Drivers & Software

[theacclaimed]

I can confirm Heavensward dx11 client crashes on MSI R9 390x gaming 8g with 15.15 drivers as well as the 15.20 drivers that came with the CD. The crash is easily reproducible on a 2 or 3 monitor setup. The main display has the game running on it. The 2nd display has a youtube video playing. The playback causes the game to freeze within 30 seconds of beginning video playback. None of the settings for Video in Catalyst Control Center make a difference. Game is running in Borderless Windowed mode on max settings.

This issue is not present on systems with 290x running the 14.12 omega drivers. The issue also does not appear when running on the older dx9 client.

Issue seems to be present with the R9 300 series drivers.

If there was a way to rollback to the omega 14.12 with the 300 series, that would probably fix many of these random crash issues. I also suspect that if the 14.12 drivers could install on a system with the 390x the issues would be resolved.

[kingfish]

The common fix for issues arising from using your graphics card for 2D and 3D programs at the same time, is to disable hardware acceleration. Every browser has that as an option for a reason. Also, right clicking on a video gives you the same option. In IE go to tools > internet options > advanced > choose. Firefox has the same option under the 'general' tab. They say Chrome has the same feature.

[theacclaimed]

The problem is the crash can also happen without the browser displaying a video. The video playback just speeds up the rate at which the crash will occur.

Also, hardware acceleration can be disabled in IE for the adobe flash video player but Firefox is using HTML5. Crash happens with either one.

Disabling Hardware Acceleration is not a valid workaround in my opinion as it will make video playback of twitch streams extremely choppy while livestreaming using OBS or xsplit in addition to running the game in borderless fullscreen mode. This is just an example of a typical real world scenario where driver reliability should be expected.

All of this worked fine with the 290x and 14.12 drivers. Swapping the 390x for another 390x did not fix the problem so it's definitely driver related. Also, DX9 games do not have this issue.

[theacclaimed]

This issue is still present in 15.7.

[theacclaimed]

So far it seems that disabling Hardware Acceleration in the web browser seems to be a workaround. However, when using other applications such as Xsplit, it still crashes the game.

[theacclaimed]

Anyone with 300 series cards that run dual or triple monitor setups noticing this issue when running a dx11 game on the main monitor and attempting to watch a youtube video on the 2nd monitor?

[tjkim96]

Yes, I run a dual monitor setup - did the Heavensward benchmark, ran a YouTube video on secondary, driver crashed.

This also rarely happened on GTA 5. After toning it down to DX10, issue seems to be resolved.

I have a XFX R9 390

[theacclaimed]

I have found that this issue is not limited to just FFXIV and youtube. It seems that anytime a DX11 game is running at least in borderless windowed mode (non-exclusive fullscreen) if another program for video playback with hardware acceleration starts running it can crash the game. Sometimes it is easy to recover to desktop TDR. But other times all 3 monitors will go black with the audio from the video and the game still being heard. It can take upwards of 15 minutes to recover to desktop. The easiest way is to reboot the system.

I hope we get a beta driver soon (august) that addresses these extremely unstable drivers as it is really ruining the 300 series image.

[tjkim96]

Yeah, for sure. Actually, I've found that for GTA, even with everything else closed, the screen freezes, turns black, and the drivers restart later.

[goodplay]

You forgot to mark all your posts as helpful.