Ghost Recon Hard Locks my PC

[Tombfoot]

Hi everyone,

EDIT: For clarity, I have been having this issue for a good 3-4 months.

This is my first post here and please bear with me because it's going to be a bit of a long and rambling one so I apologise in advance.

I really enjoy Ghost Recon Wildlands and I used to play hours of it. I had a Radeon 590 at the time I was playing lots of it and I recently upgraded to a Sapphire 5700 XT Pulse. It's a great card and it benchmarked super well for me in 3DMark and is the best graphics card I have ever owned. The card even came with an AMD promo to unlock the new Ghost Recon Breakpoint. Bonus!

However, as much as the 5700 XT kicks ass and I have next to no issues with it, I do have a few very specific issues that may or may not be related directly to the card. I have had this issue for months now, I have reached out to official support for both AMD and Ubisoft and they both had absolutely no answer for me.

Basically, ever since I upgraded to the 5700 XT, every time I try to launch either Ghost Recon Wildlands or Ghost Recon Breakpoint, as the game prepares to launch and shows the little splash screen logo for the game, the entire computer hard locks. Completely freezes, can't do anything. After about 30 seconds the computer realises it is locked and restarts itself. I have had this issue none stop. I even briefly took out the 5700 XT and put my old 590 in (before I sold it) and behold! The games worked fine as they had before.

What puzzles me the most is that I cannot find anyone having the same issue as me. Other 5700 XT owners seem to be able the Ghost Recon games fine, so what the hell gives?

I have tried hundreds of things. You name it, I have tried it.

 

I have tried...

Returning the graphics card and receiving a brand new 5700 XT, testing my memory with memtest, trying another power supply, doing a clean driver install with DDU, reinstalling the games, various compatability tweaks

...amongst many, many other things.

I am completely at my wits end. I have just uninstalled the games and someday I hope I am able to play them again.

Do you guys have any suggestions or anything I could try?
I'm completely lost on this one.

Cheers

[Likwid]

What powersupply do you have?

[Stu_Bear]

You got a second pc to test the 5700 on?  Or a buddy's pc you can try it on?  Is returning the gpu for a replacement out of the question?

[Radium_Angel]

12 minutes ago, Tombfoot said:

the entire computer hard locks

Hardware failure. Your video card is defective.

 

[Tombfoot]

9 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Hardware failure. Your video card is defective.

 

Yeah, I thought that too until I sent the 5700 XT back and got a brand new replacement. Not to mention the benchmarking perfectly and stress testing flawlessly, so that theory doesn't hold much water.

[Tombfoot]

14 minutes ago, Likwid said:

What powersupply do you have?

EVGA 1000W and also tested with Corsair 750W

[Juular]

13 minutes ago, Tombfoot said:

EVGA 1000W and also tested with Corsair 750W

Exact models ?

That doesn't look like PSU issue tho. I pretty sure it's drivers. Try to install some other version, maybe a month or two older.

[Tombfoot]

11 minutes ago, Juular said:

Exact models ?

That doesn't look like PSU issue tho. I pretty sure it's drivers. Try to install some other version, maybe a month or two older.

EVGA Supernova 1000 G+ and RM750 I believe.

Yeah, drivers has been my guess too but I brought it up with AMD and have been trying as the drivers have improved but still no joy. I will try some older drivers later on and report back.

[Likwid]

27 minutes ago, Tombfoot said:

EVGA 1000W and also tested with Corsair 750W

 

13 minutes ago, Juular said:

Exact models ?

That doesn't look like PSU issue tho. I pretty sure it's drivers. Try to install some other version, maybe a month or two older.

Probably drivers, Adrenaline 2020 make my games freeze in fullscreen mode, bt computer doesn;t lock up, can get out using windows key

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, Likwid said:

 

Probably drivers, Adrenaline 2020 make my games freeze in fullscreen mode, bt computer doesn;t lock up, can get out using windows key

^^^ @Den-Fi Had Adrenaline 2020 lock his 5700XT to a clean 555Mhz, the drivers seem to be rather buggy (similar issues when Adrenaline 2019 dropped IIRC). Probably best to rollback to 2019 and see if that works, and if so then stay there till a few iterations of the new drivers. They added a lot of new stuff and changed a bunch of old stuff around, there's bound to be issues. 

