Instability in games

gordo865 · May 28, 2020

Built my first PC last year and since the beginning it seems I've always had some issues with instability in games. I can't think of a single game I've played that has not crashed at least once. Some crash frequently, some don't. But they all do at some point or another. Games include Rise of the Tomb Raider, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Metro: Exodus, Modern Warfare (by far the worst offender. Sometimes 3 or 4 crashes in one night of playing), RE 2/3/7, RDR2, PUBG, and The Witcher 3. I haven't put much play time into it, but I just bought AC Odyssey the other day and had it crash within the first 10 seconds of trying to run the benchmark. Restarted the computer and it ran fine after that, but it's a small sample size. Had a lot of crashes running the 3D Mark Timespy benchmark. I've even experienced crashes in simpler games like South Park Fractured Butt Whole and Civ VI.

In addition to crashing I've noticed very strange behaviors in games. In RE 3, RDR2 and the little bit of AC Odyssey that I've played; I've noticed that animations in in-engine cutscenes look very jittery. The frame rate isn't dropping or anything like that and I only really seem to notice it in character animations. Shadows will often behave strangely in games as well. They often will have flickering type effects that I've noticed in games like RDR2, AC Odyssey, Modern warfare, and the tomb raider games where the console counter parts do not have this effect.

Are these types of things the norm? I've been trying to adapt to pc gaming this last year and it just seems like a never ending stream of frustration.

CPU: R7 1700

Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black edition

GPU: EVGA 2070 Super XC Ultra (Upgraded to this from an ROG Strix RX 580 back in September)

RAM: 16GB Team T-Force Vulcan DDR4-3000

PSU: Seasonic FOCUS Plus 750W 80+ Gold

MOBO: MSI B450 Tomahawk

Storage: Sabrent Rocket 1TB M.2, a 500GB Samsung SSD and a 1TB HDD. Can't remember exactly what kind.

Worth mentioning, that I've tried various overclocks on CPU and GPU. I just reverted everything back to stock clocks on CPU and GPU and stopped messing with it. Didn't seem to help any though. I did a fresh wipe and install of Windows when I bought my M.2 in January. I've done DDU numerous times on my GPU drivers. Temps are all good. The GPU can get a little hot in COD sometimes, but I've never seen it go beyond 78°.

KarathKasun · May 28, 2020

1st gen Ryzen and memory speeds above ~2800 can cause all kinds of problems. I hear people say 3200 is fine... it is not. Two out of 3 1st gen Ryzen rigs I have had to work on needed memory at 2933 or lower, otherwise they would exhibit VERY strange behavior occasionally.

gordo865 · May 28, 2020

4 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

1st gen Ryzen and memory speeds above ~2800 can cause all kinds of problems. I hear people say 3200 is fine... it is not. Two out of 3 1st gen Ryzen rigs I have had to work on needed memory at 2933 or lower, otherwise they would exhibit VERY strange behavior occasionally.

Thank you for the reply. I hadn't heard that before. I always hear faster memory is better with Ryzen. I'll definitely try lowering my memory clock speed when I get home tonight.

KarathKasun · May 28, 2020

3 minutes ago, gordo865 said:

Thank you for the reply. I hadn't heard that before. I always hear faster memory is better with Ryzen. I'll definitely try lowering my memory clock speed when I get home tonight.

Faster IS better, but on 1st gen chips there were issues with the internal bus not being able to maintain the higher clocks.

In theory you could jack up the CPU_SoC voltage to ~1.2v and make it work, but that still isnt a 100% fix. Lowering clocks just a hair under 3000 is pretty much a sure fix.