at the same time, and the system can't follow for whatever reason, maybe even on a hard-drive level, instead of slowing down it starts skipping stuff and gets that error. But that again would be not a problem of me, but a problem of the game, because my HDD stresstests suggested everything is still within normal parameters.

I noticed some micro-freezes when a new effect needed to be loaded or prior to a door opening to reveal the (not yet viewed) content behind. That was never noticeable on my lower framerates before, but then again, I also never noticed those in the earlier days of Warframe, when I could play through a mission at spiffy 50FPS solid and didn't even have to use all-lowest-details.
Yes, my warframe installation is optimized and my drives are not fragmented on Warframe files and I don't think that a SATA 2 drive is not fast enough to load whatever is needed.

So we're either sitting and Windows XP being the culprit, or the game crapping itself when trying to load something faster than the harddrive is capable of, thus expecting something that isn't there yet, and starting to scream and shut down.

In either case, that's not the issue of me, but the issue of the game engine. Because again, all other games run wonderfully. And of course, I have yet created another support ticket about the matter.

[Haxa6]

On 21.04.2016 at 4:52 AM, Khunvyel said:

A spanking new Geforce 750 TI fresh from a retailer was put into the system.

So we're either sitting and Windows XP being the culprit, or the game crapping itself when trying to load something faster than the harddrive is capable of, thus expecting something that isn't there yet, and starting to scream and shut down.

In either case, that's not the issue of me, but the issue of the game engine. Because again, all other games run wonderfully. And of course, I have yet created another support ticket about the matter.

I read your fisrt message and I aware of you do not care about win7 user opinion.

Although with my gtx 250 i'm getting my share of crashes.

1) Let's say i had 90-120 minutes gaming session. If i try to go to ANY relay, Warfame will crash at the moments notice.

2) Staying at the overpopulated relay will cause Warframe to crash in about 5 minutes.

3) New Moon tilesets will cause Warframe to crash in 2-4 runs in a row. It's noticeable that next run will consume more RAM than previous.

All and all, even though my old-&#! rig is better that minimal requirement, if i need to go to the Relay, i'd better restart the game, do whatever i need to and leave.

I'm not a specialist, but i'd say game assets flooding RAM / vRAM and won't clean its crap on mission end.

P.S. Currently playing Wildstar with no crashes at all with my derelict pc, even at 20 men raids. So imho it's warframe fault.

Edited April 29, 2016 by Haxa6

[Khunvyel]

On 29.4.2016 at 8:51 AM, Haxa6 said:

I read your fisrt message and I aware of you do not care about win7 user opinion.

 

Oh no don't get me wrong, I am VERY curious about anyone who does not have Windows XP but a newer system who suffers from the same problems. The only thing I said is that I don't care about people telling me to upgrade in order to fix the problem :)

Now, may I ask you a few things?

1) Do you run 32bit or 64bit of Windows 7?
2) How much System RAM do you have and how much is installed?
3) Do you run Warframe off an SSD or a Harddrive? If it is a Harddrive, can you please tell me the model?

I still suspect that the game has troubles loading several things at once and craps itself because the loading speed is not as fast as the engine needs on a minimum level. The game also never plays "lag-catchup" as we know from other titles. You know, when you suddenly see everything "fast forward" to catch up with the stuff you missed. I guess this "real-time dependency" also causes issues with systems that load not as fast. Or rather, every other game that I encountered copes with loading stuff in the pipeline for longer just fine.

If you (and any other esteemed reader) know other people who have the same issue, try to grab them and put their stuff into this topic.
For all it matters, despite our computers may have issues, the PROBLEM is caused by Warframe because it cannot cope with these issues as any other program I have encountered can perfectly deal with them.

