Random directx error crashes

[Demon_Giri]

Ah, yes, the Super Secret Menu, where my scroll wheel is backwards. Here's an album of various things that seemed relevant: https://imgur.com/a/rebeka139-bios-oCo2t0t

No sign of short duration power limit, long duration, or cpu current limit. Could be because I'm on a laptop and it has to account for AC and DC power? *shrugs* I found the same 56x/52x values that XTU showed, but they weren't editable in BIOS, or at least they wouldn't save. different numbers

I'm currently testing with Turbo Mode disabled. It was the only thing that jumped out at me as something that could cause minor stability issues to FFXIV with 2 Pcores being 56x and the other 6 being 52x.

Also, while writing this, I rechecked XTU advance view. The two watt settings here are referred to as "short duration" and "extended duration" power limit. Would that be the short and long we're looking for?


Edit: Initial results of Turbo mode disabled: CPU is hold temps around 65-70ºC while playing, used to be sporadic between 70 and 93. The cpu cooling fan has NEVER been so quiet while gaming, I can actually hear the gpu fan. Holding steady at 60 fps. gpu has climbed to 90% usage sometimes but mainly in the 60%'s, not sure if it did before, paid more attention to the cpu before this. cpu usage is only at 15% at most. Did the 7.2 dungeon and desert lvl 100 dungeon for roulettes, same as yesterday. 4 crashes total yesterday within that time, 0 today.

I know that's not comprehensive results when it comes to a random crash, but I'm liking them thus far.

I'd recommend keeping Turbo Mode enabled. That's what allows your processor to increase operating speed when it's given more demanding tasks. Without it, your CPU will only run at base speed at all times. It may remove your crashing, as your CPU will be running extremely-throttled, but it would be a very heavy-handed way to do it. At the very least, I would try looking in the BIOS again and seeing if those core ratios are still what you set them to/what they originally were. I would listen to what the BIOS says they are over what Intel XTU says they are. Intel XTU does change BIOS values, but can only read/write what the BIOS/MOBO allows it, so I'd defer to the BIOS first.

To answer a few questions:

In your imgur album, the third picture from the bottom, "Power Limit 1" and "Power Limit 2" are the short duration and long duration power limits. PL1 being the long duration. Also, yes, these correlate with "Turbo Boost Short Power Max" and the "Turbo Boost Power Max" settings in Intel XTU.

No relation to AC/DC power as far as available settings go. Yes, your laptop has an AC to DC adapter. The power supply in a desktop PC does the same thing. Assuming you don't have some kind of weird faulty power problem, nothing AC should ever be touching your PC or anyone else's. Pretty much all consumer-level electronics run on DC and have some kind of adapter either in the cable or built into the device itself. Available BIOS options will be largely based on what the particular motherboard manufacturer allows you.

Additionally, I have to apologize. I misread your processor model originally, so please ignore the original power limits and current limit I provided you. To avoid severely gimping your processor by turning turbo completely off, but still gain stability since the crashing does seem to be related to how the CPU is running, I'd suggest turning Turbo Mode back on, and then boot into Windows and set the following values in Intel XTU:

Turbo Boost Short Power Max: 157 W
Turbo Boost Power Max: 157 W

157W is the official "Maximum Turbo Power" wattage per Intel's official site for your processor.

We don't want the processor pulling more power than it should for turbo, sacrificing stability in the process, so lets try a little more conservative/official wattage for turbo, based on Intel's specs. We also don't necessarily want to run it LOWER than 157W for extended periods of turbo, so that's why we're setting both short and long duration turbo to the same value. It was already set to 220 on both before anyway.

I did grab a laptop of mine and was able to dig more into the MSI bios you have, myself, to get a little better idea of where things are and what they're named, but I think we might be able to do much of what we want from Intel XTU, which should write to the BIOS settings when you hit Apply anyway. You will just need to re-enable Turbo from in the BIOS.

So, just for clarification, I'd suggest:

- Boot into BIOS, re-enable turbo mode, check to see if P-Core Ratios are still what you set them to before/what they originally were. There should be two "blocks" of settings for those. One is labeled "current settings" at the top, the second "block" of values is where you would adjust them, I believe.
- Boot into Windows, Open Intel XTU, Set:
Turbo Boost Short Power Max: 157W
Turbo Boost Power Max: 157W
- Hit Apply in Intel XTU
- Reboot into BIOS, check the Power & Performance>CPU - Power Management Control>Configure Turbo Options menu to see if PL 1 and PL 2 match the 157W you just set in Intel XTU, just to make sure they took
- Reboot into Windows and try your game for a while. Monitor temps if you'd like

Hope that helps clear some things up. Let me know if you run into a snag in that process,
Giri