All games crashing my PC (RSOD/ Freeze)... no idea what's wrong

[Cheerscake]

Hey guys,

 

I am having some severe trouble for a while now. While I am not certain wether they are related to each other I believe it is very well possible. Knowing that in this forum there are many very smart dudes I hope you guys can help me.

 

So it appears that all Source Enginge games are crashing into a black screen which, after a few seconds results in my computer rebooting itself. Starting the game in borderless or windowed mode prevents this issue though.

Going on with Frostbite 3. Frostbite 3 crashes into a red screen which then causes my pc to reboot itself as well. While borderless mode fixed the issue in Battlefield 4, it also appears in PvZ: Garden Warfare. Here borderless mode keeps the game from crashing into the red screen but as soon as I enable Mantle the game always freezes the whole pc while loading which results in me being supposed to reboot the PC manually. In this case it also doesn't help to change any other setting like framerate or resolution - it always freezes until I turn mantle off and dx back on again. Another issue in Battlefield 4 is, that I can not play it at 144fps. As soon as I set the video settings to 144fps I am back at the red screen of death.

I also ran into the red screen issue when trying to play Enemy Front which is running on CryEngine. Again - borderless mode fixed the issue.

 

All those mantle problems in BF4, PvZ and BF3 (I know it doesnt support mantle but also suffers from the following issue) would not be too bad if I could propperly run the games with DirectX. Well there comes another issue. I feel like the DirectX performance simply doesn't match the hardware. The framerates are all over the place and varying drastically from sub 30 to rates of say 90, no matter which graphics settings I apply. 

I thought it might be caused by the CPU but while I know that it isn't the greatest ever I still don't think that performance this poor is reasonable.

My motherboard, the ASUS M5A97 Pro being the oldest part in my system is some years old now but considering that motherboards usually don't have an impact on performance I don't think that's the issue either.

I reinstalled Windows as well so it's not cause the system is fucked up by a bunch of old crap.

 

I would be really glad if anyone of you had even a tiny clue to what's going wrong in there.

 

Here are all my system parts:

 

CPU: FX-8350 @ 4.00Ghz (Removed 4.4Ghz overclock too check if it has an impact and for the Windows reinstall)

GPU: AMD HD 7990 (Also running stock speeds)

16Gb of Corsair Vengeance RAM @ 1600Mhz

250Gb Samsung 840 EVO with Windows 8.1 64Bit

2 1Tb WD Blue HDDs

Motherboard as mentioned: M5A97 Pro

 

I also attached the result of a DxDiag I just ran, for more info.

 

 

Thx in advance guys

 

Alex

[ionbasa]

Can you please check if you have any dump files?

They are located under "%systemroot%\minidump" Copy all of the dump files to a temporary folder on your desktop, then zip them up and post them here for analysis.

 

If there are no windows dump files, the best solution I could offer is to update all of you device drivers. Also; what version of the AMD drivers are you running for you 7990?

[Foxxer]

For me, I would update my drivers, including BIOS.

Reboot.

Check your RAM. "memtest86"

Run HDD diagnostics.

[Cheerscake]

So I checked all the stuff with the following results:

 

• GPU drivers are of course up to date. Running Catalyst 14.4. Same issues appear with latest beta driver as well though.
• Also running the latest BIOS ASUS provides for my motherboard. This does however date back to october 2012... seems pretty old to me.
• The two HDDs are fine and pretty much brand new. Had the same issues with the drive I used before.
• I didn't run memtest86 but I ran a program called  MemTest4.0. When starting the test I got following report: "Your version of windows limits the amount of contiguous RAM a single program can allocate." Therefore it asked me to run the programm multiple times at once, each testing 2047Megabyte. I just ran it until it had tested 50% of the RAM with no error reports whatsoever. Gonna run it to 100% later on though.
• Yes there was indeed a dump file however when trying to upload it as an attachment (Even zipped) to this post I get the Error "You aren't permitted to upload this kind of file". Is there any way I can read it and post the stuff as a normal post so that you can see it?

[StareX]

PSU ? It is probably because of that.

[Cheerscake]

You mean the 750W can't handle the 7990?

 

I also noticed that my CPU is running pretty damn hot in some games. Even though it is not overclocked at the moment. I'm cooling with a Corsair H100i.

[ionbasa]

You mean the 750W can't handle the 7990?

 

I also noticed that my CPU is running pretty damn hot in some games. Even though it is not overclocked at the moment. I'm cooling with a Corsair H100i.

