Absolutely surreal crashes

[Octopuss]

I don't know what happened, but my stability testing results are only getting worse and worse. I thought I just had some minor problems, resulting in occasional crashes (and it looked like it!), but since yesterday, things have gone downhill. I didn't even change anything significant like graphic drivers.

I am using vurt's stress test, and even the naked game crashes of completely freezes now (not immediatelly of course). It started happening some time during yesterday, and I repeat, I didn't make any significant changes to the PC at all. Basically, I am still only messing around with the game, MO, and ENB.

 

After my previous thread got locked, I finally figured the approach of making sure STEP only setup was stable first was a good idea, so I started testing a bit differently.

I started from pure vanilla (with just the DDSOpted vanilla+DLC+hires textures) and made my way down.

I was getting some random CTDs I couldn't reliably reproduce, but they were there. Eventually I solved it by downloading the "optimal" version of SRO. I was still using the full 2k version at that point. It didn't make any sense, because my 4GB card was barely peaking at 2,5GB then, so I am really confused how could using lower res textures help.

So I moved down the list over to landscape mods, and that looked pretty stable. I think I repeatedly managed 10mins of vurting.

The crashes (and I think an occasional freeze) started with characters and creatures, and I believe that's where I couldn't make any progress anymore. I think it could be assumed stable, but I decided I didn't want to make any compromises. The two notes I made say I first got a CTD after 8,5min, and then after 10 (I guess right before I was about to stop the game). It lasted pretty long, but it was a crash nontheless.

At that point I started experimenting with ini settings and ENB a little, but didn't get anywhere. Eventually I started moving back, and that's probably when things started to go downhill. I just couldn't get a crash-free run. I even got crashes with just the fixes category active.

 

Right now the damn game crashes or completely freezes with just the hires optimized textures. After that I only have Live another life active (so I can test), and of course I run SKSE (I don't even use the alpha). Not even the unofficial patches (it crashed with them as well). I don't get it.

I tried several things:

- reinstalled drivers 3 times and tested again both with the stable and newest beta

- switched to pure vanilla inis (they were 99% vanilla already though)

- various combinations of ENB settings (like, ExpandSystemMemoryX64, manually setting VideoMemorySizeMb, ReservedMemorySizeMb)

- completely removed ENB (that was a bad idea, because when Skyrim freezes there's no way to close it, you can't even bring Task Manager up)

 

This is a proper WTF material right there.

Edited March 28, 2014 by Octopuss

[rootsrat]

Ok, as you apparently know better, I'll let you sort your problems yourself...

[z929669]

I do follow advices that make sense.

the rin may lie the issue

[MadWizard25]

Octopuss, if everything is as you say, then you are really only left with option to do a clean reinstall. All your info points to a potentially corrupt install, and steam file verification will not remove additional files or fix every issue. There really is nothing else to recommend with such bizarre CTD issues. If i were you at this point I would do the same.

 

There are so many details and files that get changed added removed during modding sometimes its hard to remember everything that is changed. Best to start with a clean slate at this point. Its recommend by others for a good reason 

[Spock]

It doesn't sound like a Skyrim issue, probably hardware or drivers. Some r9 290's are unreliable.

Even though I didn't try a clean install I'm having similar issues. It might be the install as well but I found out (through other applications) that my card has the infamous blackscreen bug. It's very prominent for me in 3DMark, I cannot even run through it once. You could also try lightcoin mining for 2 hours. Maybe try with a fresh windows and driver install to rule out driver issues.

Problem is these instabilities are kind of random and hard to pin down, for example heaven runs completely fine for me. Maybe you can find your problem.

[Kuldebar]

Octo: I will make the safe assumption that you are a Mod Organizer user.

 

Run the game from Steam Launcher, it should be a pristine as it was from the first day you installed the game: Only Bethesda provided files and DLC's.

 

(Now, you have SKSE/Sheson Related and ENB related files installed, for now, let's hope you haven't fouled up something in regards to those files and settings) For purposes of being methodical, you may need to pull all those as well, then carefully install them for specific testing.

 

What are your repeatable results running the game normally and under stress from the Steam Launcher?

[Octopuss]

Again that stress test will crash even a vanilla game! Hence you need to make several of them and then see at the total. 

1 out of 10 times CTD within a minute would still amount to a stable game for example. 

 

You will NEVER be able to get an entirely CTD free game.. since it is an open world game then this is just not a realistic expectation. You can only aim to make sure you do not get them so often that it ruins gameplay. 

 

And again that stress test is not a reliable indicator on its own. You need to hold it up against other types of tests as well. 

That's an interesting idea.

