Far Cry 3 Crashes (Of Course...)

[AO1337]

So I just bought Far Cry 3 from the Steam summer sale, and to say the least, I'm extremely disappointed. About 10 minutes from first launch, it crashed and rolled back a bit. Another 10 minutes go by, another crash, again not saving progress. Now it crashes every 1-5 minutes. I usually see a RAM and CPU spike when it crashes, but that happens every time a game crashes for me. I turned DX11 down to DX9 and it still happens just as often. The only other games that crash often for me are DayZ mod and DayZ Standalone. Please help.

Specs:
MSI R9 270X 2GB Gaming Edition("Overclocked" by default)
AMD FX-6300 6-Core 3.5GHz
Vengeance Black DDR3 RAM 8GB
Corsair 500W PSU
Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB HDD

I run the game on Ultra, accept for the AA turned to 2 and V-Sync turned off. I get 30-60 FPS, depending on where I am in-game.

 

[clutchc]

Have you ever run a cleaner app on your machine? Run CCleaner https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner
...and do the Clean and Registry portions both. Then check your tray for stuff you can disable. Software conflicts can cause issues like that. Especially if they are poorly written. If still no joy, it may be malware causing conflicts. Run Malwarebytes and do a FULL scan: https://www.malwarebytes.org/

Finally, are you uninstalling old gfx drivers before installing new ones?

 

[AO1337]

Have you ever run a cleaner app on your machine? Run CCleaner https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner
...and do the Clean and Registry portions both. Then check your tray for stuff you can disable. Software conflicts can cause issues like that. Especially if they are poorly written. If still no joy, it may be malware causing conflicts. Run Malwarebytes and do a FULL scan: https://www.malwarebytes.org/

Finally, are you uninstalling old gfx drivers before installing new ones?

well my computer is brand new and i havent downloaded anything from an untrusted source, i have norton installed and i scan everything before using it. i use amd not nvidia, but i havent installed any other drivers since i first setup my computer. i usually restart my whole computer before playing fc3 and clear my tray of overlay programs and ones that use high memory. i still only get a few minutes of playing.

 

[clutchc]

Two other things to check;
if you are running ShadowPlay, uninstall it or at least disable it from starting. One poster I was working with had extremely bad stuttering issues. He uninstalled ShadowPlay and the problem was gone.
Nortons used to be a problematic resource hog. I haven't used it for years. Maybe it's better now. You might want to try uninstalling it too. Use Microsoft Security Essentials until you satisfy yourself that Nortons isn't the problem... if you worry about viruses during the test.

 

[AO1337]

Two other things to check;
if you are running ShadowPlay, uninstall it or at least disable it from starting. One poster I was working with had extremely bad stuttering issues. He uninstalled ShadowPlay and the problem was gone.
Nortons used to be a problematic resource hog. I haven't used it for years. Maybe it's better now. You might want to try uninstalling it too. Use Microsoft Security Essentials until you satisfy yourself that Nortons isn't the problem... if you worry about viruses during the test.

from what i see on task manager, norton only uses about 5mb of memory most of the time. i played fc3 after a restart with only needed programs running to play the game, and still it crashes. at random times, when im getting normal fps, it just freezes and glitches out then it crashes. ubisoft is ruining my chance of buying fc4

 

[Rationale]

I've played FC3 for dozens of hours without any crashes. So crashing probably isn't typical. You should be able to get this ironed out soon enough.

Just so you know, these programs are known to use DX hooking and can interfere with certain games, like Far Cry 3, if they're running at the same time.

Fraps
Xfire
Team Speak
Mumble
Steam Overlay
Evga Precision X
Gigabyte OC Guru I & II
ASUS GPU Tweak
ASUS Smart Doctor
Gamer OSD
MSI Afterburner
MSI kombuster
Evolve Client

Also, you need to make sure the .NET framework is updated.

 

[AO1337]

I've played FC3 for dozens of hours without any crashes. So crashing probably isn't typical. You should be able to get this ironed out soon enough.

Just so you know, these programs are known to use DX hooking and can interfere with certain games, like Far Cry 3, if they're running at the same time.

Fraps
Xfire
Team Speak
Mumble
Steam Overlay
Evga Precision X
Gigabyte OC Guru I & II
ASUS GPU Tweak
ASUS Smart Doctor
Gamer OSD
MSI Afterburner
MSI kombuster
Evolve Client

Also, you need to make sure the .NET framework is updated.

i dont run any of those programs while i play far cry and i disabled the steam overlay. i also updated my .net a few days ago. still no luck.

 

[Joseph DeGarmo]

Far Cry 3 was crashing on me when running my GPU at its factory overclocked speed. I reduced the clock speed to Nvidia's OEM reference model speed and the crashing stopped. The same thing happened on The Elder Scrolls Online. Some games just don't seem to run stable on overclocked hardware. The R9-270X's default core clock speed is 1050 MHz. Set the clock speed to that in MSI Afterburner and it should resolve your issue.

 

[David Kebodeaux]

Far Cry 3 was crashing on me when running my GPU at its factory overclocked speed. I reduced the clock speed to Nvidia's OEM reference model speed and the crashing stopped. The same thing happened on The Elder Scrolls Online. Some games just don't seem to run stable on overclocked hardware. The R9-270X's default core clock speed is 1050 MHz. Set the clock speed to that in MSI Afterburner and it should resolve your issue.

Same, I heard OC on some GPUs causes this game to crash. Also try testing it without AA and disabling origin/steam in game.

 

[AO1337]

Far Cry 3 was crashing on me when running my GPU at its factory overclocked speed. I reduced the clock speed to Nvidia's OEM reference model speed and the crashing stopped. The same thing happened on The Elder Scrolls Online. Some games just don't seem to run stable on overclocked hardware. The R9-270X's default core clock speed is 1050 MHz. Set the clock speed to that in MSI Afterburner and it should resolve your issue.

I tried that but it seems 1080 MHz is the lowest my gpu can go? I used MSI afterburner and turned it to 1050 and when I looked on GPU-Z it still said 1080MHz. GPU-Z still shows the correct speed of anything over 1080 though.

 

[AO1337]

Far Cry 3 was crashing on me when running my GPU at its factory overclocked speed. I reduced the clock speed to Nvidia's OEM reference model speed and the crashing stopped. The same thing happened on The Elder Scrolls Online. Some games just don't seem to run stable on overclocked hardware. The R9-270X's default core clock speed is 1050 MHz. Set the clock speed to that in MSI Afterburner and it should resolve your issue.

also its still crashing

 

[numanator]

I didn't see you mention anything about the drivers, have you done a clean install for the newest set of GPU drivers from AMD's website?

 

[AO1337]

I didn't see you mention anything about the drivers, have you done a clean install for the newest set of GPU drivers from AMD's website?

yes