WolfInAStraightJacket Posted December 21, 2020 Share Posted December 21, 2020 What happens: I'll be playing along when the graphics will freeze but you can still hear the sound. After about 10 seconds, it becomes evident that I can move around because I can hear footsteps when I hit the direction keys. I can also hear the ambient sound, like birds chirping. I might leave it for about 1 minute but the video doesn't recover. I can't find a pattern in terms of _when_ it occurs. It _feels_ like it happens within 20-30 minutes of play (but can happen immediately upon entering a world) In the logs, the following errors are apparent (please forgive me if these are as useful as "Unhandled Exception Encountered", I'm still learning ) `failed to create buffer` `failed to create staging 2d texture` When running at the lowest res (I think 640 x 480) in full screen, I am yet to have a crash * I am running with textures / graphics etc at the `lowest` preset * the freeze will happen with resolutions of 1920 x 1080 and a few below this. THe only resolution I haven't repro'd the problem with is on the lowest (I think 640 x 480) * have excluded the entire steam folder from my anti-virus * have tried EAC on / off * have tried windowed vs full screen * renderer: Direct X 11 vs GLCore * use native input module vs don't use * exclusive full screen mode vs not * gamesparks on vs off * played on remote servers or locally * tried forcing Direct X 10 using `-force-feature-level–10–0` in the Additional Parameters field, but the logs say `Version: Direct3D 11.0 [level 11.1]` . Not sure if I'm looking in the right spot. Please advise of the correct params if mine aren't correct. I don't think I have covered every permutation of the above variables. If you think there is a useful combo to try, please let me know. I'll try anything Through my experience, the only thing I can say is that the game is stable when running at the lowest res. Required info: Specs (sorry if I'm inarticulate, please let me know where you need more info) Windows 10 Pro 64-bit Intel Core i8 8550U @1.80 GHz 16GB RAM Graphics: Intel UHD Graphics 620 / 4GB ATI Radeon 530 (have graphics changed settings to force Radeon all the time) Is it just a matter of not having good enough specs to deserve a res better than 640 x 480? Possibly useful (of course, please ignore if irrelevant 😞 * I haven't entered any of the cities yet, still on the outskirts so activity is pretty low * Steam is installing into Program Files (x86), does that mean I am installing 32 bit Steam? Since my OS is 64 bit, should I be installing a different version of Steam? Here is a log from a most recent failure. Please advise if you want more https://pastebin.com/yK5TCPjD https://pastebin.com/waFjyFmS Thanks in advance. I have been reading some of the other posts and it is so nice to see such a supportive community. I hope to be a useful member if you'll have me! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox Posted December 21, 2020 Share Posted December 21, 2020 Your GPUs (both Intel and ATI graphics) are way below spec for this game. Your CPU and ram are fine though. Is the game installed on SSD or HDD? If it's on HDD, you might want to get it on SSD as it's one of the few games out there that don't run well on HDD. If you have a decent power supply with enough wattage for a GPU upgrade, then that would be my suggestion. There's likely still a bunch of really good used graphics cards out there waiting to be bought right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beelzybub Posted December 21, 2020 Share Posted December 21, 2020 4 hours ago, Fox said: If you have a decent power supply with enough wattage for a GPU upgrade, then that would be my suggestion. It's a laptop. 6 hours ago, WolfInAStraightJacket said: It _feels_ like it happens within 20-30 minutes of play It may be heat related. You can use an app like hwinfo to check temps and see if your cpu/gpu are throttling. I hear the blow through type laptop coolers work well. Like this one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SylenThunder Posted December 21, 2020 Share Posted December 21, 2020 7 hours ago, Fox said: Your GPUs (both Intel and ATI graphics) are way below spec for this game. Your CPU and ram are fine though. I'd be willing to bet that this is an HP or Dell Laptop, and there's a lot more going wrong behind the scenes as well. Such as completely underwhelming power supplies, and the fact that they're made for business use, and not gaming. It's most likely heat related as both the CPU and GPU would be throttled below min spec. 3 hours ago, Beelzybub said: I hear the blow through type laptop coolers work well. Like this one. If he's got one of the systems I think he does, he won't be able to use that. The full extent of his cooling is going to look something like this... For which there really isn't much you can do except not play demanding games on it. These types of laptops are made for Enterprise Lease programs where the end user isn't expected to be doing more than having a browser or two, an RDP session, and Excel/Outlook open. We lease these for help desk agents in droves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jugginator Posted December 21, 2020 Share Posted December 21, 2020 Welcome to the forums and of course we'd like to have ya To go off of what Bud and Sylen were saying with heat, don't forget that "max boost up to 4.0" has a strict "... if there's enough headroom in the temperature department". You'll likely not see sustained speeds much over 2.2 - 2.6 while gaming due to thermal throttling. You can try re-pasting thermal paste, but if that case is what Sylen posted you're not going to gain much, sadly. On another note, you can try to utilize dynamic resolution. Set it to scale, not auto, and lower it a bit. This will let you play on higher resolutions while reducing the texture resolution, keeping a crisp UI/text while drastically reducing the stress from crisp textures. Don't forget to update drivers, too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WolfInAStraightJacket Posted December 21, 2020 Author Share Posted December 21, 2020 Quote I'd be willing to bet that this is an HP or Dell Laptop You should have bet, Sylen; you would have won big! Yeah, it is a Dell Inspiron 5570. Not quite the case you posted above but probably not much better either. Quote Set it to scale, not auto, and lower it a bit. Ooh, thanks for the tip Jugginator. I'll try it out. I'm thankful I can play this great game at all. The low resolution doesn't really bother me so much when I'm in the thick of it. The annoyance mainly came up because I was playing on a modded server and the inventory was off the screen 😹 Thanks also to Fox and Beelzybub for chiming in too ❤️ Thanks for the warm welcome, everyone Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jugginator