Hello.
I'm getting hard crashes only during effects that seem to have something in common, but I can't figure it out. These crashes only occur with FFXIV, all other graphics-intensive games, videos, and such never give me any problems. This is solely to do with FFXIV, I could not replicate the results with anything else.
By hard crash I mean that:
-I get a black screen/no signal screen
-The audio becomes locked on a constant stutter of the last sound played
-I can't Alt+Tab out or open the Task Manager or anything at all
-The only way to stop it is to manually restart
The info on my system is:
-CPU: AMD Athlon X4 740 Quad Core Processor 3.20 GHz
-RAM: 16 GB DDR3
-GPU: AMD Radeon RX 480
-Windows 10
-DirectX11
-SSD
The scenes and effects that cause this all seem to deal with fire, smoke, and white magic effects (as in the color of the effect on screen is white/blue-white). The thing is, it isn't every instance of fire, smoke, or white magic. The crashes are always preceded by a framerate loss/skip.
Using SpeedFan I do know that during these scenes the heat of my GPU and CPU spikes, and it's likely the crash is due to overheating. But I do not understand what is causing that spike in temperature, as these effects are the only instances I can replicate with the heat spiking in such a way.
Some specific examples of instances where it may cause a crash:
-The final boss of Matoya's Relict, the Mother Porxie, uses an ability called "Open Flame" that places red reticles on each player, then explodes in circles of flames. When those flames appear, about halfway through the animation my system will lock up as I described up above.
-If looking in "The Unending Journey" menus of cutscenes, under "Main Scenario: Shadowbringers" > "Shadowbringers Main Scenario Quests" > the "Shadowbringers" tab at the bottom, and then slide the slider over once for "Cutscene 5": this is another that causes me to crash - guaranteed. Without using spoilers, there is a moment where a group of people begin to channel white beams. It is when the effects for these beams comes that my computer locks up.
-The second boss of The Grand Cosmos, Leannan Sith, uses an ability called "Ireful Wind". It is a large AoE that brings up large tornadoes of green-ish wind all across the arena. When the tornadoes first show, about halfway through their animation my system will lock up.
There are others, but those are the most reliable ones for testing.
I have tried:
-Completely reinstalling my graphics card driver, included using third party tools to clean out any trace of previous drivers, etc.
-I have changed all the settings in the FFXIV "System Configuration" graphics menu, even going down them one-by-one.
-I have tried windowed, borderless windowed, fullscreen, etc.
-Completely reinstalling DirectX11
-Tweaking setting in the Radeon software
-A complete FFXIV uninstall/reinstall
-Reformatting my system
My best guesses are it is something to do with a sort of combination incompatibility between DirectX11, my GPU/software, and FFXIV itself. I'm thinking maybe multiple redundant filterings are being layered between all of them, or something along those lines.
Any info or advice would be greatly appreciated.