Stutter, display driver crashes, and system lockups

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1

My problem began this afternoon. I started the game as normal and noticed a new stutter (spikes in frametime) when turning my camera in game using my mouse. While diagnosing this issue, including changing various graphics settings such as V-sync and Triple Buffering, I went through a series of display driver crashes, shown below.

Event 4101, Display
Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered.
Details: pastebin HKHEDuMw

The crashes happened one after another for several minutes; sometimes the driver would recover, sometimes the game would crash, sometimes explorer.exe would crash with it, and sometimes my screens would go black and force me to reboot.

After this first instance of back-to-back crashes, I rebooted my computer, started the game again, and continued to fiddle with with graphics settings. The stutter I originally noticed remained, but now I would reliably crash each time I attempted to close the game (via Esc, Exit Game), normally after being prompted with a “these settings will be applied next time you start the game’” message.

This time the display driver crashes would lock up my entire computer, including all other open programs and processes, forcing me to hard reboot the computer (by holding in the power button).

I again attempted to fix this issue by cleanly removing my video drivers (Nvidia Game Ready Driver 451.67 for the RTX 2080 Super) and reinstalling them. I also attempted to disable then delete all my AddOns, deleted the WTF and Cache folders, and uninstalled/reinstalled the game, checking whether each fixed the problem. Nothing I tried has fixed this issue. My computer is up-to-date running Windows 10 version 2004.

I’ve maybe narrowed it down–maybe not–to the Advanced graphics settings in-game, specifically Triple Buffering. Changing this setting and attempting to restart the game crashed my video drivers more reliably than any other setting. Changing the basic graphics settings in the Graphics menu did not produce a video driver crash.

DxDiag: pastebin sWhqfsXQ

2

Hey Diot,

This event error that you receive seems to indicate that there is potentially a problem with the graphics card drivers.

If you have the graphics card overclocked, then I would advise you to reduce the clocks to the reference levels. Then use this program to uninstall your display driver.

After that download the driver from the Nvidia website here.

3

Thank you for the suggestion. I already tried reinstalling my display drivers using that exact method, but that didn’t help. My GPU is not overclocked, but I do run MSI Afterburner and RivaTuner Statistics Server at all times to monitor framerates and frametimes.

A detail I left out yesterday: I have been using the new Windows 10 version 2004 graphics setting “Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling.” My game was not producing display driver crashes until yesterday, despite using this new setting for over a week, but a combination of RivaTuner and hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling seems to be causing the issues. See below.

I continued troubleshooting today. I was not able to reproduce any full system-wide freezes today under any circumstances. I changed nothing between now and yesterday, but there was a Windows 10 version 2004 cumulative update. I was still able to reproduce display driver crashes under very specific circumstances:

  • Enable Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling in Windows and allow RivaTuner to hook wow.exe, limit the framerate, and display an overlay. In-game, change any graphics setting in the Advanced graphics settings menu (I changed Triple Buffering from Disabled to Enabled back to Disabled). Press Apply (there is rather long 3-5 second freeze), wait for the settings to be applied, then press the Windows key on your keyboard. The Start menu appears over the game, then the display driver crashes and recovers exactly twice before returning to normal. Alternatively, instead of pressing the Windows key, press Esc to open the game menu, then press Exit Game. This causes the display driver to crash once as the game closes (previously this would cause a system-wide freeze requiring a hard reboot).

I was able to prevent display driver crashes with either of these two fixes:

  • Fix 1: Disable Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling but allow RivaTuner to hook wow.exe, limit the framerate, and show an overlay.
  • Fix 2: Enable Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling but disallow RivaTuner from hooking wow.exe.

So the problem seems to be some sort of interaction between Windows’ new Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling, RivaTuner Statistics Server, and maybe DirectX 12.

I should note the original issue with significant stutters and hangs, which led to me discovering this issue with the display driver, persists through all of this. I wasn’t able to find a solution, but I the stutters/hangs seem to happen a lot more in Rustbolt on Mechagon island.

I’ve submitted this issue as a bug report with a link to this thread, in case you want to track the interaction of any of these third party programs/settings with WoW.

Edit: After playing the game as normal for a few hours, I can safely say the original issue with significant stutters and hangs is limited to Rustbolt on Mechagon island. I’d consider all issues in this thread closed, although I’d be interested to know what the devs think about the settings/programs mentioned above.

4

I’ve same problem currently, it has been a problem for one week but I didn’t find anything which would resolve this problem.

My pc is 7y.o. but until now it was smooth experience, I hope I’ll be able to play SL with this pc until I made new one.

DxDiag info: https // gofile io d/ipjJIY

Thanks for your time and help. Ps: no I cannot use DirectX12.