Sad state of gaming on windows 10

[Teddy Vetter]

I've been pc gaming for 30 years, and i dont recall any time where i've had so many games not working/crashing as right now.... i cant help but feel this has something to do with the 6 month roll out of windows 10 versions, which annoyingly reset all your spyware settings(not that it matters according to the news just published... windows 10 spys on you no matter what settigns you use).

i have a fairly decent gaming rig, its a threadripper with a vega 64(all water cooled) and for the life of me, cant get quite a few newer games to play correctly....
fortnight crashes usually before i get to the ground and has been unplayable for over a year...
Rise of the tomb rader or shadow of the tomb rader also randomly crash and searching web forms show thousands of others who are hoping to find the "magic"combination to get the games to quit crashing.

I played through the earlier tomb rader game at the end of 2016 and the same hardware can no longer run that game(but i was on windows 7 with this computer at the time).....unless i go to linux... thats right... i broke down and installed linux and for the first time in quite a while and games actually ran better on that open source piece of crap that linux is(sorry linux fan boys, but no real support for gaming is there, it has crummy driver support and no settings to control hardware like windows) but in the end.... its working more reliably than windows 10(needless to say i dont have warm and fuzzy feelings about microsoft's recent endeavors)!!!!

While ive only listed 3 games here, i can easily say almost 1/2 of the games in my steam library crash randomly(over 10 games) and several other games which install off of dvd/cd's. Its not hardware either because there are quite a few games that are graphically intense(max the gfx card to 100% usage)and NEVER crash.

If i could install windows 7 on my current rig, i would... but microsoft BLOCKS windows update for my system even though there are drivers for all my hardware!!!

As backwards as it would be going back to a 10 year old OS, i would gladly do it as i know my kids computer which uses hardware thats only a generation older runs all these games without any issues(Intel 4690k and r9 390x) on windows 7... however, dual booting them to windows 10 and her computer crashes the same as mine.... so all i can say is this all appears to be a windows 10 issue. i dont know if programmers are having issues keeping up with the OS changing all the time or maybe the gfx drivers are... or maybe its a combination of the 2... but there shouldnt be so many issues with games crashing all the time. Even the change over from windows xp to vista caused fewer issues than windows 10 is...

-end rant-

 

[USAFRet]

i have a fairly decent gaming rig, its a threadripper with a vega 64(all water cooled) and for the life of me, cant get quite a few newer games to play correctly....

Threadripper is not aimed at gaming, nor is a Vega GPU.

If Win 10 were this bad, I'm pretty sure we would have heard more about this over the last 3 years.
Sure, there are always outliers regarding crashes, etc. And people report this. Loudly.
But no OS is immune to that.

 

[USAFRet]

MERGED QUESTION
Question from Teddy Vetter : "Sad state of gaming on windows 10"

I've been pc gaming for 30 years, and i dont recall any time where i've had so many games not working/crashing as right now.... i cant help but feel this has something to do with the 6 month roll out of windows 10 versions, which annoyingly reset all your spyware settings(not that it matters according to the news just published... windows 10 spys on you no matter what settigns you use).

i have a fairly decent gaming rig, its a threadripper with a vega 64(all water cooled) and for the life of me, cant get quite a few newer games to play correctly....
fortnight crashes usually before i get to the ground and has been unplayable for over a year...
Rise of the tomb rader or shadow of the tomb rader also randomly crash and searching web forms show thousands of others who are hoping to find the "magic"combination to get the games to quit crashing.

I played through the earlier tomb rader game at the end of 2016 and the same hardware can no longer run that game(but i was on windows 7 with this computer at the time).....unless i go to linux... thats right... i broke down and installed linux and for the first time in quite a while and games actually ran better on that open source piece of crap that linux is(sorry linux fan boys, but no real support for gaming is there, it has crummy driver support and no settings to control hardware like windows) but in the end.... its working more reliably than windows 10(needless to say i dont have warm and fuzzy feelings about microsoft's recent endeavors)!!!!

While ive only listed 3 games here, i can easily say almost 1/2 of the games in my steam library crash randomly(over 10 games) and several other games which install off of dvd/cd's. Its not hardware either because there are quite a few games that are graphically intense(max the gfx card to 100% usage)and NEVER crash.

If i could install windows 7 on my current rig, i would... but microsoft BLOCKS windows update for my system even though there are drivers for all my hardware!!!

As backwards as it would be going back to a 10 year old OS, i would gladly do it as i know my kids computer which uses hardware thats only a generation older runs all these games without any issues(Intel 4690k and r9 390x) on windows 7... however, dual booting them to windows 10 and her computer crashes the same as mine.... so all i can say is this all appears to be a windows 10 issue. i dont know if programmers are having issues keeping up with the OS changing all the time or maybe the gfx drivers are... or maybe its a combination of the 2... but there shouldnt be so many issues with games crashing all the time. Even the change over from windows xp to vista caused fewer issues than windows 10 is...