[Haxa6]

On 5/5/2016 at 10:13 PM, Khunvyel said:

1) Do you run 32bit or 64bit of Windows 7?
2) How much System RAM do you have and how much is installed?
3) Do you run Warframe off an SSD or a Harddrive? If it is a Harddrive, can you please tell me the model?I

1) It 32 bit. (and that'

2) 4 gigs (3 something-something because of 32 bit OS)

3) HDD, can't tell you the model ATM because I'm not at home, probably add this info tomorrow.

I was unable to play Warframe once, game was crashing every 5 minutes, can't really recall which update it was... Tethra's Doom event, I believe. But then we've got a bunch crash fixes.

Right now I consider Warframe client slightly unstable, but I'm expecting more performance issues at the moment U19 kicks in.

P.S. Of all online games my PC still able to run, Warframe is the only one with this kind of performance promlems. The other one was Nosgoth, but it's dead now :-) 

Edited May 7, 2016 by Haxa6

[nVidiaContractor]

Upload your crash log, so we can all take a look.

On every Relay, im getting "insufficient video memory" error since U17, so when trader is here, its a big challenge for me, because when i get on Relay, i have 20-60 seconds to do a business, then crash, and usually i must go again to Relay, but to be clear, im playing on much lower machine then yours.

P.S. There is updates for XP. Microsoft still supporting XP under PoS.

Edited May 9, 2016 by nVidiaContractor

[Haxa6]

3 hours ago, nVidiaContractor said:

 

Upload your crash log, so we can all take a look.

 

If you don't mind tell me where its location.

[nVidiaContractor]

On Tuesday, March 22, 2016 at 7:37 PM, nVidiaContractor said:

You could upload your crash WF log report (%LOCALAPPDATA%\Warframe\Crashes\YYYY.MM.DD.HH.MM.SS\EE.log) or screenshot of that hardware failure information.

 

On Tuesday, March 22, 2016 at 11:49 PM, nVidiaContractor said:

Dont C/P it, try like C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData... %USERNAME% is your Username ACC at OS... YYYY.MM.DD.HH.MM.SS is Year.Month, Day, Hour, Minutes and Seconds when crash appear. Try find it manually as EE.log, etc.

 

On Thursday, March 24, 2016 at 5:23 AM, Gimpenstein said:

Also, be careful not to upload your ee.log (you can search from start menu for EE.log), since it contains personal information you probably don't want to share. Look for the specific crash report and just copy/paste that. 

If you uploaded crash report, write a WF number or something like that, like WAR-2345, so DE can take a look.

Edited May 9, 2016 by nVidiaContractor

[Khunvyel]

On 7.5.2016 at 6:46 AM, Haxa6 said:

1) It 32 bit. (and that'

2) 4 gigs (3 something-something because of 32 bit OS)

3) HDD, can't tell you the model ATM because I'm not at home, probably add this info tomorrow.

Did you have a chance to check up on the hardware model in the meantime? What you should do is open a ticket to Warframe's zendesk technical support, and throw throw them the info, including the error log that was talked about later. I'm currently having one open again and this time it seems like we're getting somewhere. Perform benchmarks with Crystaldiskmark (it checks your harddrive speeds) and download Speedfan which can check your harddrive's S.M.A.R.T. values and where you can also let the results be interpreted on a website.

However, I'm also suspecting the 32bit system to play a role in the issue with Warframe in terms of load architecture. In theory, depending on how long your operating system has been up and running, you could be due for a reinstall. If you do, you could as well re-install the 64bit version. It's legal and valid to install a 64bit system with a 32bit key and vice versa. All you need is the .iso file for Win7 64bit which are legal and free (especially virus free) to download and you're good to go. In case people doubt that: Check here, official microsoft.

Now I'm NOT asking you to install 64bit windows just for a game. I'm aware that certain programs that people still want and need for their work are not 64bit capable, or only with a majorly expensive upgrade. But since we're already down on the nitty gritty that it comes down to Warframe not "catching up" with what needs to be loaded, and since it narrows down further and further, we're down to two things: 32bit architecture and load times.

