Hardware or game issue?
Hey all, been having some problems with the game. I recently reinstalled the game to play again after not being on in a bit. Download and everything went smoothly, logged in, checked out my main toon, then started a new one and got to playing. After about an hour and a half of playing, the game crashed to the desktop. I had absolutely no problems, performance was fantastic and everything was going quite smoothly up until the crash. I pulled up the launcher, got the character screen, went to log onto my character, and experienced a BSOD (0x116) regarding atikmpag.sys. I know that is a driver problem, so I double checked my AMD drivers after rebooting to ensure they were up to date, and they were (Radeon Crimson Edition 16.9.2 Hotfix, released 21 SEP 2016). I started up the launcher and ran the repair function, which came back as finding no problems, so no repairs done. I launched the game again, and was able to play for a little over an hour before another black screen crash to desktop. Once again, I attempted to log back in, but experienced another 0x116 BSOD upon clicking login at the characters screen. This event occurs regardless of my location in game or my activities, it happens while leveling or while standing around on ship or in fleet, and I never have any problems leading up to the crash/BSOD.I completely uninstalled all AMD drivers using Guru DDU, and did a clean install of both the current and the previous driver edition. Same results, crash followed by BSOD after between 1 and 2 hours of playing. BlueScreenViewer tells me that dxgkrnl.sys is the driver causing the BSOD. I've monitored the temperature to see if perhaps something was overheating, and both GPU and CPU stayed below 60C consistently, with the GPU only spiking to 63C for a very brief period during BF4 play. Also, I've dusted the * out of everything, and made sure there was no dust left on any internal component. My DX11 drivers are up to date, as is my OS (Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit). I don't have access to another GPU or PSU to do a swap test. That being said, my entire rig is less than 1.5 years old, with the exception of the PSU, and I would believe it if maybe it's at the end of it's life. MY GPU has performed beautifully since acquiring and has not had any problems whatsoever thus far.
I have tested this with some other games I play frequently (Battlefield 4, World of Warcraft, Grand Theft V) for long sessions over the last few days and I never have this issue with any of them, they all run smoothly, which leads me to believe this problem is specific to SWTOR. I can browse the internet normally after a CTD without experiencing a BSOD.
My system specs:
ASRock H97 Pro4 motherboard
Intel i5 4590 Quad Core CPU 3.3GHz
XFX AMD Radeon R9 280 3GB DirectX 11.2
Corsair TX650W PSU
x2 G.Skill Ripjaw 4GB RAM sticks
SAMSUNG 850 EVO 250GB SSD (SWTOR is installed here)
WesternDigital 1TB HDD
Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit
Any help for this problem would be really appreciated. It only happen with SWTOR, which happens to be what I really want to play right now, and it's driving me crazy trying to figure this out 😢 Also, sorry if any of this post seems jumbled, I just got on after a very busy day and am a little tired lol
So, after dialing back the settings for shadows in game, I've had multiple 2-3 hour sessions without any crashes or blue screens. I'm kicking myself for not trying something this simple already! Since I haven't been having any issues, I'm gonna mark this solved for now. Thanks for the input and assistance you provided!
