“All is Vain…”
Serious black/grey screen errors...
How did you assert that the system really is stable if you don’t wanna run some basic stability checks like memtest, prime95, or Heaven? “Take my word for it” isn’t a valid answer here given any electrical component can degrade over time. From what I remember, WoW, D3, and DotA2 don’t even come close to stressing a system like GW2 does.
He isn’t getting stop errors in the sense of his sytem turning blue with a vague code, most of the time the system doesn’t even generate a legitimate bugcheck or stop code. Just lines of zeros. It’s clearly a video issue.
Legitimate bugcheck? Lines of zeros? Do explain.
IMO, this sounds like a dying 660. Pull the card and try it in your own system. Given the frequency of the crashes, it shouldn’t take long to rule this out.
How did you assert that the system really is stable if you don’t wanna run some basic stability checks like memtest, prime95, or Heaven? “Take my word for it” isn’t a valid answer here given any electrical component can degrade over time. From what I remember, WoW, D3, and DotA2 don’t even come close to stressing a system like GW2 does.
He isn’t getting stop errors in the sense of his sytem turning blue with a vague code, most of the time the system doesn’t even generate a legitimate bugcheck or stop code. Just lines of zeros. It’s clearly a video issue.
Legitimate bugcheck? Lines of zeros? Do explain.
IMO, this sounds like a dying 660. Pull the card and try it in your own system. Given the frequency of the crashes, it shouldn’t take long to rule this out.
Wow, what a self serving donkey show of a reply. I am the boyfriend that HAD the problems she posted. The system was completely stable before, had no problems before GW2 and outside GW2, and the frequency of crashing was not related to my system being stressed. I had no degradation in my overall system stability – the crashes only intensified while playing GW2. Rolling back to 314 drivers helped a little. Rolling back to stock windows update drivers made it worse.
What I did was do a clean wipe of my drivers with Display Driver Uninstaller. I then installed the nvid 320.49 drivers, the last driver created with specific changes relating to the 660. Then used Evga Precision to underclock gpu by 100 mhz and memory by 10. Also went into nvid control panel, tweaked settings (single display optimization, favor performance in power management mode).
Since then, not one crash, and in general the whole game is more snappy and runs much more smoothly. Finally got to finish a dungeon instead of crashing 5-10 minutes in (please note i had no problems with pvp or world events before this, my crashes were concentrated to dungeons and when I’d walk around by myself in the world, once in a story quest, and once in Lions Arch). I also never have the random fps drops anymore that would occasionally happen (Not just in heavily populated areas but even more often in the world walking around by myself).
Clearly, there is some issue out there that far too many people here experience to just first write them off as having dying systems. To be honest, that attitude comes off as incredibly elitist and dismissive, and pretty ignorant because no matter what you may think, this game doesn’t require a nasa supercomputer to run. If it did, the crashes would be related to relative stress at the time of crash, not all over the place as people report.
In any case, I’d chalk this up to the architecture of the coding – there seems to be a weird disconnect in how the game handles distributing stress to the cpu and gpu, then the resulting back and forth feedback between the CPU and GPU. Much more likely than some oligophrenic theory like a massive wave of people’s hardware failing coincidentally upon installing this game.
How did you assert that the system really is stable if you don’t wanna run some basic stability checks like memtest, prime95, or Heaven? “Take my word for it” isn’t a valid answer here given any electrical component can degrade over time. From what I remember, WoW, D3, and DotA2 don’t even come close to stressing a system like GW2 does.
He isn’t getting stop errors in the sense of his sytem turning blue with a vague code, most of the time the system doesn’t even generate a legitimate bugcheck or stop code. Just lines of zeros. It’s clearly a video issue.
Legitimate bugcheck? Lines of zeros? Do explain.
IMO, this sounds like a dying 660. Pull the card and try it in your own system. Given the frequency of the crashes, it shouldn’t take long to rule this out.
The system doesn’t “Blue screen” in the traditional sense. Often when you look at event viewer it is just a generic “the computer unexpectedly restarted” error. There isn’t anything like 0×8 or 0×7f. It’s just very general.
I mean, you can play the whole “The game I run fine requires an NASA computer, and everyone who has a problem just has failing/bad hardware”, but from what I’ve gathered, this grey/black screen thing is… a big thing that has been going on since launch.
It seems like it is driver related, but at the same time updating the drivers like crazy didn’t help. Underclocking the card has seemed to help it, which is a “fix” (lol?) that I’ve seen proposed on various websites in regards to THIS GAME and THIS GAME alone when it comes to this issue.
This is why I don’t ask for computer help online. Nerdlingers can’t accept that people besides themselves know how to do basic computer upkeep and have stable systems. Arena-Net’s best advice for troubleshooting this: go into Nvidia control panel and mess with a setting.
Really? With an issue this widespread that has been occurring since launch I don’t think you can just write people off as morons who needs to buy new RAM and live on Memtest waiting for an error to pop up or switch their video cards everytime Nvidia can’t write a good driver or a developer conflicts with something somewhere.
We put these things on to our systems, and pay money, with good faith. When they start to have problems, don’t get smart with me like I’m a moron and act like I’m to blame because I don’t want to kitten through things I know aren’t a problem. I run my systems everyday: you do not.
“All is Vain…”
The system was completely stable before.
Then used Evga Precision to underclock gpu by 100 mhz and memory by 10.
