15 replies to this topic

[El Rizzo]

Hello everyone,

about 3 months ago i bought a Nvidia Geforce GTX 780 and since then i had spontaneous freezes while playing MWO which occur randomly and last for about 3 to 6 seconds before the game resumes back to normal. Those freezes could usually be fixed by tabbing out of the game and tabbing back in, which was annoying but manageable, but since i installed the new Geforce 334.89 Driver the game completely freezes and i can't even tab out anymore and have to wait for the game to continue, which often results in my death since it sometimes happens during battle.

It is definitely not a hardware issue since i can run any other game just fine for hours without the any problems and the CPU is rock solid at its current settings. Temperatures are also well within specifications as my CPU never gets hotter than 50°C (58°C after many hours of Prime95) and my GPU doesn't reach 70°C while playing MWO since i limited the FPS to 60.
I also checked if the GPU clocks down while the freezes occur (using MSI Afterburner), which also isn't the case, furthermore i already deleted the shaders folder without having any effect.

My question is whether anyone else is having this problem and if anyone knows how to solve it or if the only possible solution for me is to use an older Driver, which at least lets me tab out of the game.
Ingame Settings are set to maximum except for Motion Blur which is disabled.

My Hardware config:
Core I5 3570k @4.2 Ghz
Gigabyte Geforce GTX 780 Windforce Ghz Edition
2x4GB DDR3 1866 CL9 Ram

Edited by El Rizzo, 19 February 2014 - 01:24 PM.

[Durant Carlyle]

Use MSI Afterburner to down-clock your GPU by 30 MHz and your graphics memory by 50 MHz.

Alternatively, you could use MSI Afterburner to increase the GPU voltage by a small amount. I'm not sure of the increments Afterburner gives, but try +0.05v to start.

You have a factory-overclocked GPU that likely isn't fully stable at its default settings. It's causing your graphics drivers to stop working and then reboot themselves. It might be the GPU speed or the memory speed that's causing the problem. And yes, it can be "stable" in many games but have problems with one particular game. That just means it isn't actually stable -- the other games just don't exercise the GPU like the one problem game does.

Once you've either decreased the speed or increased the voltage, test it out by playing a few matches.

[Summon3r]

have had the same issue myself. i use EVGA precision X. it doesnt allow me to down clock but i can up the power %. the only time i do not see fairly frequent freezes is when i have precision X running, still once in a while i will get a freeze.

[Durant Carlyle]

Summon3r, on 19 February 2014 - 10:43 PM, said:

have had the same issue myself. i use EVGA precision X. it doesnt allow me to down clock but i can up the power %. the only time i do not see fairly frequent freezes is when i have precision X running, still once in a while i will get a freeze.

Precision X has a voltage setting as well -- not just the Power % that you mention. Increasing the voltage would likely fix your problem once and for all. I have mine set for +38 mV, which is the maximum increase for my graphics card. I overclock mine beyond what the factory overclock is though -- I wouldn't recommend that high a setting just to get stability. Maybe +10 mV in that case.

[El Rizzo]

Quote

You have a factory-overclocked GPU that likely isn't fully stable at its default settings.

Believe me when i say, its stable, i can run ANY other game without the slightest issue, also other games based on the Cry Engine, for example Crysis 2 or 3 at maximum details including AA and AF which is a far more performance hungry game than MWO and another hint that it is not related to my clockrates is the fact that it didn't occur in that form with an older driver. Furthermore, since i limited the fps to 60 my card doesn't even use its full boost clockrate but rather runs even below its standard Clockrate so it doesn't even run with the overclocked settings and the Vram isn't overclocked at all.

Your input is very much appreciated though but like i hopefully explained in this post it is highly unlikely that its my card thats causing the issues. Nonetheless, i will try increasing the voltage slightly and will post if it had any effect.

