Cities: Skylines crashes regularly unless I force DirectX 9. What is my problem?

[Khev]

I played the game for 7 hours or so before I started having any difficulties at all. Then, the game would crash my system (forcing me to do a hard reset) quite frequently, which seemed to be triggered by zooming in and out. I checked my drivers and saw they needed updating, so I updated them to the latest version. After that, the game no longer crashed my entire system, but cities.exe would stop working under the same conditions.

I know my system specs are a bit low, and it might be that I need a GPU and/or CPU upgrade (which I'm planning on doing), but I do exceed the stated min specs, so it seems I shouldn't be experiencing crashes. Forcing the game to run with DirectX 9 seems to solve the problem, though at the cost of graphics quality. I've had zero crashes since forcing DirectX 9.

I'd appreciate any suggestions you might have. I'd especially like to know of upgrading my GPU or CPU is likely to solve the problem.

Graphics card: Radeon HD 6770

CPU: AMD FX 4100

8 GB RAM

 

[Brazilian Joe]

I always suggest a crash-solving-101 to see if matters improve:

chkdsk
defrag
(filesystem defects and excessive fragmentation can cause instability)
if still having trouble:
Clean gfx driver install
if still having trouble:
Hardcore gfx driver reinstall (uninstall, boot in safe mode, remove gfx driver folders, edit registry, delete all references, reboot in normal mode, reinstall - get a howto on the internet!)

If still having trouble:
Bug report ( you just did it! )

 

[Method0ne]

Forcing the game to run with DirectX 9 seems to solve the problem, though at the cost of graphics quality.

This is a fallacy, there is no graphical difference between the DirectX 9 and 11 versions, since there are no DX11 functions in the game whatsoever at this point.

 

[Brazilian Joe]

This is a fallacy, there is no graphical difference between the DirectX 9 and 11 versions, since there are no DX11 functions in the game whatsoever at this point.

There are things which merely perform better, and there are thing which definitely look better with new method introduced by a newer DX version. I don't know for a fact that there are ONLY performance-related DX11 code paths on CSL. There may be visual differences as well.

But it's ancillary to OP's problem. Even if there's no visual difference, there would be a performance difference, and even CO does not recommend DX9 as a long-term solution, although it recommends as a workaround/debug step.

 

[Method0ne]

There may be visual differences as well.

If I could find the thread and/or post, I'd directly link to it, but at least one CO staff member has stated exactly what I did.