Resolved PC crash to hard reset no bsod

[rektasaurus]

I’m having an issue described by others. My PC crashed and reset during playing Bannerlord only once or twice before the last patch. This patch the frequency went up dramatically.

Hitting ESC to skip TaleWorlds logo cutscene would reset my PC. I dropped quality settings and saving settings would reset my PC. Not skipping the cutscene gets me into the game. But loading screens (and gameplay in general) have been considerably slower and intermittently resets my PC.

It’s unplayable at this point and I’m about to under-clock everything and point my fan at my gpu to rule out all hardware before reinstalling windows. My PSU is Antec 1000W 3 years old I don’t overclock my gtx970 or i5 but have a fat heatsink on it anyways and my drivers are up-to-date. I reapplied my thermal paste. Bios reports 45-50C on my CPU. My system can handle an overclock fine and doesn’t have this issue with other games.

See this thread for others with similar problems some time ago. https://forums.taleworlds.com/index...-random-restarts-of-my-computer.405795/page-2

 

[elysebluemoon]

Forwarding this issue to the QA team for further investigation. Thanks for reporting.

 

[rektasaurus]

Forwarding this issue to the QA team for further investigation. Thanks for reporting.

So I’ve since ruled out my cpu or power supply. I’ve overclocked my i5 to almost 4ghz and it’s sitting at 55c. However my gtx 970 needs to be underclocked by about 500mhz in order to run the game without crashing. This is all on a clean install.

I got a hardware monitor and noticed that right at the logo cutscene my gpu utilization would spike and the clock would spool up. It usually hovers around 300 - 600mhz before spiking and once the clock reaches about 1400mhz it hard resets my pc. Same thing when loading the campaign map or a battle scene.

It’s stable with the gpu underclock with no crashes so far. Graphics settings doesn’t seem to make a difference. The frame limiter does seem to help. I had the game running for days at a time on the campaign screen actually and didn’t realize it was running with 200fps limit. I’ve since dropped that to 60fps. Still a huge issue though because I should be able to run it nonstop at max settings without wrecking my card.

I think I may have actually burned my card because my gpu is running a little hotter than normal. I’m going to open it up and report what I find. I also have logs I can share from the latest crash but I don’t think there is any good info in there.

 

[SgtSlick]

I have same issue. For me the game is much more unstable in 1.4.2. It has BSOD a couple of times as well as restarting my computer 3 or 4 times too (this hasn't happened before this patch). I have a GTX970 and i5 cpu too so maybe its something to do with that. Ill try lowering my game to 60fps limit (think i've been using 144) and see it that makes a difference.

 

[rektasaurus]

I have same issue. For me the game is much more unstable in 1.4.2. It has BSOD a couple of times as well as restarting my computer 3 or 4 times too (this hasn't happened before this patch). I have a GTX970 and i5 cpu too so maybe its something to do with that. Ill try lowering my game to 60fps limit (think i've been using 144) and see it that makes a difference.

I don’t know if lowering my frame limit actually does anything but underclocking my gpu definitely fixed the hard resets for me. I took my card apart and reapplied the thermal paste. I’m running 10c cooler now at 60c at 900mhz. I have the graphics set to high and sometimes get a lot of stutter. I’ve started raising the clock speed slowly back to normal to see at what speed exactly it starts failing and forcing a reset. I’m already getting draw errors on my screen though so I think it might be time for a new card and mobo for me

 

[SgtSlick]

Fair enough. No way known I can be bothered going to anywhere near that amount of trouble lol

 

[rektasaurus]

The issue started back up again with my video card underclocked and well within its temperature limits. Enabling vsync, using desktop resolution, and setting my frame limiter higher than 60 FPS destroys my frame rate. Using no vsync, 1080p, and 60 FPS runs much better but I get very slight screen tearing, I need vsync for smooth FPS but can’t use it or my game tanks. Either way I still have the reset issue.

It seems the game hangs right when I click a button like “done” or “continue” and then my pc just resets. Is there an issue with the gtx970? Is there a way to log at which command the game crashes and resets my pc?

 

[rektasaurus]

Forwarding this issue to the QA team for further investigation. Thanks for reporting.

I just had a crash to desktop and sent a bug report through the game. I found I had nvidia sound drivers on. I disabled them through windows and performance improved quite a lot since I’ve been having stuttering sound issues. I went into nvidias 3D settings and optimized a bit. It has made a huge impact. Now my move to position order preview actually shows the green flags with only a little bit of artifact. I really don’t think this is a hardware issue on my end. Can I please get some help with this heh sorry

 

[rektasaurus]

For posterity, turned out to be the psu. Shocking, I know. To anyone with a similar problem, replace the psu first. In fact buy one before you need one. All of the local stores in my area were sold out during all of this happening.

After a ton of denial I tried running stress tests with OCCT (great tool). My vram and everything else checked out great but whenever I put any load on my gpu core my pc would immediately reset. The 12v rail would dip under 11.8v and under light load voltages would fluctuate just a bit at about 0.01-0.02v, which is only the range which was being polled every 2 seconds so probably much, much more fluctuation was going on, so hard to spot. Things would run fine until the gpu demanded that extra juice for the shaders, my 12v would dip to 11.65 and my psu would tap out.

I actually hadn't noticed how much my system had deteriorated so it was hard for me to judge. I slapped in a working $50 650w and oh man the frames I didn't realize I was missing. It was like putting on a pair of glasses for the first time. If Bannerlord ran okay with a dying psu (and I hope it was on its way out anyways) and an underclocked gtx 970 now I'm thinking of seeing how far it could actually go with a decent oc...

All of the settings adjustments above that kept my pc from hard resetting are still super valid performance boosters. For anyone wondering if their 970 and i5 will cut it, campaign and scene is smooth as butter (comparatively) with very high maxed out settings motion blur and all. GPU usage is still at just about 100% but all seems okay and now I seem to be getting just the normal ctds everyone else is. Only with such high usage constantly I'm wondering how long this new one I have will last.

This can be marked solved. I'm open to share any details with anyone who might be curious or have questions in the future.