Guild Wars 2

I have been having a problem which encounters only when I’m playing GW2.
Which is that my computer suddenly blacks out and reboots.
This doesn’t happen while playing other games, BF3 for example (all settings on ultra).
This doesn’t happen while benchmarking my computer with HyperPI, Prime95, Furmark etc..

Only way I can “cure” this crashing is to set all graphic settings on LOW (best performance). That’s not really what I paid for.
If I boost some setting up to medium, my computer crashes.
When setting all graphics to high (best appearance) my computer is running this game with 30-60FPS, so it’s not about lack of performance.
But that fun doesn’t last for long, for about 0,5-30 seconds and crash happens.

I have been testing GPU drivers from 296.10 to latest beta (306.02), no difference.
Yes, my computer is overclocked atm. Though running factory clocks on everything did not change anything either.

Things I can ensure you which this crashing is not about:
-Overheating (all (4) cores around 50-55 celcius, MB on 38 celcius, GPU on 60-70 celcius)
-Power supply (Chieftec 750W)
-Broken component.

And some specs from my rig:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 2.66GHz (OC 3.4GHz)
GPU: Nvidia GTX460 1GB (OC 850MHz/1.062V on core, 2000MHz on memory)
MEM: Kingston 800MHz DDR2 6GB (OC 901MHz/1.9V)
MB: Asus P5Q
PS: Chieftec 750W
SSD/HDD: Corsair Force 3 90GB, 2x 500GB WD Green on RAID1.

I am glad if anyone actually read this topic from start to this point.
My thoughts of this are that Nvidia drivers are failing. Allthought they are working (almost) on everyone else.

Feel free to tell your opinions and discuss.

First I KNOW you feel it isn’t overheating, and while I agree the GPU temps should be fine I was getting a driver crash on my GTX 470 and the temps weren’t going much higher than ~74c sometimes they wouldn’t even be that high. My CPU wasn’t getting much over 58c and my MB was running around 28c to 32c.

With that said all I did to fix the crash was run EVGA Precision with a custom fan profile. Initially I set the fans manually to 70% speed and that stopped the crashing. If I ran precision but at a lower fan speed the driver would crash. I’ve now switched to a custom profile to auto control the speed with a more aggresive profile than the stock and again am not crashing.

note.5817:

Things I can ensure you which this crashing is not about:
-Overheating (all (4) cores around 50-55 celcius, MB on 38 celcius, GPU on 60-70 celcius)
-Power supply (Chieftec 750W)
-Broken component.

Can I ask how you are so certain it’s not one of these?

Drintar.1246:

With that said all I did to fix the crash was run EVGA Precision with a custom fan profile. Initially I set the fans manually to 70% speed and that stopped the crashing. If I ran precision but at a lower fan speed the driver would crash. I’ve now switched to a custom profile to auto control the speed with a more aggresive profile than the stock and again am not crashing.

I have set a manual fanprofile through MSI Afterburner.
GPU fan will hit 100% speed when gpu reaches temp of 80 celcius.
Note: This is not a driver crash. This is a crash that would happen if the GPU somehow reached 120 celcius.

Can I ask how you are so certain it’s not one of these?

Various of testing I’ve proceeded.
Temperatures are still far under the limits they would cause the crash.
Power supply tested with a PS tester. Volt lines are stable.
While playing GW2, watt consumption doesn’t even reach 500W. This has been tested with a wattmeter.
Components have been inspected with bare eye. No popped capacitors or any other broken components.

Thanks for your replies.

same here for 2 days. only runs well on low , on high fps starts at 60 , then drops to 15 and even 5 , sometimes crashes have i7-3700k(NOT overclocked), 2 X 670 in SLI at 1920 by 1080.

I’m pretty confident it’s a hardware issue, i’m looking towards the Chieftec PSU if i’m honest even after your testing, do you know the exact model?

Very little other it can be considering you seem to know what you’re doing.
Memtest the RAM and individually connect the hard-drives testing each time is another thing you could test. There is of course a slim chance that the graphics card has gone iffy but I would expect other symptoms.

Nine times out of ten the bsod and reset issue (probably won’t get to see the bsod) is memory or psu. Also you didn’t mention what sound card you are using, I would try disabling the sound entirely via system devices as most make terrible drivers notably creative and realtek.

majestic.8129:

I’m pretty confident it’s a hardware issue, i’m looking towards the Chieftec PSU if i’m honest even after your testing, do you know the exact model?

Very little other it can be considering you seem to know what you’re doing.
Memtest the RAM and individually connect the hard-drives testing each time is another thing you could test. There is of course a slim chance that the graphics card has gone iffy but I would expect other symptoms.

Nine times out of ten the bsod and reset issue (probably won’t get to see the bsod) is memory or psu. Also you didn’t mention what sound card you are using, I would try disabling the sound entirely via system devices as most make terrible drivers notably creative and realtek.

The model is APS-750C which is 80 PLUS certified PS if you really find it neccessary.

