BF4 crashing when overclocked

RandiezCAndiez33

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Jul 26, 2015
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hello, i have been having and issue when i overlock my gigabyte gtx 970 g1. Right now my overlock is +150 gpu +200 Memory with an increase of 18 mvs in voltage. I have run benchmarks in unigine heaven 4.0 on max settings and there were absolutely no artifacts or crashes. The overclock seems stable. But when i go in battlfield 4 it crashes out of nowhere. They happen pretty often to but only when i have the overclock. The error says something about a bad command and it mentions my gpu so i think it may be a gpu crash. i dont know what it could be this has also happened to people without and oced gpu. My first guess is i am not overclocking correctly and it is not stable, but it is not a very big overlcock. Could it be the voltage? Bf4 runs like a dream when not overclocked but it crashes like this quite a bit when it is. Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated
 
Solution
I get same crash / error after I start the game for the first time. I then load back Guru OC profile and start the game over. I don't recall second crash unless I reboot PC.

InvalidError

Titan
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Different software stress the GPU differently. It is entirely possible that BF4 has a sequence of instruction that stresses a part of the GPU that is more sensitive than the parts Unigine puts the most emphasis on.

Since you say you get "GPU crashes" only when overclocked and only in BF4, try toning down your OC by a few notches and see if that fixes it in BF4.
 
Hey,
It's obviously the overclock, however considering you aren't going much above the cards already good overclock I suggest just leaving at STOCK SETTINGS.

*Keep in mind that raising the voltage also raises the temperature which can in turn LOWER the performance due to thermal throttling. Thus your overclock is not only unstable (not necessarily heat issue) but may not be getting any frame rate increase either.
 

RandiezCAndiez33

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Jul 26, 2015
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Sorry I mean display driver crash lol. And I will try toning it down but I am very surprised that I would have to because of the voltage I have, also would turning up the voltage help? And should I turn down both the gpu clock and memory or maybe just the memory?
 

InvalidError

Titan
Moderator
Finding the optimal stable overclock is a process of trial and error. Try it and find out.

As for why the drivers crash when the GPU is OC'd, the drivers might be relying on knowing the GPU's internal state for a critical variable. When the drivers try to do something assuming the GPU is currently in a specific state but a GPU malfunction from OCing causes said state to change, random stuff happens and the drivers crash/restart to reset the drivers and GPU to a known clean state.
 

RandiezCAndiez33

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Jul 26, 2015
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So you're saying that the crashes do not mean it is unstable or what?
 

RandiezCAndiez33

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Jul 26, 2015
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well clearly you know nothing about the gigabyte 970. all the 960s 970s and 980s were made for overclocking. ESPECIALLY the gigabyte g1s. i get much more stable frames and maybe about 10 more on some occasions on average with overclocks. Heat is not an issue at all and the gpu boost make a very big difference in some situations. Anyways thanks for the advice.

 

InvalidError

Titan
Moderator

Drivers crashing sounds normal to you? There are only two main reasons for a piece of software to crash only overclocked hardware: either the software has a timing bug that shows up only while OC'd or the hardware is malfunctioning and the driver decides to quit when it encounters an unexpected hardware state since restarting the drivers and GPU is the safest way to restore a consistent driver and hardware state.

Basically, the drivers restarting is the drivers' way of telling you something got messed up. The drivers reloading to reset the GPU to a known state is nothing more than an alternative to initiating a hard-reset so you may have a chance to save your work or finish whatever you were doing before restarting your PC to clear any system data corruption the GPU/driver crash may have caused.
 

RandiezCAndiez33

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Jul 26, 2015
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so should i just stop ocing just to be safe or try and find a stable oc