Update:

The increased voltage didn't do anything, but when i disabled the fps limit i had set with Nvidia inspector, i had no freezes at all, so i came to the conclusion that it had something to do with the drivers power management which was set to adaptive as the global setting. So i created a profile for Mwo and set the power management mode to "Prefer maximum performance" and i had no freezes since

Seems Mwo and the power management of the driver aren't working well together and are causing the freezes. Hopefully this solution works for you as well Summon3r and a big THANK YOU to Durant Carlyle for trying to help me !

Edited by El Rizzo, 20 February 2014 - 09:51 AM.

[Durant Carlyle]

I'm running the newest driver, and I've got an EVGA GTX 780 SuperClocked w/ ACX graphics card. It's factory-overclocked, plus I've got it overclocked beyond the factory settings using Precision X (+52 GPU, +286 Memory, +38 mV voltage).

My Nvidia Control Panel settings:
AO: Perf
AF: App-Con
AA-FXAA: On
AA-Gamma: On
AA-Mode: App-Con
AA-Trans: Multisample
CUDA-GPUs: All
MaxPre-RendFrames: 1
MultiDisp/MixGPU: Single Disp Perf Mode
PowManMode: PrefMaxPerf
TF-ASO: On
TF-NLODBias: Allow
TF-Q: Perf
TF-TriOpt: On
ThreadOpt: On
TripBuf: On
VertSync: Use3D

My game settings:
2560x1440, full-screen, all Very High, motion blur off.

My system:
Intel i7-4770 CPU
ASUS Z87 Gryphon MB
Crucial Ballistix Sport 2x8GB 1600 CL9 RAM
EVGA GTX 780 SuperClocked w/ ACX 3GB GPU
Samsung 840 Pro 256GB SSD
Seagate Barracuda 3TB 7200 RPM HDD
ASUS PB278Q 27" 2560x1440 LCD
Win7 Pro 64-bit (fully updated)
Nvidia 334.89 graphics driver (installed using Advanced > Clean Install option)

You should be able to run the game better than my system can, with your CPU overclocked. I've got the regular 4770 so I can't overclock it.

Edited by Durant Carlyle, 20 February 2014 - 03:30 PM.

[Summon3r]

Durant Carlyle, on 20 February 2014 - 02:09 AM, said:

Precision X has a voltage setting as well -- not just the Power % that you mention. Increasing the voltage would likely fix your problem once and for all. I have mine set for +38 mV, which is the maximum increase for my graphics card. I overclock mine beyond what the factory overclock is though -- I wouldn't recommend that high a setting just to get stability. Maybe +10 mV in that case.

thx i didnt know about that voltage setting.... im currently at gpu OC +128, mem offset +204, power target 118%, and just upped the mV from 987 to 1025.... will see who that works.

[El Rizzo]

Quote

You should be able to run the game better than my system can, with your CPU overclocked. I've got the regular 4770 so I can't overclock it.

That might be true, but i don't get your point, i never had any issues with game performance, just sudden freezes that were apparently caused by the Nvidia driver's power management mode. I intentionally limited my fps to 60 to reduce power consumption and noise level of my gpu, its not the maximum framerate i can get in the game if thats what you were thinking

[Durant Carlyle]

El Rizzo, on 20 February 2014 - 02:21 PM, said:

... apparently caused by the Nvidia driver's power management mode...

So setting the Nvidia driver's Power Management Mode to Prefer Maximum Performance fixed it?

[El Rizzo]

Quote

So setting the Nvidia driver's Power Management Mode to Prefer Maximum Performance fixed it?

Yup, had no freezes since i set the Mwo profile to maximum performance even with my fps limited to 60. I told you about it in the update of my second post, but i guess you had already answered me before that and didn't see it, sorry

Edit:

Dammit, i just had a freeze again ... guess i have to do some more testing without limited fps.

Edited by El Rizzo, 20 February 2014 - 06:13 PM.

[Durant Carlyle]

I went back and read your update.

