Fatal DirectX Errors with AMD R9 300 Series cards in the DX11 client

[Lucatiel]

I've had constant trouble with this since I built my new computer just over a month ago, and have done a decent amount of digging, researching, and experimenting to better narrow down the issues. Figured I'd make a post on this to better collect information, and at least have a decent description of the problem for anyone digging around themselves.

The symptoms: The DirectX 11 client of FF14 crashes randomly while playing on AMD cards using the Tonga chipset, this includes the R9 300 series as well as the R9 285(among others). No specific in-game event or instance seems to be causing these crashes, it has happened to numerous people everywhere in the game at any given time. It can be 10 seconds, 10 minutes, or 10 hours into playing, but the game WILL crash. Giving the Error "A fatal DirectX Error has occurred(11000002)", crashing out, or sometimes locking up the computer entirely (Though I've only experienced the first of these). It is also important to note these issues do not happen in the DX9 client, and do not happen in other DX11 games. This seems to a problem unique to FF14 and this range of AMD cards (though I have heard Witcher 3 having the exact same issues, I don't own the game so can't comment too well on that).

The Issue: The biggest issue with narrowing down anything specific is that this problem does not seem tied directly to the game itself. Changing settings doesn't appear to affect anything (and is hard to experiment with, given the randomness of the crashes themselves), either in the game or in Catalyst Control Center for the GPU itself. After a couple weeks I'm confident in saying the main problem is one of two things: The FF14 DX11 client does not properly work with AMDs Tonga drivers -or- This specific chipset of AMD cards really, REALLY doesn't like FF14s DX11 client. I'm really not sure which side of the fence this problem falls on (either AMD or Squeenix), but in the end it's still a problem. Best-case scenario is that it's a driver issue AMD hasn't solved yet or a client issue Squeenix hasn't solved yet. Worst-case scenario is that the DX11 client just can't run on Tonga cards, and we're doomed(well, "doomed") to run the game in DX9 forevermore.

Workarounds: The best workaround, as stated right above, is to simply play the game in DX9 mode. I don't consider this a solution in the least, but the game is simply unplayable in DX11 mode when you can crash at literally any second. I've heard some success of messing around with some settings, but the closest thing to "success" is playing the game for slightly longer than normal before it crashes. And given how random these crashes are I'm hesitant to honestly call any of these a genuine success when it could just be luck. The safest bet is to stay in DX9 until something is actually fixed, or at the very least acknowledged. As far as I know, neither AMD nor Squeenix have commented on this issue which further confounds things a bit. At least hearing from one or the other on would go a long way towards fixing this. Here's hoping...

[phrixos]

I have a Sapphire NITRO Radeon R9 380 card and am having the EXACT same problems you're experiencing, except I am most often getting the video output to monitor complete failure (black screen with no way to recover, have to reboot PC). Sometimes the game will just crash and there will be a message in windows bottom right of screen saying "amd driver has stopped working and recovered" . I have done extensive research on this issue and confirm it to be a commonly found issue with FFXIV DirectX 11 client, especially in AMD R9 300 series cards. It looks like there is some discrepancy going on between the FFXIV DX11 client and all current AMD drivers when running on the R9 300 series cards.

[phrixos]

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...80#post3155969

Apparently this issue has been going on for at least 6 months.

PhallOid posted on 7/17/2015 that "Btw my problem is the same one, black screen, still music at the back, driver not responding, but my graphic is a amd sapphire nitro r9 380. "

[Halcyon]

Good luck, most of these just get moved to "Insufficient information" and ignored. AMD also ignored all inquiries I made with them about the issue, although they did claim to someone else that it's been fixed.

[phrixos]

I spoke with Square Enix support over the phone and the guy said the best thing (and really only thing) we can do is post the issues to the technical support area of the forum (The developers actually look through these apparently?). Anyone else having this issue or something you feel is similar/related please create another forum post under technical support. The more number of posts that we get, the more chance we have of the devs seeing the issue and noticing it is happening more often than it should. Also I noticed this same issue has been posted all around various forums of the Internet, I'm going to try and get all those posters who play FFXIV to create forum posts in here. If anyone else knows of others besides yourself (whether it be friends irl or forum posts you've seen outside of this forum) please have them create a post under technical support in here if possible to report the issue directly to the developers). ANYONE with a problem running the Direct X 11 Client for any reason, that should be able to run it (your hardware supports it) please post! I'm curious how many players are unable to use the DX 11 client. Thanks.