 

23 hours ago, nVidiaContractor said:

On every Relay, im getting "insufficient video memory" error since U17, so when trader is here, its a big challenge for me, because when i get on Relay, i have 20-60 seconds to do a business, then crash, and usually i must go again to Relay, but to be clear, im playing on much lower machine then yours.

I feel your pain. I forgot how many things I could NOT get and NOT do because of this issue. It's basically arbitrary content blocking.

At any rate, fire up a support ticket, outline the issue and start pushing. To both of you :) As mentioned, my bet is on time sensitive load operations that overwhelm the system, causing the game and DirectX to fail, and 32bit architecture on top of that. I'm working on it on my end as well.

Edited May 10, 2016 by Khunvyel

[TheDarkness506]

Thank you so much for starting this topic. Finally someone gathered loads of information on this issue.

I can do some missions before running into yellow textures and crashing. All my graphic settings set to low/disabled except for display resolution (set to 1024x768, just like my general resolution, otherwise I simply can't read any text) and weapon elemental FX, I also use windowed mode. I am running WinXP SP3 x32, 2GB RAM, GeForce GT640 (1 gb VRAM), AMD Athlon  64 x2 Dual Core 3600+. I was dedicated to help the Devs nail and fix the issue, so I can share more details about this. 

I experience similar symptoms, although to a lesser extent:

Spoiler

-Yellow textures which make the game lag noticably when you're facing them,

-Transparent/black textures for faces, icons, black blocks instead of HUD elements/text, chat is affected too,

-Game freezing while loading textures, after a while the window resizes itself a little while its contents black out, then everything goes back to normal, all textures are reloaded,

-Rays of different colors emerging from the center of the screen, they stay as if they were a part of HUD and sometimes change colors,

-"Out of memory" crash- either after severe artifacting (yellow or black textures) or straight out of the blue.

-Speaking of blue- all ONLY while running Warframe:

BSOD  KERNEL_MODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED (0xc0000005,varies, varies, 0x00000000) mentioning nv4_disp.dll and, according to BlueScreenView, dxg.sys.

(only once) THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER (0x100000ea, 0x89697700, 0x896ac7e8, 0xb84dbcbc, 0x00000001) mentioning nv4_disp.dll and, strangely enough, hal.dll.

-"Nvidia driver has stopped working" (very rare if not once),
-If the game crashes with "out of memory" once, each game launch attempt will last less than the previous one, sometimes crashing even before login screen, reboot solves this,
 -The window becomes "fragile"- the process is running, but I can click through it on my desktop icons, which leaves a hole in the window, or I can "wipe" it entirely by another window- this usually is the last stage, and the game most likely won't launch before reboot. 

Here's my story.

Spoiler

It all started during the period from Simaris update to March 06. I was unable to acess/stay on Relays long enough to access Void Trader. Wnen Sands of Inaros update dropped, this became serious since I had only several days to get the quest, so I submitted a support ticket. Although while waiting for response I managed to get the quest (Fresh boot, no other programs running, Excal with default color scheme, no cosmetics, default Sicarus as the only weapon), and was unable to answer the "sorry for delay, issue still persists?" answer, so the ticket was closed.

Then it got worse. The issue spread to normal missions, yellow/black textures became my worst enemy.  It wouldn't be as bad if a simple lag due to textures loading didn't lead to an inevitable host migration. I then opened another ticket.

I was told to:

Spoiler

-Update my drivers(Tried plenty from older to newer- no difference), 

-Increase my pagefile to 3 times my RAM (that was long ago, probably helped a little),

-Stress test my GPU and CPU (no issues),

-Disable DX10/11- unavailable for WinXP,

-Disable 64-bit mode (Didn't I mention several times that I use x32 OS?),

-Multi-threaded rendering (no difference),

-Set all settings to low (mentioned several times),

-Enable Debug mode for my graphics card (turned out to be an unsupported feature for XP).

Then I was told that there's nothing that can be done from my side and a note about this would be moved to the Devs. 
I gathered plenty of crashlogs and screenshots for those interested. Some info about them in the spoiler, logs themselves are huge.