I completely reinstalled Windows (hey it only takes like an hour including installing all programs) just for the hell of it, and tried with pure vanilla game again - no mods, no optimized textures, not even cleaned ESMs. No SKSE or ENB(oost) either. Game started from the launcher.

run1: 10 mins without a crash

run2: CTD after 1 min

run3: CTD after 3,5 mins

run4: CTD after 9,5 mins

run5: CTD after 4 mins

 

I really am not sure what to make of that. Obviously, the game is not designed for such load put on the engine and scripts, but then again, this is just the vanilla stuff.

It could very well be the card. It's still relatively new stuff, and I believe there has been exactly one officially stable driver release since launch.

 

edit:

run6: CTD within 30s

run7: 10 mins without a crash

On the last run I looked at memory usage. The game process was using 1.4GB RAM, average VRAM usage was a little under 900MB with absolute maximum being somewhat under 1200MB.

Edited March 28, 2014 by Octopuss

[Octopuss]

It might just be some weird coincidence, but I feel like the crashes almost completely stopped after I physically removed "Skyrim - textures.bsa".

Out of last 7 test runs I only got one freeze (not even a CTD) after 6 minutes, and in the rest of the cases the game held stable for 10 minutes. And I am already past the characters and creatures group, which was previously always crashing on me.

[Noobsayer]

I admit I haven't read every single post, but is it possible you could have a corrupt mesh somewhere? Those will definitely give "surreal" crashes till you narrow it down.

[Octopuss]

I think I am pretty close to nailing it.

Fully modded game just held for 8 minutes, and then unfortunately froze. But at least it wasn't a CTD, and for decently modded game, I think 8 minutes is good anyway.

[TechAngel85]

You had to have done something wrong within your setup or your hardware/drivers are at fault. I just ran that test on a STEP:Extended setup for over 10 minutes without any issues besides some pausing during new cell loads. No crashes, no freezes.

[Octopuss]

The only thing I can think of that could possibly explain some instability is the card. I'll see if anything changes with next WHQL release (possibly in april).

But like I said in my previous post - it's 500% better now.

[Octopuss]

I ran two more tests. First time I crashed in a minute, and the next one the game was stable for 10 minutes. I decided not to stop there, though. I wanted to see how far could I get - but after 20 minutes in total I got bored and my eyes started to burn and water, so I closed the game. I am happy with that result, that's stable enough for me.

 

However, I have a question. The stuttering I get from loading tons of textures all the time at this speed is really annoying. I know it will not be noticeable when playing normally, but for testing, it really sucks. I was thinking, would packing loose textures into BSAs help that? The idea is that having to go through 10000+ files in one folder (say, the hires textures for example) really puts extreme load even on my really fast SSD, so what if the game was only loading a portion of a single file? BSA, being a native format to the game, might work better.

Any thoughs about that?

[TechAngel85]

I ran two more tests. First time I crashed in a minute, and the next one the game was stable for 10 minutes. I decided not to stop there, though. I wanted to see how far could I get - but after 20 minutes in total I got bored and my eyes started to burn and water, so I closed the game. I am happy with that result, that's stable enough for me.

 

However, I have a question. The stuttering I get from loading tons of textures all the time at this speed is really annoying. I know it will not be noticeable when playing normally, but for testing, it really sucks. I was thinking, would packing loose textures into BSAs help that? The idea is that having to go through 10000+ files in one folder (say, the hires textures for example) really puts extreme load even on my really fast SSD, so what if the game was only loading a portion of a single file? BSA, being a native format to the game, might work better.

Any thoughs about that?

I have no idea. There is no difference between them with installing mod with Mod Organizer, but I'm not sure when it comes to in-game. Yours was "stuttering". That's good. Mine was completely pausing for up to 3 seconds at times. That was entirely due to my slow HDD.

[Aiyen]

The amount of data you need to move about means that it will never be seamless at that speed. Nothing short then a specially engineered server setup system would be able to move that amount of data at that speed! 

The time it takes you to move from A to B at that game speed means you ask the game to load just about EVERY single texture in your mod folder more or less. 

You can take that number and then compare it to your rigs theoretical bandwidth... which you can look up in your technical documentation. Do note that practical bandwidth is always a bit lower due to heat, age, data package loss, etc. The theoretical bandwidth is always just the total amount possible without any other considerations. 

As I recall then most PC´s can only do a few GB´s a second and with high res textures you quickly get up to 5-10Gb of data. Also there are limits to how big your cache is. The first time you do a run will always be slower then the second one since most of it will be stored in memory if possible, which allows for faster retrivals. Hence you should never include the first run done in your testing.

[Octopuss]

I guess two SSDs in RAID0 would solve the "problem", but that would be really ridiculous thing to do

Instead of messing around with nonsenses I should go back to alpha testing Castle Volkihar for Hein84 Yes that's a spoiler for everyone who likes his textures.