Octopus Overlords

As many of you know, I bought a new PC a few months ago. It's top of the line (i7-9700K / RTX 2070 water block / 16GB DDR4 RAM) yet I am having problems running some of the older games I have in my Steam library, stuff that I bought but didn't have a good enough PC to play on.

I can't run Watch Dogs (1). It keeps crashing in the intro cutscene. Graphics corruption suggests this was a video card issue. I've tried all sorts of video settings. The only ones that seem to make the game last a little longer was turning the game down to 1280x720 and graphics setting to "low" preset. But I keep getting stuck in the intro sequences.

Sniper Elite V2 was crashing like crazy. It was working fine (I finished the main campaign), then one day, it wasn't. I suspected that it's one of the Microsoft Windows Updates, but there's no way to tell which ones really caused it. It doesn't even load the main menu. This makes it impossible to play the DLC missions as those don't have checkpoints. If you crashed in the middle, you lose all progress in the mission.

Sniper Elite 3 was also crashing until I also detuned it slightly to 1680x1050 (instead of 1080p) and windowed. Not sure why that'd made a difference. Also turned off any supersampling. It still crashes, but only occasionally.

I can't run Deus Ex Human Revolution Director's Cut until again, turned off DX11, lowered res to 1280x720, and graphics to low.

WTF is going on? I didn't have this much problem, I swear, until maybe 2-3 weeks ago when I got the darn MS update.

Did you try stripping the drivers entirely (safe mode, internet disconnected, Display Driver Uninstaller) and reinstalling?

Cant you step back your Windows update?

Daehawk wrote: ↑Wed Mar 20, 2019 7:49 pm Cant you step back your Windows update?

I thought I tried that. It could be the 1809 update they rolled out 11 days ago.

I guess I'll go to "Recovery" and roll back the entire update back to 1803.

I'd look at videocard temperatures. One thing that can happen when you use a top end computer to run older games is the top end computer can generate very high framerates. This can cause the videocard to generate lots of heat. I notice you're using a water block. If it's inadequate, or not set up properly, there's a chance it's not keeping up with demands.

The quick test is to cap framerates, to 60fps for instance. What you're trying to prevent is framerate from skyrocketing to 400+fps in the menus or other undemanding areas of the game.

Also, cut back on any overclocking. I had terrible problems with BF-V till I had my RAM run on basic speed. Worth a shot, also is there still something like a compatibility mode in Windows?

That's a frustrating issue. I sympathize. Is there any chance that the card is bad? I mean, if the card is giving you so much trouble, and it shouldn't in terms of playing older games that aren't even all that old, then it's possible there's something wrong with the card.

Also, I had been having issues with my new card and games crashing earlier this year. Almost everything I tried playing would crash about 10 min in. I had been away from running more demanding games for quite a few years and so I had fallen out of practice of closing my browser before playing. But one day out of frustration I decided to close my browser and try again, and lo and behold, my problems disappeared. I think this happens when games try to access memory a certain way already being accessed by other applications. So, basically, close down anything memory intensive. I think that's a good reminder to anyone.

Rumpy wrote: ↑Thu Mar 21, 2019 2:06 pm That's a frustrating issue. I sympathize. Is there any chance that the card is bad?

Nope. 3DMark runs perfectly, all the variations except the ray tracing one (that requires feature update 1809, which I just uninstalled)

Card was NOT overclocked. The card's fast enough that I didn't even bother tweaking it.

It ran Sniper Elite V2 fine for a week, then it went all kablooey.

There were reports of high failure rate for RTX 2080 and 2070 cards.

One thing you can try is to set the Power Management Mode to "Prefered Maximum Performance" (in Nvidia Control Panel -> 3D Settings -> Manage 3D settings -> Global Settings). Maybe that'll help.

I had experience with a cheap GTX 960 card that was probably misconfigured by the manufacturer that had graphic corruptions and total crashes without that setting. With that setting, my old GTX 960 card was very stable.

WTF, even 3DMark had stopped running. I am now officially pissed off at my PC.

I've restarted in safe mode, nuked the display driver with DDU, and reinstalled an OLDER version 417.19 (instead of 419.35, which is at least 2 releases newer). But 3DMark still doesn't work.

I am seriously thinking of reinstalling Win10. Yeah, i think I'll do just that. Doing the "reset" right now. Good thing this is a Friday and I can redownload **** tonight. *sigh*

Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Come to think of it, I can probably just get UPlay and Steam to rediscover the downloads, so I probably won't have to redownload EVERYTHING, and most of the installed apps, I kept the installers. *sigh* It's just a PITA to redo the system after only a 2 months...

I nuked my OS three times before I was finally able to determine that it was a faulty boot drive. It's not a fun process.

Before you nuke everything, test the boot drive and the memory.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Fri Mar 22, 2019 12:00 pm I nuked my OS three times before I was finally able to determine that it was a faulty boot drive. It's not a fun process.

