Problem for gtx 970 users?

[ketxxx]

Thanks for the useful suggestions!

Now, my problem is, that while gaming (doesn't matter which in-game situation) it suddenly stops playing the background music, (every other sound keeps on playing) but nearly all textures on the map and inventory go black. And as soon as I try to interact with someone, the game freezes for a few seconds, with noises (of branches and stuff) still going on, until it starts running again like nothing ever happened.

Do you please have some sort of idea what the problem could be?

I'm running on:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
i5 3570 stock
ASUS GTX 970 OC Strix (with the stock "oc" it's being delivered)
16GB RAM
the PSU and everything works just fine, because I've only encountered this particular problem while playing Witcher. And the temperatures of all my PC parts are more than fine...
I have updated the BIOS, graphics, sound (onboard) and Microsoft Visual whatever driver.

You're response would be VERY appreciated!

That sounds like it could be 2 things, the first one being you are getting severe audio lag in which case I would suggest uninstalling your audio drivers, downloading the latest available (if you own a Xonar use uni xonar drivers not the shat asus ones), always remembering to get the drivers direct from the manufacturer, eg; if you have a asus mainboard with realtek audio go to the realtek website to get the latest HD audio drivers or alternatively visit guru3d their servers are often much faster for downloading. The second thing that comes to mind is HDD fragmentation, download and use diskeeper for its trial period its by far the best HDD defragging tool out there, the best free HDD defragging tool I know of is Defraggler.

Lastly, you may have a shit ton of unnecessary applications in the background running eating a lot of CPU cycles or a lot of malicious software but we will save tackling those for phase 3 if need be.

 

[Mushashi7]

That sounds like it could be 2 things, the first one being you are getting severe audio lag in which case I would suggest uninstalling your audio drivers, downloading the latest available (if you own a Xonar use uni xonar drivers not the shat asus ones), always remembering to get the drivers direct from the manufacturer, eg; if you have a asus mainboard with realtek audio go to the realtek website to get the latest HD audio drivers or alternatively visit guru3d their servers are often much faster for downloading. The second thing that comes to mind is HDD fragmentation, download and use diskeeper for its trial period its by far the best HDD defragging tool out there, the best free HDD defragging tool I know of is Defraggler. Lastly, you may have a shit ton of unnecessary applications in the background running eating a lot of CPU cycles or a lot of malicious software but we will save tackling those for phase 3 if need be.

I connection with Dragon Age Inquisition I also had problems with my sound. Someone suggested that I uninstalled my original soundcard driver (in my case Soundblaster Creative SB X-Fi) and only use the NVIDIA audio drivers. It worked for me. It seems there was a double processing effect causing a bottleneck.

 

[jimmyok]

Not overclocking anything, but nice assumption mate.

what is with the attitude? I have a 970 (gainward phantom) and see none of these problems. I have my cpu overclocked by 1.2Ghz and the GPU overclocked by 120Mhz and see very little issues ( I have a well ventilated case.)

So looks like its you buddy, use MSI afterburner to display you temps while playing. You need to keep CPU around 50 degrees and GPU around 70ish (i am told 80 is fine)

 

[ketxxx]

Generally speaking a CPU will live a long happy life if its kept around 70-80c, in the case of a GPU similar temps are perfectly fine too but heat generated by a GPU is much harder to control \ contain as are the VRM temps. The "habitable zone" if you will for a graphics card IMO is one where the GPU doesn't exceed about 70c and the VRMs don't exceed about 80c. Beyond that heat generated from the graphics card becomes difficult to effectively manage without it heating up everything else in the system even with very good airflow.

 

[jumboag99]

For those assuming and or pushing that those with issues have overheating problems, while I cannot speak for OPs machine, I can assure you that is not the case with mine for a couple of reasons.

1) I monitor my temps and they're fine.
2) I can crash the game at will at a specific point (boss fight in Wandering into the dark). Between launch time and crash, I can have the pc rebooting in about 60-90 seconds, nowhere near enough time for the cards temp to start to spike.

Clearly the issue is not just with the GTX970 but with a combination of it and other things, as many of you have indicated you have no issues, but if you search for issues in general with this game, the GTX970 is rather problematic, and while a somewhat popular card, its popularity and distribution plummeted after the whole Nvidia memory design debacle, so its probably less in use than you may think.

So along those lines, I'm running that card (EVGA SC version) no overclocking, Win 8.1. 32GB ram, SSD, EFI boot configuration. Intel branded motherboard (also not overclocked at all)

I'd be happy to take any legitimate advice from others on here on identifying the root cause of the issue. FWIW, I also have DA3 on the same machine and it's never had stability issues so I dont believe my card itself is bad, nor do I think its an issue with it being overtaxed in some way. I think there is a legitimate combination of items that triggers a code fault in the game that is catastrophic enough to cause the windows kernel to actually panic and reboot the machine.

