How frequently do your games crash? (AMD vs. Nvidia GPUs)

[Satan_Prometheus]

Hi,

 

I'm considering options for a new gaming system and I'm wondering about AMD vs. Nvidia for the GPU. I have not used an AMD GPU since the 200 series days so I am really not familiar with how they perform today.

 

Primarily, I'm interested in getting something that does not crash frequently, as I hate hate HATE crashing in games. If a game crashes more than once or twice during my playthrough I'll probably just stop playing it entirely. There seems to be a lot of FUD out there regarding AMD GPUs and crashing in games, and I'm really not sure what to believe. For what it's worth, I have a decent number of crashes on my current Nvidia GPU, so I know that Nvidia isn't perfect either.

 

So in that spirit, I'm asking for people's experience with both AMD and Nvidia GPUs and how often your games crash. I'm especially interested in input from people who've been using their GPUs for at least 6 months so they have a lot of experience.

 

Here's what the poll options mean:

 

"Frequent crashing" = crashes regularly every 5 hours of gameplay or less

 

"Occasional crashing" = crashes once every 20 hours of gameplay or so

 

"Almost never crashes" = crashes less than once every 20 hours of gameplay

 

Thanks for your input. There's so much fanboying and rancor surrounding this topic that I just want some sorta-scientific data to base my purchase on.

[Levent]

I havent had a game crash due to drivers for a long time (I am talking years), though this is mostly due to I make sure everything is 99.9% stable.

[manikyath]

i dont think i've *ever* had a game crash due to a GPU / driver issue. (aside from some wacko stuff that needed adjustments on first installation because ancient games on modern hardware)

 

this isnt even an "AMD vs nvidia" problem.. it's something that shouldnt be a problem at all.

[Hinjima]

Had a game crash recently: Wolfenstein Youngblood crashes on first boss instantly when he used his Laser Beam, game runs in Vulkan only.. Turning off RayTracing fixed the issue ( Fix from reddit, many Nvidia GPU's crashed there ).  That's the only of few games I know that crashed due to Nvidia GPU over 15+ years I have used them. Rest of the crashes has been due to the game itself being bad, not the drivers or GPU.

[johnno23]

Similar story here. 

crashing whilst gaming is often game dependent.

Warframe hates XMP and under both intel and AMD the game crashes for me if XMP is enabled.

Gears of War 5 on occasion gets it panties in a twist due to Unreal Engine suddenly quitting.

Same thing happening right now with the early access to Smalland

Unity games at time crash 

but none of the games crashed due to the GPU. 

In my own experience some games simply perform badly or do not launch if i forget to update drivers but that is user error not hardware .

 

[podkall]

Understand that GPU isn't the only, or even common reason that games crash.

 

Game crash or instability can happen for different reasons,

 

such as: slow/old CPU, running out of RAM, etc.

 

and also software, not just hardware reasons, like Windows doing something, poor software optimisation or bad coding of a game/software, etc.

 

or combination of two, I know for a fact from experience, sometimes things might crash/lag/be slower if you try on a slow CPU doing too many things at once

[BiotechBen]

Almost all of the crashes I've experienced have been game engine related or API related (civ V had a dx11 bug for years that would cause random crashing and spit out API errors). 

Newer games are going to likely have more bugs as they are continuously being patched and features and gameplay added, but older games do as well.

• Republic commando crashes every time you touch Bumpmapping
• Civ city 4 deluxe will randomly crash when you get above 20k pop, or your economy crashes.
• FH4 crashes unexpectedly (haven't found a definitive cause yet)
• Age of empires 2 will freeze and crash at random (has been that way since it was on CD only. Better, but still an issue
• Battlefield 1 will occasionally crash if the engine gets overwhelmed with API physics calls.

[Satan_Prometheus]

11 minutes ago, podkall said:

Understand that GPU isn't the only, or even common reason that games crash.

 

Oh for sure, I get that!

 

The point of this poll isn't to blame all crashes on the GPU. It's to determine if there is a meaningful statistical difference in the frequency of crashes between Nvidia and AMD GPUs.

 

Like, if games are crashing for reasons that aren't the GPU, then those crashes should be reported in roughly equal numbers by both Nvidia and AMD users, right? So, presuming that enough people respond to the poll, then the poll should determine whether one vendor has proportionally more crashes than the other, simply by comparing the percentage of each response per vendor.