-end rant-

 

[WildCard999]

You may want to list all specs including PSU. While TR4 isn't really made for gaming there's really no reason you should be crashing as often as you've stated unless your having a power issue with the PSU or overheating which shouldn't occur with water-cooling.

Unstable overclocks could cause crashes...

 

[USAFRet]

You may want to list all specs including PSU. While TR4 isn't really made for gaming there's really no reason you should be crashing as often as you've stated unless your having a power issue with the PSU or overheating which shouldn't occur with water-cooling.

Unstable overclocks could cause crashes...

Agreed.
This sounds like a hardware issue.

 

[Shoomer]

"Its not hardware either because....."

Well by that logic I can say it's not Windows 10. Because I use Windows 10, and I can't remember the last time I had a game crash (including the ones you mentioned). I don't think I've had a crash in the whole of 2018. So it's either something going on with your setup or you have a different version of Windows 10 to everybody else.

 

[Dugimodo]

Are you using the Ryzen master software and enabling game mode? Threadripper has a lot of known issues and was never really the best choice for a gaming CPU. Many games just don't know how to deal with that many cores.

Also your personal bad experience with windows 10 on one specific machine does not make it a universally "sad state of affairs" I have a Ryzen 2700X and a GTX 1070 running windows 10 and games do not crash on me and everything in my steam library plays just fine.

 

[TYPICALHUMAN]

Are you using the Ryzen master software and enabling game mode? Threadripper has a lot of known issues and was never really the best choice for a gaming CPU. Many games just don't know how to deal with that many cores.

Also your personal bad experience with windows 10 on one specific machine does not make it a universally "sad state of affairs" I have a Ryzen 2700X and a GTX 1070 running windows 10 and games do not crash on me and everything in my steam library plays just fine.

I didn't know that but If you claim that too many cores may cause game crashing issues, then disabling extra cores should turn out to be helpful. It can be accomplished via msconfig.

 

[Dugimodo]

Read this https://www.anandtech.com/show/11726/retesting-amd-ryzen-threadrippers-game-mode-halving-cores-for-more-performance
It'll explain better than I can. Game mode disables half the cores and reduces memory latency and can be toggled on and off with the ryzen master software and a reboot.

 

[Dugimodo]

Or here's a better one https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-game-performance,5207.html

Breaking Games
Some games simply won't load up when presented with Threadripper's 32 threads. That's right, AMD's flagship broke a few titles. The same thing will happen to Intel when its highest-end Skylake-X chips surface shortly.

Out of necessity, AMD created a Legacy Compatibility mode that executes a "bcdedit /set numproc XX" command in Windows. This command cuts the thread count in half. Fortunately, due to the operating system's default assignments, the command disables all of the cores/threads on the second die. That has a side benefit of eliminating thread-to-thread communication between disparate dies, solving the constant latency-inducing synchronization between threads during gaming workloads. It also prevents thread migration, lessening the chance of cache misses.

 

[Teddy Vetter]

Game mode, been there done that.. doesnt make a difference on games crashing.
I dont overclock, run at stock speeds on both cpu and gfx. The farthest ive pushed the cpu when i was overclocking is 4ghz and heat or crashing during encoding of video has never been an issue.

this is definitely a software issue .... since i posted earler today, i've spent the last 4 1/2 hours gaming on linux without a single crash on tomb raider.... which on windows i cant get to the first save point before it flakes out. If this were a hardware issue, it would crash the same regardless of operating system.

The entire point of my rant is this is a software issue.... back in the day, you may have some hiccups going from one os to another when Microsoft rolled out a new version... but aftrer a few months, the software and drivers were finalized and things got better.... Ive been gaming on win 10 for 2 years on this computer(1 1/2 for this gfx card) and ive noticed that the entire experience is getting buggier not better.... and while ive been on christmas vacation and trying to do some gaming, ive had some time to try and hunt down the cause of the crashing. Going to the forms for the various games are littered with pleas from gamers who bought the games but are unable to play due to the various games crashing... and just like me, some have noticed the issues crop up after microsoft forces one of its semi annual updates.... My machine was just forced to take the october update, you know, the one that accidentally was deleting people's documents/media files even if they were on a different drive from windows!!!(what the heck kind of bug is that) and this is the SECOND semi annual update rolled out that still has home networking broken(been broken since they removed homegroups).... were taling about MAJOR issues with BaSIC functionality are being left broken and buggy so microsoft can keep rolling out new versions of windows at breakneck speed.... i can only imaging that software developers have thrown up their hands and decided they will fix bugs in software when they get to them as the normal overtime crunch they face every 4 to 6 years now happens every 6 months....

personally, id be interested to see tomshardware put windows 7 up against the latests windows 10 on several hardware platforms and see where gaming stability lies.