Memory tested with with latest version of Memtest86+, also later versions have been used. Tests done several times, no errors.

I don’t even think that you’re serious about running a harddrive test on a SSD.
The HDD’s don’t really have a part in this since nothing is loaded from them.
If they did contain errors, I think the computer would be crashing even if I didn’t touch GW2.
I have installed GW2 on different locations (SSD/HDD) and it still crashes.

The graphic card is not throttling, and doesn’t show any signs of errors whatsoever while testing with Furmark. I could also test it with Unigine Heaven.

I have several soundcards, including those you mentioned “terrible” (allthough I totally agree, at least on Creative) and an Asus.
Having all them disabled or enabled separately doesn’t show any change.

What you mentioned about the relation between crashing and PS is fairly true, but somehow I find it quite impossible that it would happen only when playing GW2.
Having the computer more stressed while benchmarking and not crashing strengthens my beliefs.

I’m happy to see you being interested in this.

I didn’t mean those soundcards are terrible hardware wise, as I stated it’s the drivers that are terrible. You are correct on the HDD it was a long shot due to you being pretty adamant on other components and I would expect other problems to occur as you say. To confirm though I didn’t mean run any tests on the SSD rather just individually connect the devices.

Efficiency certifications mean very little, the reason I asked for the model is because Chieftec like many others use different OEMs. Yours is a Sirtec which is the OEM I was wary of and further confirms my suspicions about this unit as they aren’t very good quality frankly.

With reference to the benchmark testing it doesn’t always work like that, only some programs will reproduce the instability. Recently I had a PSU fail and the ONLY program that brought it out was SWTOR. You name it I ran it, OCCT, Furmark, Prime, Linpack, Heaven.

I’m really satisfied to get replies like yours, because my first thoughts of this topic was that it would sink in the forums, like the Titanic.

I think I indicated myself wrong about the soundcards, because I was talking about the drivers aswell.

What I really think about the efficiency certifications on PS’s is that they are utter BS.
I really just mentioned it along the model without relying on it anyhow.

What you stated about Chieftec there was completely new to me.
I have always been on the thought that Chieftec is pretty awesome brand, because I have never met a broken one during my 4-5 years of IT knowledge.

I will be getting new components in the up coming days, where the only parts that won’t be replaced are PSU, GPU and HDD’s.
So if the crashing continues, I will try replacing the PSU.

I thank you for your time and for your knowledge.

Ps. I might try testing with SWTOR, because that’s something I haven’t tried yet. I will post the results.

The best option would be to borrow a PSU to test if that’s possible at all but I understand this isn’t the easiest to just quickly swap out, in-fact one of the most irritating!

Just to clarify on Chieftec, like many other resellers the different units can vary drastically due to coming from different OEMs – I have heard the CWT based units they sell are very good.

Personally I would only trust something for my system made by Seasonic, CWT, Delta or Enermax due to having many problems in the past it’s just not worth the hassle. Always check who actually makes the unit.

Hope you get this sorted!

Here is something to check:

Power Options – High Performance [select this if it isn’t already] – Advanced Power Settings – PCI Express – Link State Power Management

LSPM should always be OFF, as this can cause major issues in game and apps that rely on the video card. No reason at all for this to be on in a desktop PC, but I have seen it enabled by default on many systems. Probably have to restart the PC if you change this setting, to have any effect.

Also, make sure you don’t have your system set to auto-reboot on BSOD. Check:

Right click My Computer – Properties – Advanced System Settings – Advanced – Startup and Recovery – uncheck Automatically Restart.

Now if you’re actually getting a BSOD it should display on-screen. If you get a BSOD, write down the error and report back. If you are getting a black screen and the PC freezes (may have looping sound/loud noise, and have to hit reset button on case), it’s most likely a different issue.

What I think here is that in this topic, it is quite clearly stated that my computer is not getting BSOD’s.
In fact, if I ever had a bluescreen, this topic would not exist, because the BSOD would actually tell me what’s wrong and/or what might be broken.
Here, when I’m only getting hard crash (equal with powerloss + reboot) without any errorlogs created, it’s much more complicated.
I can read BSOD’s somewhat well and I have wide knowledge of Windows based operating systems.

What I still believe to be the reason is that the GPU drivers are somewhat buggy and might get fixed within next WHQL driver release.

There were many good points and facts in your replies Idolicious, so I thank you for it.

note.5817:

What I still believe to be the reason is that the GPU drivers are somewhat buggy and might get fixed within next WHQL driver release.

I agree with you on that. Both ATI and NV seem to be definitely having issues with this game (could of course be due to buggy GW2 programming).

If you computer completely shuts down/black out & reboots my very first thought would be power supply. No doubt about it. Until you’ve tried another power supply stop speculating.

Especially after reading this about the 750C:
The efficiency is about 86% at the maximum, but quickly falls below 80% at low loads.

Which means it’s more like 500-600w. If it’s old it could very well be overheating inside or components in psu’s can easily degrade reducing the quality even further.