I have not tried underclocking the card just yet, might give that a whirl this weekend. If that resolves it, that could indicate a code problem where the game is convincing the nvidia drivers to push the voltage way over spec or something like that, triggering the fault.

 

[GoldfishTaco]

Same card as OP.- EVGA GTX 970
Win7
i5 760 @ 2.8 GHz (below min specs for game)
16MB RAM

Had frequent crashing and bad frame rates in Novigrad.
Nothing as bad as what OP described, but not fun.
Googled solutions.
Set background characters to medium.
Set shadow quality to low.
Set everything else to ultra.
No Hair Works - of course.
Rarely crashes and getting 55 - 60 FPS.
Using latest NV drivers.

I place most of the blame on my CPU, but I'm not really having too many issues anymore.

HTH

 

[randyrhoads]

My 970 can easily do 60 fps at ultra on everything (high on distant objects to make sure it never goes below 60) at 1080p, no hairworks.

 

[CountDuckula]

Gigabyte 970 and i7 2600k with H60 water cooler, both factory clocked, 16GB RAM, game installed on a 4TB WD Black HDD. Running everything on ultra other than shadows and background characters on high, hairworks off.
Highs of around 90fps, average around 60-65, in some locations/times of day it can average mid 50s, occasional drops into high 40s. With a gsync monitor and vsync off in-game its really quite smooth the whole time.

I have had probably about 10 crashes to desktop in around 120-130 hrs of gameplay, hopefully 1.07 will help with those and improve performance a bit. The changelog is as impressively expansive as the game itself.

CTD is likely game code related, but system crashes or hard locks have to be driver or hardware/heat related. The game is user mode so should be unable to bring down the system by itself outside of pushing things hard or exposing bugs elsewhere.

Overall it's a truly wonderful, beautiful game and to me at least seems well optimised for PC. It has a few bugs for sure but what game of this scale doesn't, especially on PC? I'm not normally into RPGs and have played over 120 hrs so far, so they must be doing something right

 

[jumboag99]

I rolled all the way back to 353.06. Doing so got me through my problematic boss without crashing. I'll post an update in a few days if the overall stability has improved beyond that with the older Nvidia's.

 

[medu5a]

That sounds like it could be 2 things, the first one being you are getting severe audio lag in which case I would suggest uninstalling your audio drivers, downloading the latest available (if you own a Xonar use uni xonar drivers not the shat asus ones), always remembering to get the drivers direct from the manufacturer, eg; if you have a asus mainboard with realtek audio go to the realtek website to get the latest HD audio drivers or alternatively visit guru3d their servers are often much faster for downloading. The second thing that comes to mind is HDD fragmentation, download and use diskeeper for its trial period its by far the best HDD defragging tool out there, the best free HDD defragging tool I know of is Defraggler.

Lastly, you may have a shit ton of unnecessary applications in the background running eating a lot of CPU cycles or a lot of malicious software but we will save tackling those for phase 3 if need be.

Thx for your answer!

I downloaded the realtek sound driver from the original realtek site, and uninstalled ALL audio related drivers before rebooting and installing the "new" one. Additionally, as soon as I started the NVIDIA Experience application, the NVIDIA audio driver installed itself again. As is, I have now 3 audio drivers visible in the sound-related part of my 'Computer Management explorer':

High Definition Audio Device -> installed by Windows
NVIDIA Virtual Audio Device (Wave Extensible) (WDM) -> self explanatory
Realtek High Definition Audio -> obviously the one I specifically reinstalled

However, this hasn't fixed my mentioned 'freezing' by any length.
I have installed the game + steam + anything driver-related on one of my two SSD's. Correct me if I'm wrong, but SSD's don't need defrag... right?

My idea so far is, that some other software, either Windows or 3rd party, that's involved in processing the sounds inside the game, could be responsible for my problems. Note that I haven't EVER had this problem with any other game!

Does anyone know what other drivers or software (i.e. Microsoft Visual C++ 20?? Redistributable (x??), DirextX ??) the Witcher 3 uses/needs?

 

[jumboag99]

well, so much for the rolled back drivers being a permanent fix. While the game is a bit more stable and I got farther than I was, it still crashes to desktop somewhat regularly and I have experienced multiple system panic/reboot events. Card temps are never spiking overly high, so its not a overheating issue.

 

[sno0ks]

2x MSI 970s, experienced my first crash tonight. happened when initiating dialogue option for turning in the gryphon contract (Killed the Gryphon / No more captain nice guy? )

I don't know what my temps were but they seemed to be fine when I checked them after.

 

[kenji1245]

I can no longer play the game safely.