 

[drivinfast247]

Easy fix. Uninstall Windows. Problem solved.

 

[WildCard999]

personally, id be interested to see tomshardware put windows 7 up against the latests windows 10 on several hardware platforms and see where gaming stability lies.

I'd take that bet on Win10, it's been stable on older systems I've upgraded (X4 965/R9 290 & X4 850/GT 1030) and newer systems (R5 2600/RX 580 & R7 2700X/GTX 1080 ti). No crashes, no BSOD, smooth as butter. This includes a valid Windows 10 Pro and unlicensed versions. Game mode works well but you can also add in active times so Windows won't update during that time.

You still have yet to lists your specs in detail.

 

[Teddy Vetter]

Specks-

cpu - 1900x which has 8 cores/16 threads... many other game on ryzen cpus without any errors due to number of cores, so as i stated before... this isn't the issue especially since i've had the games working at an earlier time on this very cpu and several games that crash in windows do not under linux( very limited number of games are ported to linux though) I have an aio cooler attached to the cpu.

motherboard- Asrock fatality x399 gaming board

ram- 16gb corsair ddr4 at rated speed (2666)

gfx- fronter edition vega 64(has 16bg of video ram) water cooled with after market cooler this card comes with professional drivers and gaming drivers(gaming drivers are the same as vega 64 drivers)

hdd - 265gb ssd for os is split in half to dual boot win 10 and linux mint. also have 6 TB of standard disks for documents and such.

Nothing here is out of the ordinary and when this system was built, at some point ive booted into and played most of the games I own. My issue is now after 1 3/4 years and 4 windows 10 revisions, many of those games that did work have major issues with stability. The computer passes all hardware/stability tests i can throw at it (3d mark/ Ada64/heaven benchmark) no crashes on these with 100% load, and temps never climb over 55deg c. Ive also tried several older driver revisions installed using driver cleaner... this helped my other computer with fortnight but not my current gaming pc.

As I've stated before, this is 100% not a hardware issue.... If anything someone could argue its a software issue due to unpopular hardware (remember nvidia owns 94% of the gfx gaming market, games work with nvidia much more than ati.)

My entire rant is over the sad state of quality control in computer gaming in general. In the past, the only times i saw issues was the first few months after an OS was released(especially vista) all your hardware makers put in lots of overtime putting out betas and working out the bugs. they also worked with the game programmers to get things working properly on all hardware.... Most OS's this buggy period lasts about a month or 2 at most, but vista was phased out over the rough transition from xp. Many people with more obscure hardware had major issues with things not working properly and in the end, had to replace hardware to get things working in vista or roll back to xp.

This thing i see going on with windows 10 is a new "os" is released 2 times a year.... the hardware makers NO LONGER put in the overtime to squish bugs as soon as they get done, microsoft releases another update..... its the new normal, and as far as i can tell... they just threw up their hands and ignore complaints. People with more obscure hardware are just left out in the cold. you say your pc is rock steady? good for you!! you want a cookie? For example, visit to epic's forms for fortnight and you will see some pc players haven't been able to play reliably for over a year.... I'm seeing large numbers of gamers on quite a few games, who can no longer play the game they paid for.... and as i've said before, many are noticing that the problems started after windows 10 went through one of its "os"upgrades.

 

[TYPICALHUMAN]

Why don't you put a fresh older version of Win 10 on your PC like 1709 or 1703 (plug off ethernet cable before proceeding with installation) and, then block windows update, install drivers, start a game ? At least you will see whether your hardware is the issue or not.

 

[Teddy Vetter]

Not going to bother, I already know it worked on earlier versions of Windows 10, but I would also have to hunt down and install all the drivers from that time to get the exact same experience.

I already have most of the games that are crashing on windows working just fine under Linux(again meaning this IS NOT A HARDWARE ISSUE). I’m going to have to go through the hassle to learn wine(but I don’t have much hope in translation layers.... no matter how hopeful/positive the Linux community is.) and see what that turns up...

I figure if all else fails, I’ll use hardware pass through to a windows 7 virtual image using KVM. I’ve done this in the past just playing around with Linux and it works pretty good, my only issues back then was home networking with the VM host wouldn’t work the way I wanted... that’s not an issue I would have with my current board.

The motherboard has extra network ports that I could permanently pass through to the win7 image to give it real access to my home network. With this being a virtual machine, Microsoft won’t block updates, and I can game in peace on a stable OS that isn’t constantly changing.

It’s just going to be a pain to set up and I shouldn’t have to do this if Microsoft got their crap together and made a decent OS instead of banking on making money off my privacy(which they currently are doing to all users).