Graphically demanding games crashing to desktop without errors.

[X82]

For a while now I've been suffering with this issue and frankly, I'm tired of it. All I want it to know what is as fault. Obviously I would like the issue resolved but failing that, I want to be able to point a component and know that is the cause.

Firstly, full specs here. I used Speccy to give me everything in case it is helpful.

When playing games like Arma 3, or more recently Ghost Recon Wildlands, the game will run just fine for an unspecified amount of time before it will freeze. About 3/7 seconds later I hit the desktop. No error message, no dialogue boxes, nothing.
Event viewer shows me nothing either.
This does happen in other games, but those are the only two I have installed right now.
All drivers are up to date, as is the BIOS.
Memory tests are all OK.

The only thing which I haven't tried is messing with the video cards voltage, memory etc. But obviously I don't want to mess with things I have no idea about.
The graphics card is a GeForce GTX 1060 WINDFORCE OC 3G. I'm not running any afterburner or 3rd party software. Using latest Nvidia drivers 417.35.
When googling, I've come across VGA BIOS files, one seemed to look never than mine. But again, worried about messing with those.

Just to add, I can sometimes play a game like Arma 3 for maybe an hour, max two before this issue happens. In a game like Ghost Recon Wildlands, maybe 20 minutes to half an hour. But it happens every time.
Last night for example, Arma 3 crashed like this 3 times in 30 minutes.

Can any wizard help me finally get to the bottom of this? Or is it a case of, it's just the way PC gaming is?

 

[X82]

Ah yes, the part I forgot.
I believe it is a Corsair 1000W doohicky.

 

[X82]

So nothing at all in Event Viewer and no 'vga driver has stopped working' etc? I dont play those games so have no idea of their stability. Maybe just bumping cpu/ram/gpu voltage a tad might help but the fact you are getting no error is puzzling.

EDIT: Are you running any software in the background while playing, streaming/recording etc?

There is nothing in the event viewer no. I used to get those stopped working messages, but in recent Windows 10 builds, that seemed to have stopped.
I do run GeForce experience, but in fairness this problem has been happening long before I installed that.

I would try reseating your ram and gpu. What you are getting normally means an unstable over clock or less likely a power issue if there are no errors. My old rx280 had to be underclocked a little to be stable.

The problem I have is I don't know what the correct, or appropriate voltages and settings need to be. I don't want to start moving sliders down without knowing what I am doing.

Physical Memory
Memory Usage 34 %
Total Physical 16 GB
Available Physical 10 GB
Total Virtual 19 GB
Available Virtual 8.44 GB

Something funky going on here to me.

I don't know if this helps.

 

[X82]

Just tried some basic monitoring with afterburner. Not sure really what it tells me. 97% GPU usage while gaming, then it freezes, sound continues for a bit, then crashes. Soon as it freezes GPU drops to 0%.
Which is pretty obvious I think.
Is there any other way of monitoring what is going on?
It is depressing now since I can't play games for long at all before it crashes with NO error and NO logs.

 

[X82]

This has been a problem in fairness for over a year. I usually put it down to games being games. But in recent months/weeks, I'm just tired of it and hoping to get to the bottom of it.

My graphics card is factory overclocked. I made some tweaks in afterburner (core clock +120, memory clock +570) which seem stable. Arma 3 hasn't crashed yet, but that could be arma.
Ghost Recon Wildlands however, keeps crashing every 15 minutes.

No BIOS tweaks, everything is stock there.

 

[X82]

No, no overlay.
The frustrating thing is a lack of logs or error messages. Games just drop the desktop.
I wish there was a decent monitoring programme that would tell me what happened, or what failed.

I don't know if this is helpful, but here is my hardware monitoring in afterburner.

 

[X82]

Run everything at stock but put power limit to +20% and see if it still crashes

I can only go to 116 from 100. I will try that however.

Daft question but when did you take that Speccy? Had you been using pc to game prior or was it just idling?

It was idling. I installed it and run it to get data for this post.

 

[X82]

Try running your card at reference speeds or even a little lower as a test.

I don't fully understand that. What I was trying to find out is what the stock nvidia settings are. As in a non OC device. Then lower my card to those settings. But I can't find out what the stock are, I don't want to move sliders down without a frame of reference.

Since upping the power limit to the max (116), it seems to behave. Not touched voltage, unsure if I need to mess with that.
Although I did get a bluescreen VIDEO DXGKRNL FATAL ERROR since reboot, I've managed to play Ghost Recon for about an hour with no issues. Maybe I got lucky however.

 

[X82]

If you look at the first released versions of your card type they are usually at reference settings, often the first reviews show these. I did this for my old rx280 which was only stable at non overclocked speeds.

Having said that if it is now stable just carry on as you are.

both games crashed shortly after I posted. I managed to find the reference details, but it's getting into afterburner.

Clock Speeds
GPU Clock
1506 MHz
Boost Clock
1708 MHz
Memory Clock
2002 MHz
8008 MHz effective

I don't know how to change it to match 1506. I'm assuming curves (helpfully hidden and bound to ctrl+f), so I assume I make a straight line with the curves window?
I also can't find anywhere to change the boost settings either.