Spoiler

I've read the logs myself- they usually mention:

-(a lot) "Budget overrun"  while loading a texture file,

-(half of the log)PreLoad Failure while loading png files (textures too?)

this in the end of one of crashlogs (crashed while on Liset)

Spoiler

Error [Info]: Crash Message:
Error [Info]: 
Error [Info]:     GPF in 0060B35B() [????????.???:0]
Error [Info]: 
Error [Info]: Stack Trace:
Error [Info]: 
Error [Info]:     Warframe.exe  0060B35B
Error [Info]:     Warframe.exe  00D2204F
Error [Info]:     Warframe.exe  00D21084
Error [Info]:     Warframe.exe  00D21ADF
Error [Info]:     Warframe.exe  00D0F0C0
Error [Info]:     Warframe.exe  7C816037
Error [Info]: 
Error [Info]: Build Label:
Error [Info]: 
Error [Info]:     2016.05.27.19.53 Retail Windows x86
Error [Info]: 
Error [Info]: Registers:
Error [Info]: EAX=0012C740 EBX=00000003 ECX=00000000 EDX=00000AAA
Error [Info]: ESI=0588D6B0 EDI=24905C10 EBP=0012FFF0 ESP=0012FFC8 EIP=7C816037
Error [Info]: FLG=00210217 CS=001B DS=0023 SS=0023 ES=0023 FS=003B GS=0000

Application error messages:
Hub.lua
PlayerShip
PlayerShip.lua
AnimateGeneticLabDome
CrpBFGAnimations.lua
UpdateAnimations
PostCameraUpdateHud.lua
Update

Error [Error]: DXDiag write timed out.

If anyone wants more, please, tell me a good website for uploading this- I would gladly share them, I have 6 different crashlogs.

A great culprit could be one issue during the launch of U15 (And that is October 2014, the date OP mentions as the start of it all): many XP users couldn't play at all, especially NVidia users. Same symptoms, but worse: I was unable to stay on Liset without artifacting and crashing. Since this was a massive issue for a huge amount of players, it got fixed in less than a week and was indeed connnected to memory handling: just look through patchnotes since 15.1.0.

[DE] Nathan said this in the ticket: "The problem is basically your system does not have the memory to load all of the new textures in U15. We are working on a fix for this issue as XP users are all having this problem. It worked better on our stand alone client because Steam was not running the overlay and other functions at the same time. Steam uses a lot of resources."
And the hotfixes that followed all mentioned XP crashfixes and (!) "Improved Dojo load times and Dojo stability for 32-bit systems." (15.1.2). 

In conclusion, mu guess would be that this issue is caused by a combination of Nvidia GPU, WinXp, x32 and relatively small amounts of VRAM. 
Please, don't let this topic die. I think that the more information we can gather, the easier it would be for the Devs to find the exact case and fix this issue. It would be great if someone sends the link to this topic to Devs via PM or a Support Ticket. 

Edited July 10, 2016 by TheDarkness506
Some formatting.

[Khunvyel]

On 10.7.2016 at 6:49 PM, TheDarkness506 said:

Please, don't let this topic die.

 

I had a pretty long ticket going on with support where I also pointed towards this topic here. We tried a lot of things, mostly troubleshooting though. [DE]Nate was it in my case, might be a name change from Nathan so we might have had the same person? You know, specializations and such.

I suggested what things could be done to avoid memory hogs like that, and narrowed down at windows XP memory architecture and 32bit limitations. I'm pretty sure an ATI card has the same problems. ATI doesn't randomly make a game more memory efficient.

At any rate, the reason why I lost interest in this topic and did not do any updates was because after all the effort I made, the ticket got closed without mutual consensus. While he did say that he is passing the stuff to the Team to test it, I'm at a loss how I was not involved in the test process, giving the mounds of information I supported and going out of my way to test new things for them. I even went to PROVE them how Harddrive load speeds affected the stability of the engine. Everyone wants windows XP to be gone, I understand that. And I might also understand the confusion as to why not simply use a 64bit system when it only has advantages. Well the problem is, not all 32bit programs work with 64bit systems, which is why people still chose 32bit.