[podkall]

1 minute ago, Satan_Prometheus said:

Oh for sure, I get that!

 

The point of this poll isn't to blame all crashes on the GPU. It's to determine if there is a meaningful statistical difference in the frequency of crashes between Nvidia and AMD GPUs.

 

Like, if games are crashing for reasons that aren't the GPU, then those crashes should be reported in roughly equal numbers by both Nvidia and AMD users, right? So, presuming that enough people respond to the poll, then the poll should determine whether one vendor has proportionally more crashes than the other, simply by comparing the percentage of each response per vendor.

it only determines who has which card brand, if they even bothered to vote

 

so the only thing you get from this data, is the % of AMD to Nvidia ratio ownership of forum users who sellected something (I didn't for example)

[manikyath]

3 minutes ago, Satan_Prometheus said:

determine if there is a meaningful statistical difference in the frequency of crashes between Nvidia and AMD GPUs.

this would assume there is a statistically meaningful amount of driver/gpu related crashes...

[Satan_Prometheus]

2 minutes ago, manikyath said:

this would assume there is a statistically meaningful amount of driver/gpu related crashes...

If there's not a statistically meaningful amount of driver/GPU related crashes, the poll should reflect that (again, presuming a sufficient number of responses).

 

Because the FUD online would have you believe that AMD cards crash a lot more than Nvidia ones.

 

If there's not a statistically significant number of driver/GPU related crashes, then the poll should reflect that by having the ratio of replies within each vendor be about the same - and to be honest, that's the result I would like to see. Basically, I'm hoping to see empirically that the FUD about AMD cards is just meaningless BS.

[Radium_Angel]

Pointless trivia:

 

I switched from nVidia to a Radeon Pro card (I'm not much of a gamer) and after a year of driver issues (I could make the RadeonPro driver panel crash repeatedly merely by clicking on certain sections of the driver), I switched back to nvidia.

I never had a game crash under AMD RadeonPro drivers, but a buggy driver by itself was irritating.

[manikyath]

2 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Pointless trivia:

 

I switched from nVidia to a Radeon Pro card (I'm not much of a gamer) and after a year of driver issues (I could make the RadeonPro driver panel crash repeatedly merely by clicking on certain sections of the driver), I switched back to nvidia.

I never had a game crash under AMD RadeonPro drivers, but a buggy driver by itself was irritating.

wellyeah.. i've had plenty of run-ins with nvidia control panel.. but it's *never* been an issue in-game..

[Satan_Prometheus]

1 minute ago, manikyath said:

wellyeah.. i've had plenty of run-ins with nvidia control panel.. but it's *never* been an issue in-game..

Yeah it amazes me how laggy Nvidia control panel is

[randy123]

Almost every day on Garrys Mod. Other games? Rare but it happens.

[Radium_Angel]

25 minutes ago, manikyath said:

wellyeah.. i've had plenty of run-ins with nvidia control panel.. but it's *never* been an issue in-game..

I don't install the nvidia control panel for the same reason, it's buggy. 

[Zomeguy]

3 hours ago, manikyath said:

this would assume there is a statistically meaningful amount of driver/gpu related crashes...

There's also the problem of it may seem like it's the GPU but isn't. For me I was getting games crashed and getting messages that the display driver stopped and various other error messages relating it to the GPU being the problem. Eventually found it was never the GPU and it was bad RAM even though the error messages all threw back GPU driver problems.

[BuzzingBee]

AMD and Nvidia GPU user here and almost never crashes for no reason. When it does it's usually my fault for overclocking or undervolting too much.

[starsmine]

Due to Drivers on Both AMD and Nvidia? almost never. But I dont have the ability to vote for two options.

Game crashes are almost always on the game not the driver.

I mean I have had driver related crashes on both with newish hardware, but like its never intrusive. 

Of course, its uncommon for me to play games on day one. and even the rare times I do... guess what happens in a week. 

[manikyath]

17 hours ago, Zomeguy said:

Eventually found it was never the GPU and it was bad RAM even though the error messages all threw back GPU driver problems.

thats the problem with bad RAM... it will crash on literally everything except RAM errors.