BATTLETECH - Crashing PC during battle

[Seoulcaliper]

One line summary of your issue
Crashing PC during battle

What platform are you running the game on?

Steam

What operating system do you use?
Windows 10
What version are you running?
1.2.0-345R

Please explain your issue is in as much detail as possible.
I have not had any instability issues up until this week. The game seems to be fine during cutscenes or while in the various Argo screens. When starting a battle the game will run for short period of time, from 1 to a few minutes, before the screen will go to a blank solid color, and the sound repeats in a loop. This is causing a whole system lock-up. I cannot Alt+F4 the game, Ctrl+Alt+Del, etc. I am forced to do a hard reboot. I was previously running Nvidia GPU driver 397.64, I have updated to most recent 399.07 I have also update MB BIOS/UEFI (ASRock Fatal1ty X299) from 1.50 to 1.80. These did not help. Disabled Sophos AV and same result. When in a battle it does not matter if I am actively commanding units or not. Just allowing the battle map to sit idle will still cause a crash. I can play other steam games, and I ran a 3DMark stress test and it did not have an issue, so it does not *appear* to be PSU/hardware related. I removed and reseated the GPU just to give it a try. I have tried different missions on different terrain types, both side contract and story mission, they all have the same result now. Since the system is crashing, not just application, I am not getting crash logs to be able to upload.

Steps to reproduce the issue
Play game, start a battle.

Attach DxDiag (PC) or System Info (Mac)

Attach Output Log

Attach Crash Log

Attach save file

Attach screenshot / video

 

[Seoulcaliper]

I forgot to include: I was originally running on top graphical settings, I have bumped them down for testing. I have also tried fullscreen vs windowed, and I have uninstalled and reinstalled the game. None have helped the issue.

 

[AndrewT]

Please report the temperatures of your CPU and video (GPU)
1/ before starting the game up and
2/ in the main game menu
3/ after say 10 minutes' play, or as far as you get at least
If your PC's vendor has given you no way of reading temperatures, install
SPEEDFAN http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php

 

[Seoulcaliper]

Please report the temperatures of your CPU and video (GPU)
1/ before starting the game up and
2/ in the main game menu
3/ after say 10 minutes' play, or as far as you get at least
If your PC's vendor has given you no way of reading temperatures, install
SPEEDFAN http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php

Summary of temps here. Additionally, an Excel spreadsheet is attached from MSI Afterburner logging. I did not have Afterburner installed until today, so it would not have been the cause of the instability. Specs seem fine until a savegame is loaded and the GPU utilization immediately spikes to 100% and remains that way until system crash.

Sitting at Win10 desktop [idle] all afternoon:
GPU 33°C, CPU 37°C

Open BattleTech, let cutscene roll and sit at main menu ~6 minutes:
GPU 34-35°C, CPU ~44-50°C

Load savegame, sit at Argo screen (GPU spikes to 100% util. immediately on load)
GPU 45-50°C, CPU ~40-45°C

Launch contract from Argo screen. Sit idle on battlefield (no user input).
GPU 45-50°C, CPU ~45°C

Start playing mission. I got about 1 minute of clicking. No actual combat started before system crash. Had to hard boot.
GPU 45-50°C, CPU 40-45°C

 

[AndrewT]

Those temperatures are fine; indeed I'd say somewhat weirdly low given the GPU is at 100%!

I have not had any instability issues up until this week.

Was this with the 1.2 patch? If you are not sure you could try reverting to the previous versions 1.1.2 in the Steam betas tab for this game, and see if you still have this problem.

 

[Seoulcaliper]

Those temperatures are fine; indeed I'd say somewhat weirdly low given the GPU is at 100%!


Was this with the 1.2 patch? If you are not sure you could try reverting to the previous versions 1.1.2 in the Steam betas tab for this game, and see if you still have this problem.

When I installed Afterburner I set a fan profile that ramped up pretty high to keep it cool--could be why the temp was low. It was getting to ~60C during 3DMark stress tests before. No instability issues prior to last Monday (03-Sep-2018). I have 60 hours in campaign and never a crash until last week.

As a side note, once it started crashing while awaiting possible fixes I purchased Two Point Hospital (also a Unity engine game) and it crashed almost immediately upon starting the first tutorial level. I tried Vermintide 2 (not Unity) and no crash. I'm unsure what this indicates.

I will try rolling Battletech back to a previous version and see what the outcome is. Thank you.

 

[Seoulcaliper]

Those temperatures are fine; indeed I'd say somewhat weirdly low given the GPU is at 100%!


Was this with the 1.2 patch? If you are not sure you could try reverting to the previous versions 1.1.2 in the Steam betas tab for this game, and see if you still have this problem.

I ran DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) in Win10 safe mode and after reboot did clean install option on the Nvidia driver that just came out on the 10-Sep-2018, v399.24.

I was able to interact with battle for a good 15 minutes or so without crashing today. It *appears* that the driver may have remedied the situation. I will try to get a good game session in this week to verify.

Apologies, my gaming time is sometimes limited with work, kids, and kids' activities but I wanted to follow up for others who may be having a similar issue. I will provide more definitive answer one way or the other in the next couple days. ​