FC3 keeps crashing

[Dweller_Benthos]

The definition of insanity is repeating the same action over and over but expecting different results.....

Anyway, fingers crossed, I may have fixed it. Did the driver sweeper thing, of course that made no difference. So then I ran a memory test for two hours and that came up clean. But I noticed that the mem test was reporting the speed of my memory timing, and it seemed a bit odd. Anyway, I fiddled with the memory timing in the BIOS, basically setting it from "auto" to the highest setting. The computer wouldn't even boot, gave an error that overclocking was unsuccessful. So I went back to the BIOS and set the memory timing back to auto, so maybe it picked different settings, but anyway, played for 2 hours and 40 minutes, the longest I've ever been able to, without a single problem.

Fingers crossed it stays that way when I try direct X 11 mode tomorrow. I'm just a glutton for punishment, I know.....

[Art Blade]

Let's just hope that you won't get any lethal power surges that turn your rig into a pile of smouldering goo..  8-X



:-()

[Dweller_Benthos]

Well, I have it on a good battery back up so not much chance of that.

Ran the memtest again for a couple hours while I was out. Turned out fine, and it seems the memory is running at something like ~675mHz. I'm really glad I sprung for the memory that's supposed to be able to run at 2400 mHz. Nice to know to keep the system stable it has to run at just over 1/4 that speed.

[fragger]

Here's hoping it's all good :-X

[Art Blade]

man, I sure hope so, too  :-X

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yep, another hour and 40 minutes this morning with no problems, hope it's licked. I'm still quick saving after opening every loot chest though, out of habit.

[Art Blade]

Nice.  :)

So all you needed to do was to go into the BIOS and change the memory timing from auto to highest and back to auto? And all it did was to cut the speed from a possible 2400 MHz down to something around 675 MHz?

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah, something like that. See, there are a bunch of ways to change things I guess, and if you change the CPU it changes the memory to go along with it. I think. Anyway, I had been fiddling with the windows version of the motherbaord utilities and I may have changed something that I didn't think was vital, I don't know. So, then I went to the BIOS and there were some settings that are the same, but I don't think the memory timing is one of them, I think you have to go to the BIOS to change those. Anyway, yeah, I changed it from auto to a setting that allows you the independently change the CPU clock and the memory timing, set the memory to 2400 (that's what the spec sheet says it can run) and it wouldn't boot. Went back to the BIOS and set everything to auto. This time it picked 665 mHz for the memory speed and it works, so who knows?

Last night I threw the works at it, ran FC3 in Direct X 11 mode, with multithreading on, and turned on all the fancy sound processing doodads my sound card has and it ran smooth as butter.

Lesson learned.

[PZ]

 :-X

[fragger]

Glad you finally got there 8) Persistence pays off!

My crashing is way more intermittent, but I've found that as long as FC3 is the first thing run after startup, it's far less likely to bomb out. Even so, it's iffy. Sometimes it will run perfectly for hours - I've had six- or seven-hour sessions before finally exiting via the menu, other times it's packed it in after a few minutes.

Since about half my FC3 sessions go OK, and nothing else is crashing on my PC, I've decided to live with it and not go to the lengths D_B went to to solve the prob. Besides, my interest in the game is waning a little and I've actually been spending more of my gaming time playing Civilization. In my current 'thru I'm well into the second half and I'm so not crazy about tackling those Sam missions. I think my preference is to play up to the point where I get the wingsuit and the recruit uniform on the south island while leaving as many north island outposts unliberated and side missions undone as I can get away with, then go back north and collect all the goodies and do everything there, return south to do the towers, outposts, side mishes and item collecting, then call it quits for that playthrough. Those south island missions leave me cold, especially that painfully long poker game and knife-fight session with Hoyt - boooring. I find the second half of the game generally pretty dull and the south island is nowhere near as pretty as the northern one.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah, your problem could also be memory timing, though not as extreme as mine was, or a heat issue, but probably not heat. Like you say, not worth looking into at this point.

I don't know if I'll do a second playthru, though it might be nice to do all that without the threat of a crash hanging over my head. But since I haven't actually done any missions yet, there wouldn't be much difference.

[Binnatics]

So glad you found the solution there D_B!! :-X

A thick fat Kudo for your persistence :-X

I currently play mostly online multiplayer. A bit coop now and then, and hell is that game a piece of crap online. So many crashes, failing lobbies and endless loading sessions, and once you're in, you realise you lag over a second to other players.... Every once in a while the lag is gone, or at least at your favour. That's when the s#!t goes down >:D

Something else that's ridiculous is the difference between weapon power and in-kicking auto-aim help. SMG's for example have a hip fire accuracy that is sometimes even better than real aiming, and I mean just running around pointing the 'screen' towards enemies. Guys tend to run around with it at super speed (you can get perks to be faster) and kill everybody using 1 or 2 bullets. With teh extended clip most SMG's have, it's a mass murdering weapon.  I'm Currently using a sniper rifle, Z93, that should instantly kill most enemies with one shot. And more than once, I need two to kill them. I aim through my scope and can 'just' see my enemy, and when I want to pull down the trigger that same enemy killed me with one or 2 bullets from the same distance, with its fecking SMG. Why the H*** have sniper rifles available if the cards are shuffled that way :o
Something else that seems to mess with the weapon power is a random buggy appearance. Even in coop, sometimes your weapon doesn't seem to do any damage to the foes. Did anyone experience that during the SP gameplay? All of a sudden, you don't hit s#!t anymore, only an occasional headshot. In MP it's hard to find out what is lagging, since there's so much going wrong that you can't make up what is worse; the lag, rubber bullet-glitch or simply cheating fellow players.

Oh, sorry to get carried away about the MP-mess here. I thought of it because in SP my game never crashed. Honestly, not a single time. In MP I have to ctrl+alt+del out multiple times during a 3 or 4 hour gaming session :/