Randomly crashing game.. GTX 970

[Raist]

I had this problem when Hunts started happening and every 5th time i teleported the game would crash.
The only fix was turning off the option to Stream/cashe of low resolution objects or something like that and i will only crash every 15 times now.

The game really has some hardcore memoryleak stuffs.

That's likely more an issue with the driver or the card's firmware then the game. Might not even be the core graphics drivers for that matter--it could be the HDMI portion, or the control panel (we've seen the NVCP get stuck with an infinite loop issue as well as the ATI Overdrive cause weird stutters and such in the past). Sure, their could have been some changes in the texture maps and such that have increased the memory usage to the point that garbage cleanup isn't able to stay ahead of it, but I don't recall reading about such a major texture update recently. If it was the game causing the memory leaks, we'd see a lot more of the issue across multiple brands/cards... which we have not. The game still runs just as well as it ever did on my Sapphire Vapor-X 1GB ATI4870 on the 4GB C2D Win8 PC (formerly an XP box, which was flawless as well), and the same for my 8GB i7 Win8 laptop with an nVidia 3GB MTX 670MX. So it is more likely an issue with the software driving the hardware--ie. drivers/firmware issues.

[BobFromMarketing]

That's likely more an issue with the driver or the card's firmware then the game. Might not even be the core graphics drivers for that matter--it could be the HDMI portion, or the control panel (we've seen the NVCP get stuck with an infinite loop issue as well as the ATI Overdrive cause weird stutters and such in the past). Sure, their could have been some changes in the texture maps and such that have increased the memory usage to the point that garbage cleanup isn't able to stay ahead of it, but I don't recall reading about such a major texture update recently. If it was the game causing the memory leaks, we'd see a lot more of the issue across multiple brands/cards... which we have not. The game still runs just as well as it ever did on my Sapphire Vapor-X 1GB ATI4870 on the 4GB C2D Win8 PC (formerly an XP box, which was flawless as well), and the same for my 8GB i7 Win8 laptop with an nVidia 3GB MTX 670MX. So it is more likely an issue with the software driving the hardware--ie. drivers/firmware issues.

Problem with that is I ran the game without issue six months ago yet I have rolled back my drivers over a year with no success in eliminating the crashing, only reducing them

[Raist]

Still not accounting for the host of other cards not experiencing the problem.

It could be something with the DirectX API that has changed somehow via Windows Update or something along those lines linked to the game.. who knows for certain. But the simple fact reains that it seems to be limited mostly to the newer generation of cards.

Come to think of it... it could be something linked to changes in the DirectX API, as everyone is moving further and further away from DX9 support and older with each new generation--be that the card vendors or Microsoft (it's all emulated at the Windows level now--XP was the last OS with native hardware DX9 support).

There were some threads about this a while back, don't think they ever reached a conclusion on just what was the culprit. Vendors had gotten involved at their forums I think as well... some beta's were released at one point if I remember right, but don't recall if there was any improvement. The only thing that sticks in my mind was the Cached LOD stream settings that mitigated some of it in some cases. Trimming shadow settings may help too, considering everyone seemed to be looking at it being a memory leak/flood of sorts with the card's drivers.

[BobFromMarketing]

Patch fixed my issue. I am back to running half a dozen Eve Online clients and FFXIV simultaneously without issue.

[Raist]

well.. something is off in your system. Bob is working, and he is using the same family of drivers (although, a slightly newer release from 10/16 vs 9/19, and there is a slightly newer one out now from 10/22). So, there could be something off in the driver...or it could be something else in your environment. You said you formatted and reloaded Windows... did you run the offline DX9 Runtimes to correct the common issues that crop up from missing/unregistered DLL's that have caused issues with older games since Vista was released? (note you may need to enable .Net3.5 to install the DX9 files) How about MSIE/WMP support libraries--even if you don't use them, the game DOES and they may need updating.

Something is off in your Windows environment--be that it's API's, drivers, third party processes in the background, or flakey hardware. If it were just the game, it would be causing problems across the board... which it clearly is not.

Without being able to say for certain that your system is exactly as it was prior to patching, you have to keep yourself open to the possibility that something may be awry with your system and not just something that suddenly changed in the game's code with the new patch. Although, there was a note with todays patch that there was some specific combination that was causing crashes that they addressed--but I think that was at the server level.

Another thought jsut hit me... what security are you using? It is possible that the executable is getting trapped because a change has been detected. Firewalls are notorious for this problem--have you checked/updated your white-listing to make sure that isn't an issue?

And comparing it to all those other games that use different methods for handling A/V and thus placing different demands on the system aren't necessarily an indication of a problem suddenly cropping up in the game's code. For instance, if you have a marginal hardware environment, it may not show up with games that are not stressing everything at once like this game. It may be an issue with a driver that only crops up with the specific way XIV is handling overlay or mouse cursor--suddenly you have an access error at a specific memory address because a background driver for another device/service got updated and it is causing a problem.

