Recurrent NVIDIA Driver Crashes and Erratic GPU Usage

ECAR_Tracks

ECAR_Tracks

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Hi,

Unfortunately I cannot finish one single race in Rfactor 2, in contrast to AC, Pcars, Rfactor 1 or any simulator I have installed which runs without a glitch. In rF2 every attempt I got a "task host" error and / or a Nvidia driver failure. At first I was suspecting of my track but I realized there's nothing to do with it. It happens with pure ISI content too.UPDATE->SEP-06-16, Now it's quite clear it should be something in the track.

Hardware:
GTX 980(I tried several drivers from 311 to 358, it doesn't make difference)
i7-4790K
16Gb RAM

There is a huge difference how other simulators deal with GPU hardware. Let's see this sample:

p0EsaZ.png


rF2 is much more erratic on the GPU usage and GPU demanded power,as we can see at standard deviations. rF2 gives me 2 - 3 times more inconstancy of GPU management.

While Project Cars (just an example) keeps the GPU usage around 89% all the time, rF2 floats from 77 to 89. It's not a matter of car and track combination, all pCars tracks show this result and the same goes for any rF2 combination.

The result is a infallible Nvidia crash in all races when GPU usage goes near 100%. That's horribly frustrating because it doesn't seem to be a hardware issue in my end, otherwise I wouldn't be able to race Assetto Corsa and pCars flawlessly. I've just let a pCars race with 6 hours and all graphics maxed, 39 cars and no issues.

I hope for some ISI help if possible.
 
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ISI Help Please. Joke of the day

Anyway thats my p$ssed off comment out the way.Thanks ECAR_Tracks for going the extra mile to show some results and proof of a long outstanding problem. There are so many people out there with this problem trying everything to get a smooth game play and as myself paying bucket loads for an upgraded PC and still it crashes.

I really hope we get this sorted.
 
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I think those hard crashes are more related to specific tracks than GPU usage. At least Le Mans, Dubai and ISI 1966 Monaco have been reported to crash frequently on Nvidia 900 series cards. I drive in a league of around 100 members and none has reported crashes on our tracks this year.
 
There are a number of us experiencing this issue at the VLM Le Mans. The unfortunate thing about this? VEC is running that version of the track for their 24 race in June. Right now, the driver crash issue is threatening to ruin this event for multiple teams and drivers. Any assistance from ISI on this matter would be much appreciated. I personally do not suffer from driver crashes in any other game I play, just rFactor 2.

http://simracing.club/community/index.php?threads/nvidia-9xx-series-driver-crash-discussion.2288/
 
steviejb said:
There are a number of us experiencing this issue at the VLM Le Mans. The unfortunate thing about this? VEC is running that version of the track for their 24 race in June. Right now, the driver crash issue is threatening to ruin this event for multiple teams and drivers. Any assistance from ISI on this matter would be much appreciated. I personally do not suffer from driver crashes in any other game I play, just rFactor 2.

http://simracing.club/community/index.php?threads/nvidia-9xx-series-driver-crash-discussion.2288/
Click to expand...

If this is URD with VEC skin pack it happens, remove skin pack from the server and all is fine.
 
I'm having lots of problems with rFactor2 either, have absolutely no issues with any other simulator/game, CTD/Black screen and it's ruining my experience because i love rF2 but it's impossible to play it right now. Please ISI fix those problems, it's no coincidence this only happens in rF2...
 
Rui Santos said:
I'm having lots of problems with rFactor2 either, have absolutely no issues with any other simulator/game, CTD/Black screen and it's ruining my experience because i love rF2 but it's impossible to play it right now. Please ISI fix those problems, it's no coincidence this only happens in rF2...
Click to expand...

Running any addon plugins?
 
Just to follow up, the issue is still happening since then.

I tried to disable all plugins but it had no influence on the recursive GPU crashes.

For some reason, rF2 is pushing the GPU card to 100% of its usage which not happens with other games, racing sims or other sort of softwares. My track Bugatti is one of "lucky" ones which I can finish a single racing without a driver crash. However it could be good, I can start to isolate the objects in my SCN one by one until have a crash and find the culprit. Maybe it would be some specific shader?
 
