How to fix DX11 crashing if you have Nvidia cards

[Illya]

My search for a fix to the crashing of the DX11 client on my GTX 970 and then 980 Ti after I upgraded led me first to this Reddit thread:

http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...ur_game_keeps/

Unfortunately at first, trying the steps did not appear to fix the crashing. This Reddit post is not very clear on what it means by disabling applications which create an overlay, so I will be absolutely clear on this point.

You cannot just disable the overlay by making it not appear over the game. You must completely exit the offending application, it cannot be running in the background at all.

I was running MSI Afterburner to overclock my video card, but I had the Rivatuner Statistics Server running in the background because I use Afterburner's recording system to record gameplay. Even when I set it to "Stealth" mode to disable detection and activation of RSS in FFXIV, it still caused crashes. I had to completely disable all gameplay functions in Afterburner, which unloaded the RSS application completely from memory, to resolve the crashes. Afterburner itself doesn't cause any problems, and neither does overclocking assuming your OC is stable in games.

I also run FRAPS to watch the framerate counter from time to time. I had to completely quit FRAPS and not even leave it running in the background to stop the FFXIV client from crashing. Just leaving FRAPS running was causing the crashing to occur, even if the framerate counter overlay is disabled.

In general, any applications which create an overlay over the game must be completely terminated, they can't be running in the background at all. The only apparent "safe" exception is Steam at the moment. I'm going to test my fixes by playing the game for a really long time tomorrow, but this seems to be the solution at least for Nvidia card owners who are having random crashing using the DX11 client. I hope this helps you guys out.

I'm using driver version 353.38 (Chrome hotfix) with FFXIV on my 980 Ti.
If you want to try this driver, download it here: http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answe...ail/a_id/3694/

[Ransu]

Seems to me something else is causing your game to crash, especially if you tried two different cards and properly wiped the drivers before installing the new card. I have 970's in SLI and I've left fraps on for hours with the fps overlay and have never had any crashes. If a new card and changing drivers didn't stop the crashing then its clearly something else causing it.

[Riardon]

The latest drivers from nvidia have this problem. All programs with overlay cause crashes and TDRs. You need to unistall MSI Afterburner / EVGA Precision X and all equivalent programs. I don't know if this is because those programs need to be updated or Nvidia changed smth in latest drivers which causing the crashes. The crashes are not FFXIV's DX11 client fault. Those programs in combination with the latest drivers causing random TDRs in all games and even on desktop. For now unistall those programs and you are safe from crashes. Wait for Nvidia to fix it or those programs to be updated.

[Ransu]

The latest drivers from nvidia have this problem. All programs with overlay cause crashes and TDRs. You need to unistall MSI Afterburner / EVGA Precision X and all equivalent programs. I don't know if this is because those programs need to be updated or Nvidia changed smth in latest drivers which causing the crashes. The crashes are not FFXIV's DX11 client fault. Those programs in combination with the latest drivers causing random TDRs in all games and even on desktop. For now unistall those programs and you are safe from crashes. Wait for Nvidia to fix it or those programs to be updated.

I'm running 353.30 with zero problems.

[Gyson]

I'm not using any overlays and I still get one or more crashes per day with the DX11 client (I have an Nvidia card and the latest driver). I switched back to the DX9 client and haven't had a crash yet (unsurprising, as I never crashed prior to Heavensward's release when we were all using DX9.

[Ayuhra]

I'm sorry if this seems obvious but have you tried switching to full screen? In some cases that seems to solve a lot of problems (I use a GTX 970 myself).

[Culfinrandir]

It might interest you that during 2.x I kept getting weird slow downs that could be fixed by tabbing out of full screen and back in. I also had some crashing. I tracked it down to an overlay program from ATI called Raptr that I never used but was trying to modify the game. Even having it just running caused issues so I disabled it altogether and life changed. FFXIV doesn't play nice with overlays at times.

[KisaiTenshi]

My search for a fix to the crashing of the DX11 client on my GTX 970 and then 980 Ti after I upgraded led me first to this Reddit thread:

http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...ur_game_keeps/

Unfortunately at first, trying the steps did not appear to fix the crashing. This Reddit post is not very clear on what it means by disabling applications which create an overlay, so I will be absolutely clear on this point.

You cannot just disable the overlay by making it not appear over the game. You must completely exit the offending application, it cannot be running in the background at all.

I'll add, It's NOT just MSI Afterburner, it's also programs like Raptr, nVidia Experience, OBS and various video recording software.

The reason there-in is because they hook into the video buffer. The crash itself is caused by the game exiting before the hook is released by the software. Such is life.

I could readily replicate the crash with Afterburner every time under DX9 because that app is pretty sloppy at cleaning up after itself, so exiting FFXIV while the video recording is still buffered, would crash it easily.

OBS and such you have to make sure you hit STOP and wait about 30 seconds before you exit. That is so the capture layer has enough time to finish writing out the buffer.

[Darren777]

Pretty much.

[Rinuko]

Yes it really anoying. Though I havn't experienced crashing in couple weeks