[Guest]

Just now, Zando Bob said:

^^^ @Den-Fi Had Adrenaline 2020 lock his 5700XT to a clean 555Mhz, the drivers seem to be rather buggy (similar issues when Adrenaline 2019 dropped IIRC). Probably best to rollback to 2019 and see if that works, and if so then stay there till a few iterations of the new drivers. They added a lot of new stuff and changed a bunch of old stuff around, there's bound to be issues. 

 

This was an absolute gift in disguise. @ 11FPS, games finally slow down enough for me to get a kill in single player mode.

[Tombfoot]

3 minutes ago, Den-Fi said:

 

This was an absolute gift in disguise. @ 11FPS, games finally slow down enough for me to get a kill in single player mode.

This issue has been going on for around 3-4 months now, well before the new drivers

[Likwid]

4 minutes ago, Tombfoot said:

This issue has been going on for around 3-4 months now, well before the new drivers

Okey.

No OC.

Set motherboard setting to default. Chek if it doesn't automatically apply oc.

Unplug everything that you don't need.

Chek temps

[Tombfoot]

2 minutes ago, Likwid said:

Okey.

No OC.

Set motherboard setting to default. Chek if it doesn't automatically apply oc.

Unplug everything that you don't need.

Chek temps

Yep, tried all that. No OC. Even tried different BIOS versions. Tried running memory without XMP profile enabled.
 

I just don't get it.

[Radium_Angel]

Just now, Tombfoot said:

Yep, tried all that. No OC. Even tried different BIOS versions. Tried running memory without XMP profile enabled.
 

I just don't get it.

A hard lock is a hardware failure. It's been a long time since a poorly written driver has downed a system. It might not be the video card, but you've got bad hardware somewhere.

[Tombfoot]

10 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

A hard lock is a hardware failure. It's been a long time since a poorly written driver has downed a system. It might not be the video card, but you've got bad hardware somewhere.

Yeah, thanks for your valuable insight

[PianoPlayer88Key]

4 minutes ago, Den-Fi said:

 

This was an absolute gift in disguise. @ 11FPS, games finally slow down enough for me to get a kill in single player mode.

I played a little Witcher 3 a few years ago on my Intel HD4600 at 1080p ultra, was getting about 3-4 fps or so.  Once I figured out how to control the game, it seemed easier to react to things, fight attackers, etc.  (I didn't get very far though as I was mostly just testing things - I got to the next town or maybe a little past that after the first griffin attacked the man's wagon & took his , but I have yet to actually fight a griffin.)

 

 

Now if only the same thing (game slowing down with low fps) would work in multiplayer...

 

 

One somewhat older game I play (Team Fortress Classic, on GoldSrc engine, released 1999) has some lag compensation for poor network connectivity.  For example, let's say I'm playing as a sniper on a server with a laggy connection, like 700-800 ms ping.

 

I see an enemy and draw a bead on them.

They behind a wall, but due to my lag I don't see it right away.

I still have them lined up in my sights, and I fire off my shot.

The game knows my ping is a little high, so it somehow checks to see if my system had registered a hit.  It sees that I did shoot at the proper time (according to what my PC saw), so it brings them back out from behind the wall, applies the shot, and if the shot was charged enough, they die.  (A scout can survive several uncharged shots, but a fully-charged headshot will kill a heavy.)

 

From what I can tell, though, if ping is > 1000 ms or so, it's too much for that lag compensation to handle.  (Also with multi-second lag, the game freezes, stutters, jumps from one thing to the next, etc, until the ping drops down to the several hundred range or so.)

It also, I think, has trouble if the ping is jumping all over the place, even if it's under 1000.  I find its harder to play with ping jumping anywhere from 100 to 900 several times a second, than if it's a consistent 650-700 or so.

[Likwid]

3 minutes ago, Tombfoot said:

Yeah, thanks for your valuable insight

Try to underclock CPU , probably motherboard or CPU, new GPU --> more fps --> more CPU usage

[Radium_Angel]

1 minute ago, Tombfoot said:

Yeah, thanks for your valuable insight

Snark aside, you've eliminated all other options. You've updated the BIOS. No change.

