Possible cause for crashes on GTX 970 after patch 1.04
Hello there,
Please bear with me since I'm going to be very descriptive
Since I started playing the Witcher 3, the game crashed only twice. After the game updated to v1.04, it crashed twice in less than 15 minutes.
So I started trying to dig what it was, and one of the changes that v1.04 has is that it remembers the option where you set the game to use windowed, borderless fullscreen or exclusive fullscreen. Previous versions of the game always reverted to borderless fullscreen for me, even though I selected exclusive fullscreen again. Since the game didn't remember the option, and since borderless fullscreen was essentialy working the same for me, I stopped trying to change this option, waiting for the patch where it would be corrected.
Since version 1.04 fixed this, I set the option to exclusive fullscreen and the game hung in less than five minutes... Ok, I told myself, this happened before, it's nothing much, it won't happen again so soon. But when I restarted the game, I played it for less than 10 minutes and it hung again.
That's when I got suspicious of something wrong with v1.04 specificaly. Since the only option I had fiddled with between versions was the display mode one, I tried reverting it back to borderless fullscreen, and then played the game for about an hour and stopped playing without any crashes at all.
Since I work and study, I didn't have the time to play for a long period again to test this properly. But it makes sense to me, the game crashed twice on me before the 1.04 patch remember? Maybe it was the times when I tried to set it to exclusive fullscreen. And this issue also happende to another high profile game before, which was the new Tomb Raider. At the time I had a GTX 670, but it was just like now with The Witcher. When the game was configured for exclusive fullscreen it would always hang in less than 10 minutes.
My specs
CPU: Intel Core i7 4790
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z97X-UD5H
GPU: Gigabyte GTX 970 G1 Gaming
RAM: G.Skill 16GB (4GBx4) DDR3-1866
PSU: Corsair AX760
OS:Windows 7 Ultimate x64 fully updated
Storage:
Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB (System Drive and the one where the game is installed)
2 x Seagate Barracuda 3TB drives (no RAID)
One DVD drive and one Blu-Ray drive
Latest nVidia driver 352.86 (CLEAN install using DDU)
No overclocks besides the GPU, which has a factory overclock and runs rock stable
I run the game on 1080p, ultra settings and HBAO+, but with Hairworks disabled and a 30fps cap. I do this because I prefer a stable framerate and it saves on GPU power too (the GPU would almost always be at 99% usage with an uncapped framerate, but at 30fps it tops at about 75% to 80% and the game never stutters or has any judder in motion)
Hope this can help, and thanks for having the patience to read all of it
Hello there,
Please bear with me since I'm going to be very descriptive
Since I started playing the Witcher 3, the game crashed only twice. After the game updated to v1.04, it crashed twice in less than 15 minutes.
So I started trying to dig what it was, and one of the changes that v1.04 has is that it remembers the option where you set the game to use windowed, borderless fullscreen or exclusive fullscreen. Previous versions of the game always reverted to borderless fullscreen for me, even though I selected exclusive fullscreen again. Since the game didn't remember the option, and since borderless fullscreen was essentialy working the same for me, I stopped trying to change this option, waiting for the patch where it would be corrected.
Since version 1.04 fixed this, I set the option to exclusive fullscreen and the game hung in less than five minutes... Ok, I told myself, this happened before, it's nothing much, it won't happen again so soon. But when I restarted the game, I played it for less than 10 minutes and it hung again.
That's when I got suspicious of something wrong with v1.04 specificaly. Since the only option I had fiddled with between versions was the display mode one, I tried reverting it back to borderless fullscreen, and then played the game for about an hour and stopped playing without any crashes at all.
Since I work and study, I didn't have the time to play for a long period again to test this properly. But it makes sense to me, the game crashed twice on me before the 1.04 patch remember? Maybe it was the times when I tried to set it to exclusive fullscreen. And this issue also happende to another high profile game before, which was the new Tomb Raider. At the time I had a GTX 670, but it was just like now with The Witcher. When the game was configured for exclusive fullscreen it would always hang in less than 10 minutes.
My specs
CPU: Intel Core i7 4790
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z97X-UD5H
GPU: Gigabyte GTX 970 G1 Gaming
RAM: G.Skill 16GB (4GBx4) DDR3-1866
PSU: Corsair AX760
OS:Windows 7 Ultimate x64 fully updated
Storage:
Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB (System Drive and the one where the game is installed)
2 x Seagate Barracuda 3TB drives (no RAID)
One DVD drive and one Blu-Ray drive
Latest nVidia driver 352.86 (CLEAN install using DDU)
No overclocks besides the GPU, which has a factory overclock and runs rock stable
I run the game on 1080p, ultra settings and HBAO+, but with Hairworks disabled and a 30fps cap. I do this because I prefer a stable framerate and it saves on GPU power too (the GPU would almost always be at 99% usage with an uncapped framerate, but at 30fps it tops at about 75% to 80% and the game never stutters or has any judder in motion)
Hope this can help, and thanks for having the patience to read all of it