Games freezes and screen goes black

Hi @pchaunce

Could you post your Computer's DxDiag?

To gather a DxDiag on your computer, please follow the steps here: https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information/

You can attach the txt file to your post directly.

I will do it as soon as I get home.  Thanks.

Here it is.  Any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

**********Edit**********

Also noticed I'm getting a "TS4_x64.exe is being blocked from accessing the graphics hardware" in my notification center. I'm sure this probably has something to do with my issue.

I see quite a few of these errors in your DxDiag

+++ WER1 +++:
Fault bucket LKD_0x141_Tdr:6_IMAGE_atikmpag.sys, type 0
Event Name: LiveKernelEvent
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 9d5e2004-3662-4666-842c-4228c8e96397

Problem signature:
P1: 141
P2: ffffb707d96d9010
P3: fffff808b4a3f7f8
P4: 0
P5: 23cc
P6: 10_0_15063
P7: 0_0
P8: 768_1
P9: 
P10: 

Looks like there's some kind of issue with your graphics card (also the message you get points towards that). 

Have you run a hardware check ?

I can't really provide any help for these kinds of issues so tagging @roberta591 to see if he can assist you further.

I have the exact same graphics card, and also have this problem. Mine is with all games I'm trying to play. Googling it it seems to be a common problem with the graphics card. I can't find a fix or solution. Tried everything ☹️

Do you have that same error in your DxDiag ?

Do you have the same issue with other games ?

@pchaunce  First thing I notice is the video driver is not WHQL certified and you are getting errors from the ATI (AMD) driver. Either the driver may be bad or it's the wrong driver for the card (maybe). Next I notice the video uses 12219Mb of video memory with 8175Mb of it shared with main memory. I would guess the video driver is set for triple buffering to use that much video memory. I would not recommend using a 128Gb ssd for a gaming machine. Your going to have to off load most games to the conventional data drive so the game loses most (if not all) of the benefit of the ssd. So your computer boots a little faster. You would be better off getting a larger ssd (minimum 240Gb) or getting 2 fast conventional drives and raid them. The paging of 2 different technologies may be causing an issue?  The Radeon RX 470 has an ID of 67DF but the game thinks the video chip with an ID of 67DF is a Radeon R9 480. The card should work with this setting but if all else fail to correct the issue then I would recommend looking in this. First get a video driver that is not giving errors. Next 66Gb free disc space minus 19Gb of page file = 47Gb of free disc space (probably less) and things are getting tight with other temp files being created. I would recommend trying a fast 1Tb conventional drive and see how the computer works. Blank screens are usually caused by problems with the video buffer.

Ok, I did a clean uninstall of the AMD software and drivers.  I did try to launch the game while the machine was running on the default win10 video driver.  We didn't get any game freezes/black screens or white screens requiring reboot but the game did lag horribly. I downloaded this driver....

whql-win10-64bit-radeon-software-crimson-relive-17.7.2-july27

from the AMD website and installed it.  It is supposed to be the latest and greatest driver for this video card.  Attached is a new dxdiag.  Are you still seeing the same errors and is it still telling you this isn't a certified driver?  I have a 1TB drive in this machine in addition to the 128GB SSD drive.  I suppose I could have her uninstall the game and origin from the 128GB drive and put it on the 1TB drive.  Is this what you would suggest?

@pchaunce  IMO the problem is not enough free space on the system drive. I will not - do not sell a gaming computer with 128 Gb ssd as a system drive. It is not large enough for the Windows operating system. I don't care how much you off load to a data drive and if you off load every thing from the ssd - why have the ssd. You are using two different technologies and this may be causing issues as the drive device switches configuration to read and write. Ssd drives are still evolving and I see updates for the microcode in ssds. Ssds are for advanced users who have advanced knowledge of the Windows operating system. The Sims 3 is a 32 bit application so it can not use more then 4Gb of memory- actually it uses only 2Gb do to the way it is compiled. When the application runs out of memory Windows pages parts of memory to the system storage device (virtual memory). windows then pages parts of memory in and out as needed. The Sims 3 creates temp files as it runsso there goes more free space and we haven't talked about programs running in the back ground. If Windows can't page or has problems writing temp files this will greatly affect performance. Most games require all the computer resources you can give it. I would pull the ssd and 1Tb drive and put in a 500 Gb drive and see if the problem is still there. If the game runs better then you know you have a problem in the storage system.

I updated the motherboard drivers with manufacturer drivers (they were all windows default drivers) and she played the game for over 3 hours tonight before it finally white screened on her. I used the disk that came with the computer so I'm going to try to download all the latest and greatest drivers.  Is the SIMS 4 a 32 bit app as well?  That is the game she is playing, not SIMS 3.  If this doesn't work to her satisfaction we'll just send this computer back. I can update the video card in her old system from a Nvidia GT 200 to a GT 1030 for under a hundred bucks, roll it back to Windows 7 (game ran fine under Windows 7 with the GT 200 card, problems didn't start till we upgraded to Windows 10) and hopefully all will be good.  That will net me about a thousand bucks back in my pocket.  I'll post another DXDIAG and an update tomorrow when I get home from work.  Thanks for the help.