Are crashes while gaming the sign of a hardware fault?

[TedG]

Hi,
I posted recently asking why a game I should be able to play on my PC was causing it to crash.

The posters left me some tests to run but I am also wondering what does it mean if a game crashes the whole PC?

I was under the impression that if you try to play a game that you almost or just barely meet the minimum requirements for or your processor is missing something like the avx instruction set or if your GPU or processor isn't quite powerful enough that the game should run but just badly rather than crash the whole system? Is this the case?

I ask for my future general knowledge, I will still be trying out the stress tests to see what is going on.

 

Thank you in advance for any help.

[Curioisman]

I'd close all backgrounds programs, possibly update your graphics drivers, try to reinstall the game, and even run a anti-virus scan. Also I would check temps whit something like HWINFO as that could be a problem too

[aDoomGuy]

If you fail to meet the system requirements the game may perform badly and possibly even crash due to lack of resources. If you meet the requirements but still crash it can be due to a hardware problem or even software issues. If XMP is set but unstable that can cause crashes, if Windows have bad system files that can also cause crashes and a bad CPU/GPU overclock can definitly cause crashes and even driver problems or missing updates.

 

So what to do when crashes occur?

 

Turn off any overclocking (including XMP) and see if that helps.

 

You can check your Windows installation by doing so:

Open CMD as admin (search start menu for cmd and choose run as administrator) then enter command

chkdsk C: /r /f

Reboot your PC and let checkdisk scan your drive for errors. When back into Windows open CMD like you did earlier and run this command. EDIT: May take some time!

sfc /scannow

Let it scan your system files while you are online, it will download new ones if needed.

If it fixed things you should reboot your system. After reboot you can open CMD again the same way and do in succession.

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /ScanHealth

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /RestoreHealth

Again if it said it fixed anything reboot.

 

Now if still have problems, target your video card drivers. Download DDU and your latest graphics driver, boot into safe mode and remove the driver with DDU and install the latest fresh when back into Windows.

[Mark Kaine]

It can be either or, Usually no way to tell without testing and checking errors etc.

 

Usually its software,  but can be hardware,  you won't see the difference easily in most cases.

 

Tldr: you need to do a lot of research and gather knowledge how to test / change parts etc.

[TedG]

4 minutes ago, aDoomGuy said:

If you fail to meet the system requirements the game may perform badly and possibly even crash due to lack of resources. If you meet the requirements but still crash it can be due to a hardware problem or even software issues. If XMP is set but unstable that can cause crashes, if Windows have bad system files that can also cause crashes and a bad CPU/GPU overclock can definitly cause crashes and even driver problems or missing updates.

 

So what to do when crashes occur?

 

Turn off any overclocking (including XMP) and see if that helps.

 

You can check your Windows installation by doing so:

Open CMD as admin (search start menu for cmd and choose run as administrator) then enter command

chkdsk C: /r /f

Reboot your PC and let checkdisk scan your drive for errors. When back into Windows open CMD like you did earlier and run this command. EDIT: May take some time!

sfc /scannow

Let it scan your system files while you are online, it will download new ones if needed.

If it fixed things you should reboot your system. After reboot you can open CMD again the same way and do in succession.

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /ScanHealth

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /RestoreHealth

Again if it said it fixed anything reboot.

 

Now if still have problems, target your video card drivers. Download DDU and your latest graphics driver, boot into safe mode and remove the driver with DDU and install the latest fresh when back into Windows.

Thanks for this, I don't have any overclocking running but I will check out the other things you recommend.

[TedG]

Also someone posted this in response to my other thread:

 

"

After checking the spec for both processors it would seem that the xeon doesn't have the avx instruction set, this game might requires these instructions to run.

 

When comparing to minimum requirements you cpu matches the first gen core i family. You will be able to play anything requiring a i3 540. you my get lucky and be able to play some more demanding games due to the extra cores but it will be a gamble."

Does anyone know how accurate this is? The processor I am using is a xeon x5675 https://www.techpowerup.com/cpu-specs/xeon-x5675.c949

How important is the avx instruction set for gaming?

Thanks for your help.