WhiteShadow said:
Is that GPU Power (3,3) max to GTX 980? If it is that`s why game crashes.
Click to expand...

It's the standard deviation of GPU Power demand, it only proves that rFactor 2 demand flows much more in comparison to other sim. The crash comes when GPU usage reaches 100%.

Please notice pCars (as a example) keeps the GPU power around 88 versus 80% of rF2. However, the usage is higher in rF2, so the reason the GPU power is lower is a mistery to me and a possible cause of the crash.
 
WhiteShadow said:
Try with "Max Framerate":60 in player.JASON , and maximum pre-rendered fames >1
Click to expand...

That was my first idea too. If the problem is 100% GPU usage that will probably solve it.

I had a similar problem with my 780Ti... Some specific tracks completely reboot my computer. Bought a new 980Ti and the problem became even worst... Solution, new PSU... Like you m8, it only happened in rF2 in some tracks and not in every game.
 
I have a Corsair 1200 Watts PSU working perfectly and there's no issues running any game, software or simulator.

rF2 is the only screwing my system.

Limit framerate has no effect even typing 30 in PLR file.

I ran out of ideas, since I can run anything except rF2, I'm abandoning this title until something happens. For now, I'm saving my precious time in other stuff.
 
I had this exact problem for the entire 2014 year, it pretty much ruined my rf2 league racing that year ;(

I was mostly told that my hardware would be the problem, but I wasted several weeks testing every hardware part one by one and also replacing some parts (gpu, mb, psu).
It is a 100% nvidia problem (had it with gtx 760 and 970 equally).
Tried multiple different drivers too, so not a specific driver problem.

During 2014 it shortly went away after I did a complete OS reinstall but immediatly came back when I made a second rf2 install (promlem suddenly came back on both installs).

And since the problem wasn't officialy aknowledged as a rf2 problem, even though there are many examples here in the forums (100% on nvidia cards), I was not far away from either quitting this or selling my gpu for a AMD gpu.

But it pretty much randomly went away during one of my gazillion reinstalls I wasted over this period.
It only came back with the VEC and the rebellion lmp cars when I tested them a year ago or so, but I simply stopped using them and was fine.


Regarding the 100% use. From my experience this was not neccesairly the cause for the driver freeze, but instead the symptom.
My gpu back then would run constantly around 70% or so and than my MSI Afterburner showed a spike to 100% the moment the driver crash happened.

Once I had some hope that the problem would be officialy aknowledged when I read that Tim Wheatley had some crashes on a track as well, but for him editing the TDR Time Out Detection Recovery in the registry fixed it (which it didn't do it for me and many others).


The best explanation so far was some faulty shader like mentioned above, but who knows. I pray everytime I update my build that this thing doesn't get triggered again, as I like my GTX 970 and the AMD offerings are still not so great in comparison.
 
I had this for a long time aswell and even have it now sometimes. I have read up on it on the nvidia forums and it seems to be an nvidia problem or at least they say as the people have it with other games of different genres to. I drive mostly in VEC and the problems occured on the modded spa track on the start finnish straight or on the other side of the building after the first corner and at le mans.

From what I have read the problem seems to occure when the card attempts to go into "boost" mode where it requires a higher voltage and those voltage kicks cause the cards or some random number of them to crash. Mostly 9xx series tho, especially 980 and 980ti.

There seems to be a half solution which is to increase the voltage usage to max all the time. It doesn't make it go away for ever but the cards crashes just not as often anymore.
This tho I think IIRC is not within your warranty deal so if you want to check it google it or read up on it. It is quite a time ago that I have done somehting so I can not remember what I have done but I still have the CTD's here and there on those tracks and even on two different spa versions on the same places which is odd somehow. Also I had those crashes with different cars alone on track or not.

These days tho I run for online races a 3700Xsomething resolution instead 5700Xsomehting with all gfx setting on minimum and HDR off. And even with those settings I have quite low FPS with a full grid online and on top of that stuttering which is just a PITA. I run a 980 BTW. In our team almost every nvidia user is suffering from this. Some less but some more to a degree where people simply do not race anymore. It is quite frustrating.

Also I should warn you, I have a quite high electricity invoice since I pumped up the power usage. :(


EDIT: But still, not all games cause this so there might be somehting ISI could do about it.
 
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