How often do you experience problem games?

Hi guys. Well recently I just seem to be on a spree of bad luck with gaming on my new(ish) Clevo laptop. Model is the p170m(Vortex 4 from PCSpecialist). Specs are i7 4700mq, 8gb RAM and the AMD 8970m gpu.

The problem is that so many games just seem to fail on me. I mean some run flawlessly, and I mean without fail for hours. But some games with problems seem to cause me problems far too often for my liking. For instance just bought Left 4 Dead 2, Sleeping Dogs and GTA 4 on Steam. None of them will even run at all. And it seems like a lot of people have experienced the errors I have when I google it. Tried many fixes but nothing doing. My girlfriend also experiences frequent crashes playing The Sims 3, which is supposedly a common issue.

But despite the fact these are apparently common problems it's a bit irritating to run into 3 in a row. There have been others as well but these are the most recent and galling.

What do you guys think, is this just a hitch in pc gaming especially on a laptop? Does anyone else find this? Or could there be a problem with my machine even though it runs other things perfectly fine?

Thank you if anyone has anything to say on it.

 

What do you mean by they dont run. Do they not do anything when you start them up or do they run but very poorly. You can always try updating the drivers, I believe 13.11 Beta are the latest ones. You can also check in CCC to make sure those particular games are set to run on the 8970M instead of the integrated card.

 

it's either a problem with your system, your configuration, your game settings, or any combination thereof.

 

I have the latest drivers. And these 3 games haven't run on either the whql or the latest beta. And by not run: Left 4 Dead 2, as soon as the game starts it is a slideshow then crashes with sound looping, GTA 4 just gets stuck on the loading screen in an infinite loop, Sleeping Dogs goes through an initial options set up thing but crashes to desktop before it can complete.

Ok so but in comparison I have been playing Batman Arkham Origins, Bioshock Infinite and Rome Total War 2, all pretty much maxed out settings and there haven't been any problems. Could this still be a problem with my system in this case? If so I'd obviously like to RMA it but I already did for a faulty RAM stick and the company insists it's tested now and fully working and I've ran Furmark and memtest without any failures.

In Catalyst they are all set to high performance and there is an LED on my machine that lights up when the dedicated graphics is activated and it always comes on for the start of these applications.

 

i apologize for the ambiguity. by 'system' i mean your firmware/software setup. by 'configuration' i mean your hardware setup. it doesn't sound like there's anything wrong with said configuration (aside from your choosing AMD that is).

 

check and update directX folder in each game. c > programs > steam > game > gameaps (i think) at work so off the top of my head.
also check steam support as this is where i found the fix.

also check physX is upto date BUT it could also need an older version as some programs dont like the latest version.

welcome to the world of trial and error

 

Yeah I've emailed Steam support. Looked up loads of these trial and error solutions, have tried updating direct x packages based on the in game folder, verifying games integrity, reinstalling game, reinstalling steam, little weird things like Left 4 Dead 2 apparently needs to access a CSC folder in Windows but my Windows installation didn't even have this folder, couldn't find out anything about that. It's exhausting but I've been trying to go through as much as I can =)

I have not admittedly tried anything with PhysX, I'll try that later today, thanks.

 

ive found that the previous physx didnt work for any futuremark benchmark software but the one before that did. the latest also works. when you update drivers if you dont click custom load it will auto update to the latest physx.

there has certainly been more problems with amd gpu drivers than there has been with nvidia.
as i said its sadly trial and error as no two computers, even if exactly the same model and spec will have the same problems.

 

You can also have issues if one of the directx updates goes wrong and the only way to get round that is to reinstall windows.

 

Before you consider an RMA I would reinstall Windows. RMA's help if the cause is know and a part can be fixed or replaced. Since some games run fine and others dont its really hard to say what is causing it. A Windows install would probably be the first thing done if you were to send it in, might as well save yourself some time and give that a shot yourself.

 

I have actually reinstalled Windows. Same problems, always just these few applications. Today I actually fixed GTA however.

Do you know it sounds strange but the problem seems to be consistently that all games read the Intel card as the active one, like for it's properties. However they use the AMD card no problem. But sometimes there seems to be a conflict with them thinking they only have access to the Intel one. For instance for GTA I had to set a launch option to set the video memory to the 4096mb of vram I have. I had similar problems with Rome Total War. And literally every game always think it's the Intel card there using but most seem to be ok with it. Am I crazy to think this is the issue across the other applications?

 

Argh. Was playing GTA for a few hours. Running fine. Turned the machine off. Came back a few hours later to stick on Batman. Crashed at the start. Tried again, crashed again. Tried a few others, all crashed. I changed literally only the steam launch options of GTA.

This has happened before with the AMD drivers seeming to become corrupt randomly. Then it takes a few random reinstalls to get it fixed, the last time it actually required a reinstall of windows.

Tried reinstalling all the direct x, phys x and vc redist stuff from the games folder. Still crashes. Sure the driver has just went corrupt. Is that possible to just happen like that? Does anyone know how?

 

Maybe your memory or HDD is corrupting data, any other issues with non gaming applications? Have you run a storage check or memtest?

 

I already had to RMA the machine for faulty RAM and they said they'd tested it before sending it out but I will run memtest again, and I've not tried storage check, do both those tonight. Cheers.

Just for the record, if games are running fine generally with a few exceptions but then the drivers go wonky regularly and have to be resintalled could there be a problem with any other component? I mean the graphics card will be ok if it works in between driver reinstallations?

 

My only problematic game recently has been Crysis 2 Maximum Edition. It crashes to desktop randomly. I suppose it's just a GPU driver issue, simple change of the driver should sort it out.

 

As an update, the amd drivers were kaput. Every application using them crashed straight away. Uninstalled them. Also tried Left 4 Dead 2 and Sleeping Dogs. Both work fine with the Intel onboard card!

Also cannot install new drivers, the official AMD ones all say failed to install the installation package and won't work. Can actually install the Leekm modded beta driver from here but it crashes all games still. Any ideas?

To uninstall old drivers I use the normal uninstall option then delete all folders from c drive and then empty the registry.

 

Try uninstalling all AMD drivers using Driver Fusion, reboot, install latest AMD WHQL drivers, reboot and then install latest betas (without uninstalling WHQL drivers). This procedure worked for me.

 

Cheers mate, I'll try this tonight. Although installing whql has been impossible for me but I've not tried driver fusion yet.