Here is the conclusion part I sent to them after another batch of testing. This was my last message before the ticket was closed and I lost interest by being basically cut off from the case.

Spoiler

Fact 1: Massive issues with textures dropping and crashing started straight with Update 15. Sure, things got fixed and panned out a bit, but eventually, the errors always returned, and the more updates came, the more persistent and everlasting the issue became. Everything before Update 15 was silky smooth, I crashed like twice or so between U9 and U15. So whatever you changed, look back there.

Fact 2: Increased video memory (from 1GB on Geforce 430 to 2GB on 520 and 750 TI) didn't do anything to reduce the "insufficient memory" errors. The only thing the 750 TI did was not crash as soon, as it tried to recuperate better from the engine crapping itself.

Fact 3: Running the game off a much faster harddrive made the game last substantially longer. While the same issues occured at least they took longer to happen. Still unbearable to reasonably play.

Fact 4: Firewall performance causes framerate to tank. Either the game has massive networking issues, or for some reason my firewall just hates Warframe with a passion and is totally fine with other games.

Fact 5: In terms of networking, Warframe is so finicky that it even booted me from a multiplayer session when I changed something in the options and it took too long to apply. Warframe's networking is meant to work "instantly" it seems. There is no "freeze and then speed-up to catch up" lag. There is little tolerance in deviations, and I often get the feeling the framerate simply drops if one client has bit of a bad connection, as if "synchronous clients" are enabled or something to compensate for the lag.

Fact 6: Warframe is the only game (hell, the only PROGRAM) I have issues with. I can give you a list of games that work perfectly fine for hours and hours, if you want. Even including products that use PBR; Eve online, max details. Many spaceships. No crashes, no texture issues.

Fact 7: No Malware, no Viruses, no system file problems. And even if, then I should see issues in other games and daily work too. Which I don't. Basically, anything I'm being told that could be the problem, doesn't matter even if I WOULD have that problem, since there is no reason why other programs should NOT be affected by that too. That is, unless you can tell me very specific why Warframe does this or that differently than anything else on this computer.

Fact 8: Even when clearing all possible obstacles (no firewall, faster harddrive, decent enough Graphics card, no background programs other than what is absolutely necessary) the game still locks up and the renderer dies. It definitely has a speed issue, wanting something too fast, not getting it fast enough, and then the game is flailing in anguish, tearing things down. I can't describe it any way else. ONLY Warframe does this. So the only remaining issues are: operating system and eventually (though unlikely) RAM.

Fact 9: Windows XP is still listed as minimum system requirement. If you want to make this easy, drop Windows XP support. But if you do, I would appreciate a compensation for any affected players.
However, apparently this is not a Windows XP issue alone but a 32bit OS issue. Look at the forum topic I posted at the start of this ticket, and you will see someone mentioning how they run windows 7 32bit.

I sincerely hope that we can get now to the developer tech side of problem solving, now that the user-side of the troubleshooting is basically done. I can't think of anything else to do now, but if you have another idea, I'll be glad to test it for you.
Can you please give me specific details about your in-house Windows XP testing machine, please? Because I start to think we should find something that my machine and the test machine have in common, and where it differs and then see where we can go from there.

Especially the last part shows how much I am interested in the testing process and how I want to know their testing methodology in order to make better comparisons.

In short, the main issue is memory and access times. Warframe does not properly unload stuff when things get tight which makes it a memory hog. The highest I had in a Solar Relay on my new computer was 3.5 Gigabyte reserved RAM with total current use of 2.7GB Ram. This exceeds the Windows XP user limit of 2GB by far, and also infringes on the natural boundaries of 3.5 GB on Windows Vista and 7 and above if they are still used on 32bit. In terms of access times, it simply craps itself when things don't go fast enough.