Since then, not one crash, and in general the whole game is more snappy and runs much more smoothly. Finally got to finish a dungeon instead of crashing 5-10 minutes in (please note i had no problems with pvp or world events before this, my crashes were concentrated to dungeons and when I’d walk around by myself in the world, once in a story quest, and once in Lions Arch). I also never have the random fps drops anymore that would occasionally happen (Not just in heavily populated areas but even more often in the world walking around by myself).
Underclocking the card has seemed to help it, which is a “fix” (lol?) that I’ve seen proposed on various websites in regards to THIS GAME and THIS GAME alone when it comes to this issue.
So stable that underclocking made it better? You’ve just listed every situation during which this game would have the highest framerate and highest load on the GPU, then claimed that running your hardware below spec stopped the crashes.
Well that can’t be right since I’m supposed to be an elitist nerdling that doesn’t run my systems every day and hasn’t seen signs of failing hardware. No, you’re system is most definitely fine.
(Hint: the slowdowns were/are the GPU driver automatically underclocking the card to the next lowest perf level (likely ~400MHz) when it detects some instability)
Clearly, there is some issue out there that far too many people here experience to just first write them off as having dying systems. To be honest, that attitude comes off as incredibly elitist and dismissive, and pretty ignorant because no matter what you may think, this game doesn’t require a nasa supercomputer to run. If it did, the crashes would be related to relative stress at the time of crash, not all over the place as people report.
Because every grey and black screen issue are 100% related. Those grey screens that plagued lots of HD 6xxx owners are most definitely nVidia’s problem too. Great logic there buddy.
At least you’re correct about not requiring a NASA supercomputer; people with much, much older hardware than yours are able to play right now just fine.
TOften when you look at event viewer it is just a generic “the computer unexpectedly restarted” error. There isn’t anything like 0×8 or 0×7f. It’s just very general.
That message comes up every time Windows detects an unclean shutdown.
That message comes up every time Windows detects an unclean shutdown.
Correct, but depending on the kind of shutdown event viewer will at least have some codes to work with, a minidump will generate for WhoCrashed and whatnot.
None of this happens. It makes it about 1,000x more annoying to troubleshoot.
Even if your point is proven in a sense about the fact that underclocking has fixed the problem so it points to a hardware issue, that doesn’t mean that your initial advice of “sounds like the card is dying” was any good.
The card isn’t dying. RAM isn’t going bad. Drives aren’t corrupted. Processor isn’t sparking out.
Clearly it’s something about the way the hardware is interfacing with Guild Wars 2. It’s not “bad hardware”. So his GTX ti using it’s out of the box settings just poops on itself during Guild Wars 2… it’s not “bad hardware”, because as you’ve already stated people with lesser technology are playing just fine, myself included since I use a GTX 560, albeit a better CPU.
Why would a card at factory clocks, despite being “ti”, need to be underclocked in order to run Guild Wars 2 with stability? Good temps, and no other video errors of any kind in sight…
This is confirming that his card is bad? I don’t buy it. There is an error, maybe an error somewhere with the hardware and the game, but a BAD card? As in “replace it”? Nope.
“All is Vain…”
So stable that underclocking made it better? You’ve just listed every situation during which this game would have the highest framerate and highest load on the GPU, then claimed that running your hardware below spec stopped the crashes.
Well that can’t be right since I’m supposed to be an elitist nerdling that doesn’t run my systems every day and hasn’t seen signs of failing hardware. No, you’re system is most definitely fine.
(Hint: the slowdowns were/are the GPU driver automatically underclocking the card to the next lowest perf level (likely ~400MHz) when it detects some instability)
Really, every situation? Walking around a dead server in the map by myself, adjusting my inventory in a field with a rabbit to keep me company, puts more load on me than pvp, group events full to the brim, world events, and the odd champion train i once jumped on in queens? Can I have some of what you’re smoking?
Have you completely missed the fact that this game defers to the CPU over the GPU to run this game? Last chance to jump on the clue train buddy: having to underclock my card – which was running absolutely fine at its factory settings before encountering GW2- to fix a problem in a game that confesses it relies much more on CPU juice in the first place (As opposed to never even encountering a problem that needed to be solved by underclocking in every other game mentioned above and every other game I’ve played over the last 6 months that relies far more on the GPU) doesn’t point to failing hardware. It points to a problem with how the game utilizes my hardware AND the hardware of every other person who has been able to solve this problem by underclocking. I mean, really, you have to be missing a lobe to think it’s more likely that the fact that underclocking JUST IN GUILD WARS works for so many people here points to everyone having failing hardware, and not to the one variable that remains constant on everyone’s system – GW2.
The issue I have with people like you is that you come out and try to stroke your own ego by trying to stir up a fear party that someone’s hardware is failing out FIRST, before even trying to suggest any other far likelier options. No buddy, I’m not going to appease you by wasting 12 hours running a mem test when my system works fine in every other regard and with every other game and every other thing I do in it – as good as the first day I built it. The only reason I can see that your type of people makes this suggestion first and demands it to be the most likely solution is because you love to stroke your ego, insult the intelligence of others who know how their system runs, and knows when something in their system is going wrong, and because your type loves to come back at whatever sap does attempt to appease you with a full night of your diagnostics that result in a bill of clean health with “Sometimes mem test fails.”
You were wrong. Get over it.