Before you nuke everything, test the boot drive and the memory.

Can't, my brand new PC has brand new everything else, no spare parts around. *sigh*

Already did the Windows Memory Test (no problems) and CHKDSK (SSD drive, no problems)

Defrag any spinny drives and use Memtest86. No spare parts required.

Don't forget, you can use the Reliability Monitor in Windows 10 to help diagnose what may be causing your crashes and performance issues.

Kasey Chang wrote: ↑Fri Mar 22, 2019 11:58 am Come to think of it, I can probably just get UPlay and Steam to rediscover the downloads, so I probably won't have to redownload EVERYTHING, and most of the installed apps, I kept the installers. *sigh* It's just a PITA to redo the system after only a 2 months...

Do that, I had it done just a few days ago with Origin, Steam and Uplay. I keep games on a different drive so I don't even have to think about it.

I am starting to think my 2070 has failed. 3d mark won't start,even after resetting Win10 install and updated drivers. WTF indeed.

Kasey Chang wrote: ↑Fri Mar 22, 2019 6:42 pm I am starting to think my 2070 has failed. 3d mark won't start,even after resetting Win10 install and updated drivers. WTF indeed.

From what you have described, it certainly sounds very much like a hardware failure of some sort.

Here's hoping you aren't saddled with a shoddy customer service vendor (e.g. CyberPowerPC).

That would certainly suck, Kasey, especially since you hadn't had it for that long. It sounds like you may have been saddled with a bad batch? Maybe worth looking into an RMA. The stresses from the older games likely have brought the issues to the surface, though it might have just been a matter of time rather than the games themselves. Hope you get this fixed soon!

Trying one more time... Boot into safe mode, run DDU, reboot back to normal, reinstall older NVIDIA driver (with internet disconnected) 419.17 (newest is 419.35) reboot. See if this gets 3DMark working. If not, I al going to call iBuyPower for help.

Did not work. Furmark Stress test failed at about 1:15 to 1:30.

I have to disable all DX11 features to make games run. (I was playing Deus Ex HR with DX11 disabled, same with World in Conflict)

For grins, I'm downloading the Uniengine tests.

EDIT: Superposition crashed 1-5 seconds in depending on whether I run medium or extreme. This suggests some of the video card's onboard RAM has failed. I also noticed some visual artifacts.

EDIT: Tried to run Valley, DX9 benchmark works, but occasionally frame rate drops to single digits, while hits 130-200 fps in other sections, with visual artifacts. It's pretty conclusive it's the video card.

Unfortunately, iBuyPower doesn't operate on Weekends. M-F only. At least they work on California time.

Do you still have your old video card to swap it in and test again?

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Sat Mar 23, 2019 7:43 pm Do you still have your old video card to swap it in and test again?

Brand new system, came with everything. My old PC was a laptop.

I can see how that would complicate things. If you RMA it, they'd likely want the whole PC not just the card.

Cyberpower let me pull my bad drive and send it to them.

It's worth pointing out that 2D games are not affected. I am playing Steamworld Heist with zero problems. Which makes the diagnosis that much... painful.

Yeah, I was in a similar situation more than a year ago with my old card. My 3d games were crashing, and in subtle ways that weren't immediately evident. I never played the latest more demanding games because I knew my card even then just wasn't up to it in general, even if it had been perfectly fine. But even older or less demanding games gave me issues. My first clue that something was going on was with ATS. I'd been playing that without problems for months until I started experiencing crashes while letting it run on the map screen. Or I'd step away for a moment while I had it on my screen, return and find that my video feed had crashed to a black screen. I could still hear the game in the background. I had posted about it and someone had pointed out that the memory on the card could be going bad. I was facing the prospect of getting a new card. So, I thought maybe it'll be OK if I go older as it technically shouldn't put much stress on the card at this point, so I started playing the original SW Battlefront 2 from 2005(?). I probably couldn't get 15 min or more of playing before it would crash. While waiting for my new card, I relied heavily on getting older games on GOG. That was my best friend through all that.

Had the 3D part of my card die a year or two ago. 2D was fine. I posted about it here. Not sure when .

Got them on chat and they will issue me an RMA number within 48 hours. THEN I call them and setup my CC so they can ship me a replacement 2070 ASAP (I'm in California, can't take that long!) and I mail them the broken one.

Actually got the RMA number within 30 minutes instead of up to 2 days. However, I was too busy to call them. Will call them tomorrow morning to get the advance replacement card.

EDIT: Called, now they have to charge me and ship me the card. THEN I'll disassemble the PC and return them the card... May be a couple days.

Just received the replacement card. Will install it over the weekend.

Problem resolved. This also solved all the previous problems about games not working. Watch Dogs now runs like a champ. Having fun chasing down criminals in the city as a vigilante.

Yay! Glad it was resolved!

Now to pack and ship the card... AND confirm the refund had been issued.