There is just so much that could be causing the problem... need to be open to the possibilities and check them all out, even if it seems stupid to do so. You may be surprised at some of the things that can cause a crash. My game will crash on launch if I sign on too soon after the desktop comes available. I have to give it a moment to make sure all background processes and such are fully loaded first. Sounds odd... but that's just an idiosyncrasy of Windows that has been around for as long as I've used it, dating back to 3.1.

[Shinsei]

well.. something is off in your system. Bob is working, and he is using the same family of drivers (although, a slightly newer release from 10/16 vs 9/19, and there is a slightly newer one out now from 10/22). So, there could be something off in the driver...or it could be something else in your environment. You said you formatted and reloaded Windows... did you run the offline DX9 Runtimes to correct the common issues that crop up from missing/unregistered DLL's that have caused issues with older games since Vista was released? (note you may need to enable .Net3.5 to install the DX9 files) How about MSIE/WMP support libraries--even if you don't use them, the game DOES and they may need updating.

Something is off in your Windows environment--be that it's API's, drivers, third party processes in the background, or flakey hardware. If it were just the game, it would be causing problems across the board... which it clearly is not.

Without being able to say for certain that your system is exactly as it was prior to patching, you have to keep yourself open to the possibility that something may be awry with your system and not just something that suddenly changed in the game's code with the new patch. Although, there was a note with todays patch that there was some specific combination that was causing crashes that they addressed--but I think that was at the server level.

Another thought jsut hit me... what security are you using? It is possible that the executable is getting trapped because a change has been detected. Firewalls are notorious for this problem--have you checked/updated your white-listing to make sure that isn't an issue?

And comparing it to all those other games that use different methods for handling A/V and thus placing different demands on the system aren't necessarily an indication of a problem suddenly cropping up in the game's code. For instance, if you have a marginal hardware environment, it may not show up with games that are not stressing everything at once like this game. It may be an issue with a driver that only crops up with the specific way XIV is handling overlay or mouse cursor--suddenly you have an access error at a specific memory address because a background driver for another device/service got updated and it is causing a problem.

There is just so much that could be causing the problem... need to be open to the possibilities and check them all out, even if it seems stupid to do so. You may be surprised at some of the things that can cause a crash. My game will crash on launch if I sign on too soon after the desktop comes available. I have to give it a moment to make sure all background processes and such are fully loaded first. Sounds odd... but that's just an idiosyncrasy of Windows that has been around for as long as I've used it, dating back to 3.1.

Fresh Windows 8.1 install. No security as of when I replied back saying it's still crashing. Fresh everything. Like I said I never had a issue with the 680GTX. I still feel this is a driver issue.

If you know of a way to access FFXIV logs, other then the combat logs, it may be able to tell me something...

[Syx]

Fresh Windows 8.1 install. No security as of when I replied back saying it's still crashing. Fresh everything. Like I said I never had a issue with the 680GTX. I still feel this is a driver issue.

If you know of a way to access FFXIV logs, other then the combat logs, it may be able to tell me something...

It's not a driver issue. I use a GTX 970 with the 344.48 drivers and the game has been running beautifully.

[Raist]

It's not a driver issue. I use a GTX 970 with the 344.48 drivers and the game has been running beautifully.

Those are the drivers from October... as in the latest ones. So, it may have been a driver issue that just got fixed. As noted earlier, he is using older drivers and the the other user that is also not having the issue (Bob) was also using a release from October as well.

It may not necessarily be the video drivers per se either--it could be audio, mouse, some odd legacy IR device or an HID drive, or even a background service that is causing the access violation that is crashing the game.

[Squa11_Leonhart]

Those are the drivers from October... as in the latest ones. So, it may have been a driver issue that just got fixed. As noted earlier, he is using older drivers and the the other user that is also not having the issue (Bob) was also using a release from October as well.

It may not necessarily be the video drivers per se either--it could be audio, mouse, some odd legacy IR device or an HID drive, or even a background service that is causing the access violation that is crashing the game.

There wasn't any crash issue (in this game) in 344.11 or .16, just the fog corruption.

[Raist]

Isn't Windows Firewall on by default on a fresh install? It blocks all kinds of stuff at first. Just saying... might be right under your nose and don't even know it.

You can get a handy utility called TinyWall that makes it pretty easy to tweak/maintain Windows Firewall. (link is to cnet page about it). Note it isn't a firewall itself, just a utility to manage the Windows Firewall rules. Could try turning of Defender too I guess... or create exceptions for XIV executables via the Tools menu maybe.

Your Windows/directx logs may help shed more light on what could be going on under the hood otherwise. You can run eventvwr.msc to get to the Windows logs. Think the dxerror.log is only generated when problems are found, so not seeing anything that looks like it on my system. May be in the root of your system drive, the Windows folder, or even under a sub-folder there labeled simply "log" or "logs".