Hi all,
I came here from the Dreadful performance thread. I also experience CTDs every time I play. Filed a bug report in Zendesk and attached 4 crash reports already.
After reading your replies and some replies from a FB group I thought there could be 2 factors causing this: overheating or XBox app. I tried two things recently to fight both. Usually I had XBox Game bar on with performance graph meter. I switched it off and additionally I opened my PC case to allow better heat dissipation. I could play almost 3 hoours. I could never play that long before. I decided to try what happens when I open XBox Game bar again. And it crashed after ca 30 minutes. So I switched it off. Then I tried to close my PC case again and watch the temps. The CPU and GPU got warmer indeed as expected, although not too much: CPU temp gained 5 C and GPU more less the same. It crashed also after abut 30 minutes.
My CPU temp during gampeplay is about 70 C and GPU 65 C when the case is closed. When It’s open the CPU temp goes down to 65 C and GPU to 58-60 max.
I don’t think the temps cause this, but the fact is that I could play hours when I opened my case. Previously an hour was the maximum. After the first crash previously I could play for about 30-40 minutes and it crashed again more and more often.
So the evidence isn’t clear enough to say it’s the heat that cause this, although it may increase the chance of the crash. Same for the XBOx game bar.
However I also noticed that my PSU gets really warm and keeps its fan spinning at maximum when I play. Both with opened and closed case. Perhaps it has something to do with these crashes then. Perhaps the power becomes not stable enough to keep the gameplay running. Not sure, but I ordered a new PSU with a higher wattage (curently have 500W and ordered 650W). The current PSU should provide enough power without any problem as the whole PC consumes about 370W, so there’re still spare 130W, but it makes more noise than my PC case, CPU and 3 GPU fans altogether. So I decided to replace it to a much better one and also quieter one, which is Gold rating (the current one hasn’t got any rating).
Let’s see if the better PSU changes something. I’ll share my observations with you.
PS. I’ve got no OC enabled for anything, just the factory boost CPU clock (3.8 GHz for my i5-3670K). The CPU does not engage any thermal throttling