I have no problems on Warframe with my new computer (of course not), but I still wanted to use the old one for continued troubleshooting. As I was cut down despite all my efforts, you can imagine how that dampened my drive to pursue and resolve the issue.

It's a difficult situation because Warframe seems to do things actually not bad in terms of memory. They do have things in place where it doesn't go completely bonkers. it's just the MINIMUM requirements on memory seem to be too high, while they constantly try to keep total memory footprint low. Maybe there is too much unloading and reloading, I don't know.

Bottom line is, Solar Relays and newer tilesets like Shipyard, Orokin Moon and Grineer Lab are fatal on older systems compared to other tilesets. Corpus ice planet however doesn't seem to have that issue. I can't remember crashing there much faster, despite it being a newer one. Earth is kinda between the old classic ones and new ones in terms of "crashability."

I know that they want to throw windows XP out of the support cycle, I get it. But the problem still remains for 32bit users. It's not as bad, but still existing. And I'm pretty sure if the problem gets resolved there, then windows XP users (the few that are left) wouldn't have a problem either. Now the question is, why choosing to do it the way it is done? To me, as sad as it is, the most plausible case would simply be "the low numbers of 32bit users do not warrant a full scale rework".

I still think this topic is better suited in the "PC Beta bugs -> Performance" category but continued attempts in here to get it moved were fruitless.

Edited July 20, 2016 by Khunvyel

[AlainLove]

My history, just in case it can helps others.

3 years playing Warframe with

Windows XP
Intel Core2 Duo E8500
GT 630 2GB GDDR3
4 GB DDR2

It was never smooth but i played more or less stable until some months ago. It became a pain. Update after update i started to hate my beloved game:

- Yellow textures everywhere like OP shows in his pictures

Quote

I leave you with a few images so you can see under which circumstances I was sometimes trying (or forced to) play:

Find me an enemy  -  Find me another enemy  -  Find me my font too  -  Not even my operator is spared .
I have dozens of those.

- FPS Drops like crazy (1-5 fps, specially when yellow textures appears)
- Game freeze and host migration
- Game freeze and force reboot
- Crashing a lot
-  Insufficient video memory, not only happening on new tilesets like Lua but also making impossible visit relays when baro comes.

The last update SotR made it worse. I was swiming in a Yellow texture's ocean, every mission, even my entire liset.

I did try a lot of configurations, also i was playing with the lowest settings, every option unchecked, nothing helps.

Since i can play other games with decent graphics i was sure it was Warframe, not my pc because its a little above the minimun requirement. Tired about not seeing any patch which optimizes the game for windows xp i decided upgrade to Windows 7 64 bits.

Now i can play the game with the higher graphics, every option checked (also every option on the launcher). Not a single yellow texture, not a single fps drops, i can live in the relay. I can play with better performance than never. Same PC, different SO. Unbelievable

If you have Windows xp and you are having this kind of troubles and you can't upgrade your SO or your computer, i can't help but i feel your pain. Hell i almost bought a new PC just for Warframe when this old buddy can move it sweet right now.

Thanks for read my words and sorry for my bad english.

[TheDarkness506]

2 minutes ago, Trasant said:

-snip-

Recently upgraded to Windows 7 x64. Same specs as before (yes, even the 2GB RAM). Guess what?
All smooth no matter what. Relay works like magic. No, everything works like magic.

Here goes the claim that my graphics card can't handle the textures. Yes, it is not incredible, but it does its job well.

I guess they won't drop XP support anytime soon since it is a large part of the playerbase. The game is playable for some, so the rest just doesn't have good enough specs and that's it, case closed, This is partially true, since if you have loads of VRAM, then it is harder to run out of it. 
I have no hopes for the staff to notice and fix this, but at least those that are in the same boat as we are (were) can find the answer. To fix this, you need Win7 x64 or more VRAM. That's it.