Posted December 22, 2020 Share Posted December 22, 2020 Hey graphics aren't everything about a game I'll add that playing on a server, and certainly if it's an 8k or bigger, will add more stress as well as mods (even server side, it's more stuff the client has to show/do), so bear that in mind as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WolfInAStraightJacket Posted December 22, 2020 Author Share Posted December 22, 2020 Quote Hey graphics aren't everything about a game I mean...except when it prevents you from seeing the part of your inventory where the boiled water is kept when you're dying of thirst, right? Thanks for the tip on the dynamic resolution. I set it to about 80% and was able to play for about 40m on a slightly higher res which was good. I ended up quitting because I need my beauty sleep. Which is a much better reason to quit than defeat I was keeping an eye on the temp of the GPU while playing though and it was hanging out at about 90 deg celcius which prob isn't sustainable. I'll keep y'all updated Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jugginator Posted December 22, 2020 Share Posted December 22, 2020 You're welcome. Yeah 90c is really really warm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SylenThunder Posted December 22, 2020 Share Posted December 22, 2020 3 minutes ago, Jugginator said: You're welcome. Yeah 90c is really really warm. At the same time though, it's pretty standard fare for a system like that. CPU and GPU are typically on the same cooling pipe, so they heat each other up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jugginator Posted December 22, 2020 Share Posted December 22, 2020 Which is fair. I'm more worried about 90c in a closed environment such as that case though. but I wasn't sure of the expected load temps Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SylenThunder Posted December 22, 2020 Share Posted December 22, 2020 18 minutes ago, Jugginator said: Which is fair. I'm more worried about 90c in a closed environment such as that case though. but I wasn't sure of the expected load temps The probable failure temp is 95. The system will basically underclock itself to keep CPU and GPU temps from exceeding 85/90 respectively, however performance in general is greatly degraded once the temps get above 75/80. As the systems get older, the thermal tape they use degrades, and becomes much less effective. I have a 4th-gen Intel system here that could perform pretty decently, but because the CPU heats up too much just opening word, it's almost completely unusable. (I have a few machines here I keep putting off re-applying thermal taste/tape to just because it's such a PITA taking the things apart.) It's just another one of those reasons to never use a laptop for gaming. Even gaming laptops suffer from this. I've got a Predator that's even got an extra cooling fan instead of the DvD drive, and if I don't have all the fans at max, that's instantly 20FPS lost. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jugginator Posted December 22, 2020 Share Posted December 22, 2020 1 minute ago, SylenThunder said: The probable failure temp is 95. The system will basically underclock itself to keep CPU and GPU temps from exceeding 85/90 respectively, however performance in general is greatly degraded once the temps get above 75/80. As the systems get older, the thermal tape they use degrades, and becomes much less effective. I have a 4th-gen Intel system here that could perform pretty decently, but because the CPU heats up too much just opening word, it's almost completely unusable. (I have a few machines here I keep putting off re-applying thermal taste/tape to just because it's such a PITA taking the things apart.) It's just another one of those reasons to never use a laptop for gaming. Even gaming laptops suffer from this. I've got a Predator that's even got an extra cooling fan instead of the DvD drive, and if I don't have all the fans at max, that's instantly 20FPS lost. Ahh that's fair, honestly I didn't know failure temps could go that high in laptop parts. I concur about that, most people I know that have/had a gaming laptop had it fail on them after 2 years. I took the case off of my HP laptop that's got a 3rd gen in it and yeah, I would just have to replace the entire heat pipe line so I opted for a cooling pad lol. Thankfully the case allows intake on the bottom and exhaust out the side, which again sucks because the heat coming out is near the hinges Then again, that laptop has retired to a random test server/file hosting lol. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WolfInAStraightJacket Posted January 3, 2021 Author Share Posted January 3, 2021 I was also interested in cooling pads. I bought this one https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/B06XDLYH8N I found that the difference was trivial, maybe even slightly worse. Is it possible that it is disrupting the optimal airflow by forcing more air in? I also tried testing with the laptop lid closed and slightly closed (to obstruct the rear exhausts less) re: cooling pads, Is this just a case of you get what you pay for? Could you recommend one for me or is it not worth considering given my specs? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox Posted January 3, 2021 Share Posted January 3, 2021 That style of cooling pad usually does nothing at all aside from cool the plastic casing of the laptop. None of the air gets forced into the laptop to cool the components inside. They're essentially a waste of money in my opinion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jugginator Posted January 3, 2021 Share Posted January 3, 2021 Cooling pads work great -- if and a big if -- the case allows the air to flow properly. If you have vents for intake on the bottom and exhaust out the sides or back (i.e. ment to draw fresh air out the bottom and out whereever). My laptop runs about 10 - 15c cooler; a blower wouldn't work on mine due to the placement of the HDMI/VGA port on mine, but a friend dropped about 10 - 20c range using a blower and it no longer overheats in gaming (another testament to gaming laptops are a bad way to go, brand new 1400$ overheating simulation box lol). But yeah, if there's nowhere for the air to go, you're not cooling much. Unless that case is really well at passive cooling and you blow cold air on the case to cool the entire thing, but unlikely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WolfInAStraightJacket Posted January 21, 2021 Author Share Posted January 21, 2021 Thanks for the feedback and your patience, folks ❤️ sorry if my questions are a bit of the "should I put lipstick on this pig?" variety Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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