Farcry 4 crashing to desktop, need help!

titaniumx3 · 18 Jul 2015 at 11:10

Hi,

Im having these annoying crashes in FC4 where the game just freezes, the screen goes black and comes out of fullscreen. At this point the game is still running in the background, but is completely unresponsive apart from audio which can still be heard. I then have to force it to close using task manager.

These crashes are sporadic, sometimes they happen immediately when I go into game, other times nothing happens for hours. Usually it's pretty obvious it's trigged by something, like entering a new area, mission, vehicle, etc. I play at max settings, but did turn of the simulated fur and soft shadows and it seems to help, but not completely. I don't want to turn off this hbao+ and enhanced godrays as they add to the image quality considerably.

Apart from these crashes, the game runs absolutely fine, which why it's so frustrating. Anyone have any ideas? I'm using a 980ti with the 353.30 drivers and have no problems in any other games. Also, I'm playing the steam bought version, but it also installed uplay when I first ran the game, is this normal? Also does the game update automatically? All setting in steam and uplay are set to update automatically, yet in the game main menu it says 1.10 in the bottom left of the screen. Is this the latest version, if not how at you meant to update? Are there but fixes?

Thank you!

DarrenM343 · 18 Jul 2015 at 12:38

I have worked around the problem by lowering the graphics settings. I think I just changed the custom option to Very high from Ultra which then automatically lowers various graphics settings. To be honest I have not noticed a drop in eye candy but the black screens/crashes have totally gone away. I initially let Geforce experience set the graphics properties and then just changed the one setting. I'll have a quick look in a minute and update my post with the actual setting I changed.

EDIT:It was the Graphics Quality setting that I set to Very High from Ultra.
Hope this helps. It's a great game but a pity this hasn't been fixed either by Ubisoft or by a driver workaround. I'm still only 42% through the game and been playing it on and off for months

1.10 is the latest version and correct it is self-updating.

titaniumx3 · 18 Jul 2015 at 16:19

Thanks. Yeah, that probably will work, but I find that unacceptable really. Shouldn't have to reduce graphical settings for stability, performance yes, but not stability.

I have read around and there seems to be quite a few other 980ti users having instability in this game, with the exact same type of crash I'm getting. Most say they same thing you are saying, i.e. reduce graphical settings, but others say it's indicative of system instability. Since all my other games are running fine, I'd opt for the former theory.

Not sure if it's a 980ti or driver issue, but I think I'll wait till new drivers come out, untill I start reducing graphical settings.

varkanoid · 18 Jul 2015 at 16:40

Far Cry 4 its a driver issue. Happened to me all the time. One best thing to try is in Control Panel under manage 3d Settings then program settings select Far Cry 4 or add it then select Anisotropic Filtering to 16x and power management mode to max performance. This helped a lot. If it still has problems also try turning off any gameworks settings.

DarrenM343 · 18 Jul 2015 at 18:35

titaniumx3 said:
Thanks. Yeah, that probably will work, but I find that unacceptable really. Shouldn't have to reduce graphical settings for stability, performance yes, but not stability.

I have read around and there seems to be quite a few other 980ti users having instability in this game, with the exact same type of crash I'm getting. Most say they same thing you are saying, i.e. reduce graphical settings, but others say it's indicative of system instability. Since all my other games are running fine, I'd opt for the former theory.

Not sure if it's a 980ti or driver issue, but I think I'll wait till new drivers come out, untill I start reducing graphical settings.

I agree, and seems to be Maxwell related but only specific to this game. Take all internet opinions with a pinch of salt. I'm fairly sure it's either the game or driver related - not the card. I've read of various things to try but doing what I said ONLY worked for me. The graphics card works fine on all other games except this one. I also tried down clocking it and it was still crashing. I started playing the game using a 780ti and it was fine too. Also some say it only appeared with the 1.10 update and think I was using the 780 ti with an earlier update so it's hard to know if that also would have had the same problem.
I agree you shouldn't have to change the settings to work around it but at least you can progress the game and I don't notice any difference in quality myself.

I don't think anyone knows if it's the driver or the game. I think the driver could probably work around a code (game) issue to resolve it, if ubisoft dont resolve it themselves. Or if purely a driver issue it's a shame it's not been resolved by now.