The power management setting reduced the frequency of the freezes. That's good.Prefer Maximum Performance basically prevents the driver from shutting down parts of the GPU chip to save power.

What voltage increase did you do? You may need to boost the voltage by another small amount. I'm not sure what the increments are in MSI Afterburner, but in Precision X you can go up by +13, +25, or +38 mV. Just go up another step.

Edited by Durant Carlyle, 20 February 2014 - 06:50 PM.

[El Rizzo]

You can increase it in 1mv steps, but apparently it only has any effect if you hit a certain number, which was 15mv in my case and it didn't help with the freezes, but like i already said, i am 99.9% sure it is not a hardware problem but a software one since the card isn't running at full clockrate when i limit the fps and i can run benchmarks that have the gpu run at about 99% load the entire time without any stability issues.

Further proof that it is software related is that i played for over two hours (usually freezes occur about every second game) today without a single freeze when i had the fps not limited but instead got some big fps drops in their place, which cannot be the result of a driver crash caused by insufficient voltage/ instability, which would result in a complete freeze but not in fps drops.

But i will increase the voltage to the next step nonetheless to completely rule out this possibility and to not ignore your advice

Quote

Prefer Maximum Performance basically prevents the driver from shutting down parts of the GPU chip to save power.

I don't wanna be a smartass, but thats not correct, all "adaptive power mode" does is to reduce the clockrate when the gpu load drops to save power, for example when your mwo client is running and you are in the mechlab your fps are limited by the game to 60 which your or my card can easily provide at lower clockrates, so the card clocks down in order to reduce power consumption. "Prefer maximum power mode" simply won't let the card clock down and keeps it running at full, non-boost clockrate without regard to load, resulting in higher power consumption and heat.

Edited by El Rizzo, 21 February 2014 - 06:12 PM.

[Durant Carlyle]

El Rizzo, on 21 February 2014 - 04:57 PM, said:

I don't wanna be a smartass, but thats not correct, all "adaptive power mode" does is to reduce the clockrate when the gpu load drops to save power, for example when your mwo client is running and you are in the mechlab your fps are limited by the game to 60 which your or my card can easily provide at lower clockrates, so the card clocks down in order to reduce power consumption. "Prefer maximum power mode" simply won't let the card clock down and keeps it running at full, non-boost clockrate without regard to load, resulting in higher power consumption and heat.

CPUs do the "put parts of the chip to sleep" thing, so I figured GPUs did too. Oh well.

[ackstorm]

El Rizzo, on 20 February 2014 - 05:42 AM, said:

Update:

The increased voltage didn't do anything, but when i disabled the fps limit i had set with Nvidia inspector, i had no freezes at all, so i came to the conclusion that it had something to do with the drivers power management which was set to adaptive as the global setting. So i created a profile for Mwo and set the power management mode to "Prefer maximum performance" and i had no freezes since

Seems Mwo and the power management of the driver aren't working well together and are causing the freezes. Hopefully this solution works for you as well Summon3r and a big THANK YOU to Durant Carlyle for trying to help me !

Well Done!

[El Rizzo]

Quote

Well Done!

Guess you haven't read my update either i had freezes afterwards, they only occurred less often than before so the first time i had a test run i didn't have any and apparently jumped to conclusions

@Durant Carlyle

I increased the voltage another step and had a freeze in the first game today, so i am ruling out any voltage/stability related issues that cause the freezes, because if that were the case i would have similar issues in other games, which i don't have.

Update:

I switched back to the Geforce 332.21 driver and will see how that goes, played a few games already without freezes/fps drops.

Update 2: So far I had no freezes/fps drops with the 332.21 driver, so it seems it was a driver issue with the game.

Edited by El Rizzo, 03 March 2014 - 05:09 AM.

[M T]

I had the exact same issue. The only solution for me was to go back to an older driver, specifically some old one from 2013 march. Had no lockups ever since. Possibly it works with newer ones too but im not going to try each and every driver atm to see until which one the games keeps stable.

Im happy