750W should be enough for your rig to be honest. How long have you had your 7990 for? Is an RMA an option? It is starting to sound like a defective card.

 

If you have another computer, or a friends computer, to try it in, check and see if these issues persist there as well.

[Yus_WD]

Hi Cheerscake, sorry to hear that. Since you already know where is dump file, here is the link on how-to debug/read it.
Windows 8 :http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/windows/hardware/ff551063%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
You may go and have a look at it.

At first I thought it might be due to Mantle, but since BF3 is also experiencing freezes, then it might not be related.

I would focus more on the GPU. Have you used any system monitoring for the GPU? How was the GPU's temperature when loaded? Is the fan working fine? Is there any possibility the GPU was factory overclocked? I know that some of the AMD GPUs are factory overclocked but I'm not sure for the AMD HD 7990. Maybe you can install one of the reliable GPU monitoring software first and take a look into it.

Hope this help you.

[Tech_Dreamer]

try reverting to an older stable driver, see if that works, usually beta drivers does this kinda thing , make sure you clear out the current drivers completly including the registry as well, reboot & try the games again & post back if it doesn't work.

[Cheerscake]

Hey Peoples,

 

thanks for all your helpfull repliess!Especially the hints that it might be GPU related - it was indeed! I've been monitoring the GPU using GPU-Z earlier on already but nothing really exceptional was to be seen except from the fact that the cores mostly didn't exceed 40-50% load - even in games. Having tried all kinds of drivers, reinstalling windows and what not I finally got around to exchange some parts with a friends PC and I also got my hands back on my old 660Ti. So after switching the cards back and forth I noticed that the Nvidia card did not cause any issues whatsoever while the 7990 caused issues even in my friends PC and my old rig which was sitting at my father's place last semester. Therefore it needs to be some issue related to the graphics card. No idea what but it needs to be something.

I also reinstalled BF4 yesterday after reinstalling windows and the whole PC would always freeze in the initial loading screen which mimics the issues I had in Garden Warfare. The issues were immediately gone with the 660Ti as well and surprisingly the performance with the 660Ti is very close to what I was getting with the 7990 which I believe also clearly signals that there was something severly wrong with this thing.

 

What I did then was trying to get stuff sorted out with the ASUS customer support. Horrible experience. They are not to reach via phone cause nobody is ever available and for email support u need to fill in all kinds of odd stuff which creates a stupid barrier. After a while I found a site which said that apparently ASUS doesn't handly graphics card warranty issues on their own but that one should contact the dealer. Therefore I contacted Amazon which has a very very very customer friendly support indeed and within a few hours they replied and told me to send the card in to them and they will refund it.

Probably gonna go with a 780 or 780Ti now when I got the money back... ^^

 

Thanks again for the really helpfull support guys really appreciate it!

[DarthSlater77]

Hey Peoples,

 

thanks for all your helpfull repliess!Especially the hints that it might be GPU related - it was indeed! I've been monitoring the GPU using GPU-Z earlier on already but nothing really exceptional was to be seen except from the fact that the cores mostly didn't exceed 40-50% load - even in games. Having tried all kinds of drivers, reinstalling windows and what not I finally got around to exchange some parts with a friends PC and I also got my hands back on my old 660Ti. So after switching the cards back and forth I noticed that the Nvidia card did not cause any issues whatsoever while the 7990 caused issues even in my friends PC and my old rig which was sitting at my father's place last semester. Therefore it needs to be some issue related to the graphics card. No idea what but it needs to be something.

I also reinstalled BF4 yesterday after reinstalling windows and the whole PC would always freeze in the initial loading screen which mimics the issues I had in Garden Warfare. The issues were immediately gone with the 660Ti as well and surprisingly the performance with the 660Ti is very close to what I was getting with the 7990 which I believe also clearly signals that there was something severly wrong with this thing.

 

What I did then was trying to get stuff sorted out with the ASUS customer support. Horrible experience. They are not to reach via phone cause nobody is ever available and for email support u need to fill in all kinds of odd stuff which creates a stupid barrier. After a while I found a site which said that apparently ASUS doesn't handly graphics card warranty issues on their own but that one should contact the dealer. Therefore I contacted Amazon which has a very very very customer friendly support indeed and within a few hours they replied and told me to send the card in to them and they will refund it.

Probably gonna go with a 780 or 780Ti now when I got the money back... ^^

 

Thanks again for the really helpfull support guys really appreciate it!

make sure to mark this last response with the problem solved or best solution thing so people know the problem is solved.