[solved] Some games crash after every 5-10 minutes

[tasnim_tamim]

I have problem on some game, currently on Forza Horizon 4, where the game just freezes indefinitely after 10 or so minutes. Sometime the game will close by itself, other times it's just stuck forever. Task Manager usually shows less than 2% CPU usage on the game and 2.5GB+ memory usage and no GPU Usage. 

My Windows is fairly fresh installation. I had similar problems on Windows 11, so I downgraded to Windows 10 LTSC 21H2 like a week ago. The game is up to date from steam, my drivers are also on latest possible version. Only apps running in background are Discord, Microsoft Edge, Steam and game itself. 

My doubt is either on my slow HDD or just measly 8GB RAM, but I am exactly not sure which is it. Both my HDD and RAM reaches max usage during FH4. RAM is usually 7.2GB/7.8GB used and HDD fluctuates between 40% to 100%. GPU usage is around 90% and CPU rarely exceeds 20% with FPS locked at 85.

Slowly upgrading my PC on limited budget so I'd like to pinpoint exactly which part I need to upgrade first to remedy this issue. 

 

Spec:

Ryzen 5 5600G

PNY GTX 1650 4GB GDDR6

RAM: 1x RAMSTA 8GB DDR4-2666MHz 

HDD: WDC WD5000LPCX-80VHAT1 500GB 5600RPM (scrapped from a dead laptop but otherwise very unused, 1939 hours)

Game setttings: FH4: High - 1600x900 85Hz

(I have Windows installed on separate 120GB SSD)

[SignatureSigner]

Try reinstalling drivers and look in event viewer to see if there are any clues there. 

 

I've had issues with games crashing and it was just down to the game needing an update. Does this happen in other games?

 

If you try lower graphics settings does it still occur?

[tasnim_tamim]

3 hours ago, SignatureSigner said:

Try reinstalling drivers and look in event viewer to see if there are any clues there. 

 

I've had issues with games crashing and it was just down to the game needing an update. Does this happen in other games?

 

If you try lower graphics settings does it still occur?

Alright, so I tried both driver version 527.56 and 528.02 that was released previous day after a clean installation, even threw AMD Auto-detect chipset installation to be sure.

Both High and Medium settings don't matter.... it will always crash after 20+ minute. It even crashes while I'm on menu and nothing graphically intense is happening. Thermal isn't issue. CPU max 56 degrees and GPU max 65 degrees. I couldn't take screenshot of HwINFO as moment I was about to take one we had power outage (however if needed I can provide that tomorrow). Only RAM had very high usage and so did the HDD where the game was stored. 

 

The game should be up to date from Steam. I haven't tested many other games on my new 5600G, but I used to have exact same behavior with playing Apex Legends when I had Ryzen 3 2200G + Same GTX 1650 GPU (where R3 was massive bottleneck for GPU). This problem with Apex was solved after upgrading CPU but now I am having same problem with FH4.

[LogicalDrm]

I would have pointed to drive even without it being old and slow. HDDs are more susceptible for issues with data integrity, and this seems like there's bad sectors on drive since OS reinstall hasn't fixed the issue.

 

SATA SSDs are cheap, since you have already done bigger upgrades, buying 500gb SSD (or bigger/newer) would overall be good upgrade. RAM usage is most likely normal.

[tasnim_tamim]

Alright the problem is solved. Turns out it was GPU Driver issue, especially with newer NVIDIA drivers that cause Forza Horizon 4 specially to crash. Very widespread issue that NVIDIA and Devs have acknowledged, however didn't resolve. 

 

GeForce GRD 527.37 Feedback Thread (Released 12/1/ | NVIDIA GeForce Forums 

NVIDIA Related Game Crashes :: Forza Horizon 4 General Discussions (Opinon, Feedback, Discussions) (steamcommunity.com)

 

Downgrading to version earlier than 522.25 solved it. No more crashes.

[Ripred]

13 minutes ago, tasnim_tamim said:

Alright the problem is solved. Turns out it was GPU Driver issue, especially with newer NVIDIA drivers that cause Forza Horizon 4 specially to crash. Very widespread issue that NVIDIA and Devs have acknowledged, however didn't resolve. 

 

GeForce GRD 527.37 Feedback Thread (Released 12/1/ | NVIDIA GeForce Forums 

NVIDIA Related Game Crashes :: Forza Horizon 4 General Discussions (Opinon, Feedback, Discussions) (steamcommunity.com)

 

Downgrading to version earlier than 522.25 solved it. No more crashes.

Oh good, at least the driver doesn't make the die explode