EVGA GTX 970 SC (Factory) 2.0 ACX
WIndows 7
Intel 2700k i7

I have scoured the internet far and wide, i have tried every possible fix, no matter what i do i keep coming back to the same problem, blue screened in kaer morhen, due to the same thing, the fog in the mountains. My card is not personally overclocked, my card is not overheating or faulty. I have rolled back from Nvidia driver 347.62 to the newest hotfixed version 353.49. Nothing has worked, it always leads back to the same, i have suffered more then 15 blue screens, 4 consecutive ones within an hour while trying to fix the problem. This has been talked about so many times all ready that i know me posting this is kinda pointless, but i am beyond frustrated as much as i love this game, i'm afraid i may just harm my computer in some way with all these blue screens. My hopes are that in me posting this, somehow CD gets even more feedback towards the problem in hopes of a future fix, it's all i can do at this point. It has to be something with the fog, i have played hundreds of hours in the entire map(s) without any problems, done every quest, other then in kaer morhen, and i have suffered no such major problems concerning crashes. This has been happening since day one of the game from patch 1.01 to now current 1.06, I had to rush through kaer morhen in the tutorial without looking out the window. I know CD is listening, please fix this or at least guide to some way we can, i wish to play again.

 

[dragonbird]

If you're getting blue screens then it's definitely not a problem with the game, it's an underlying problem with your system, and it's usually hardware-related. I suggest you investigate further to diagnose the cause of the problem, for example by investigating the error message that you get with the BSOD. Sites like tomshardware.com tend to be good at helping people if you're not sure how to go about it.

 

[kamealex]

Same problem here. I'll not extend myself because I've already done it in another post pointing to the foggy zones as triggers of black screen/hard resets.

Tried everything, nothing worked. Even tried with the lastest driver downloaded today. Nothing works and I'm feeling unatended for months.

 

[kenji1245]

Same problem here. I'll not extend myself because I've already done it in another post pointing to the foggy zones as triggers of black screen/hard resets.

Tried everything, nothing worked. Even tried with the lastest driver downloaded today. Nothing works and I'm feeling unatended for months.

Same here still waiting to play, hopefully this will get fixed before the october expansion.

 

[SilverFox07]

I have a Gigabyte 970, and I'm having no issues at all. I'm at 1080p, and I'm at a mix of high-ultra with hair on, and I'm running at 60 almost everywhere. Novigrad is probably where things dip, I get anywhere from 43-55 depending on the area. And I seem to have the hardest time at night in Novigrad, lol. To be honest, I've no idea how my PC is doing this, but I'm just damn thankful it is!
After the 1.08 patch, my average temps have come down by approx. 5-7 degs celcius.

I'm on my old 347.88 driver, and the ONLY time I started having issues was when I updated to anything newer. I've tried every newer one (except for the latest which I think was released on the 13th) and so far I haven't found a more stable or better performing one than my old one. The dedicated W3 driver is just as bad.

So for people having issues, if you haven't already tried, go back a few drivers, not just 1 or 2.

 

[alaskawolf]

I have dual Zotac 970 GTXs installed running under Win 10 and have never encountered those problems. To me, it sounds much more like a driver related issue than a game related issue. I suspect if you do a clean driver install your problems will go away. NVidia has had previous version compatibility problems forever, so they have built the Clean Install option into their installer now.

---------- Updated at 05:05 PM ----------

@kenji1245, BSOD under Win 7 is usually related to a hardware (generally HDD or memory) or OS-related issue. If the game is actually causing BSODs for you, then the majority of Win 7 users should be experiencing the exact same problem. This might help you isolate your problem a bit http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/resolving-stop-blue-screen-errors-in-windows-7, or if you can post some of your STOP messages we might be able to help you figure out what is going on. I'm 99.99% sure its not an issue inherent to the game though.

 

[fuzio]

OP, mayby you should check VRM temps? In gtx 970 this is only element that get really hot. Software for that hwinfo or Aida (nothing else display vrm temps as far i know).

 

[Tamorok]

Thought I'd chime in here, hoping I don't jinx myself.... but I feel I may have solved my problems and wanted to share. I'm running an EVGA 970 SC ACX 2.0. To be clear, I have had CTD's in the past (where it says display driver failed), but the worst ones are when my monitors would lose signal and I'd have to hard reboot. It only happened from time to time but I got to a point in the game where there was a ton of fog, and it was crashing every single time. Tried a ton of things - lowering settings, exit geforce experience, disable nvidia HD audio device, borderless vs fullscreen, vsync on/off, unlimited vs 60 fps cap... I'm sure I've missed a few.

What I finally decided to do was remove the driver completely using DDU, and then when reinstalling the newest driver I only chose the display driver itself and the physx system software, unchecked geforce experience, the 3d crap, and the hd audio. I also went into windows services and disabled the nvidia display driver service (this apparently disables nvidia control center - oh well).

After that... I got through the fog, and then played for another couple hours crash-free. Let's hope it continues, and I hope this solves some of your guys issues as well.

For game settings, I'm running everything on ultra, vsync off, framerate unlimited, and fullscreen.