You've tried both with and without XMP. No change

You've done a fresh Windows install. No change.

 

It's a hardware failure somewhere. 

[Tombfoot]

4 minutes ago, Likwid said:

Try to underclock CPU , probably motherboard or CPU, new GPU --> more fps --> more CPU usage

Okie dokie, I'll give it a try

[Tombfoot]

15 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Snark aside, you've eliminated all other options. You've updated the BIOS. No change.

You've tried both with and without XMP. No change

You've done a fresh Windows install. No change.

 

It's a hardware failure somewhere. 

If that were the case why would it not rear it's head during the extensive stress testing I did in AIDA64 or the benchmarks in 3DMark? It's very weird that it's these two specific games that cause the problems and none of the other ones I play.

I don't understand why a hardware failure would be so picky

[Radium_Angel]

1 minute ago, Tombfoot said:

extensive stress testing I did in AIDA64 or the benchmarks in 3DMark?

If the failure is severe enough, then probably. But if it's a subtle one (think the FP bug in old celerons, that only manifested itself during certain computations) combined with, perhaps, a unique call to something in a video game, then it may not.

But long gone are the days were a corrupted driver/program would hard lock a system. I haven't seen software (and I do IT for a living) bring down a system in a hard way, since the Win2k days.

 

The other poster who mentioned undervolting your system (are you running a Ryzen? I didn't see you mention that specifically, but may have missed it) has solved some other poster's issues.

[Tombfoot]

2 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

If the failure is severe enough, then probably. But if it's a subtle one (think the FP bug in old celerons, that only manifested itself during certain computations) combined with, perhaps, a unique call to something in a video game, then it may not.

But long gone are the days were a corrupted driver/program would hard lock a system. I haven't seen software (and I do IT for a living) bring down a system in a hard way, since the Win2k days.

 

The other poster who mentioned undervolting your system (are you running a Ryzen? I didn't see you mention that specifically, but may have missed it) has solved some other poster's issues.

Yeah I'm on an aging Ryzen 7 1800x. Will definitely try adjusting the voltages and see if I get any joy from that

[Radium_Angel]

7 minutes ago, Tombfoot said:

Yeah I'm on an aging Ryzen 7 1800x. Will definitely try adjusting the voltages and see if I get any joy from that

This is the post that worked for another fellow:

 

What I did that has apparently fixed it was:

Down-clocked the CPU (via setting the ratio to 30) to run at 3.0 GHz, and define the VCORE max to 1.3V (rather than an AUTO setting).

This allowed the machine to be stable enough to make it into Windows.

After I got into Windows, downloaded the newest Chipset drivers from AMD, and updated all other Radeon software.

Also made sure I was on the AMD balanced power plan option.

Incrementally adjusted the CPU ratio (32, then 34, then finally 36) and the VCORE max (1.3V, 1.325V, and then 1.35V) until it was back to stock.

[Tombfoot]

18 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

This is the post that worked for another fellow:

 

What I did that has apparently fixed it was:

Down-clocked the CPU (via setting the ratio to 30) to run at 3.0 GHz, and define the VCORE max to 1.3V (rather than an AUTO setting).

This allowed the machine to be stable enough to make it into Windows.

After I got into Windows, downloaded the newest Chipset drivers from AMD, and updated all other Radeon software.

Also made sure I was on the AMD balanced power plan option.

Incrementally adjusted the CPU ratio (32, then 34, then finally 36) and the VCORE max (1.3V, 1.325V, and then 1.35V) until it was back to stock.

I tried at 1.3V max, got in to windows no problem but as ever Wildlands got to the splash screen and as it was attempting to launch the machine locked up once more.

Again, I can't stress enough that with my 590 it worked with all the other hardware exactly the same. Are 5700s just magnets for trouble? It seems like it at this point.
I just went into another thread with a fella having trouble with his 5700 XT (different model to mine; his has a blower cooler) and one of the people recommended running GPUPI which consistently kicks out errors due to miscalculations.

 

I am so fed up with this