(SOLVED) How to tell if RAM settings are causing a game to crash to desktop?

Associate
Joined
15 Apr 2016
Posts
1,173
EDIT/Solved, as Tetras mentioned below, the stock frequency for my CPU is 3200Mhz so setting that manually in my BIOS and letting my motherboard choose the voltage (1.361v) seems to have done the trick.


One of my games (BFV) crashes to desktop about twice a week, I'm not sure but it might have started around the time I installed different RAM so is there any way to tell if that's what's causing it? I've been playing BFV for a few years and don't recall it ever happening much before but also no other games are crashing since installing the RAM either. Strangly my system also seems to freeze/hang then restart itself about once every two weeks, ususally it's while playing BFV but it happend last week while watching a YT video.

So if a game is crashing to desktop with zero error message or just freezing and rebooting where and what could I look for in Event Viewer?

My system is fairly empty with regards to software and unwanted files and is kept clean with regular use of CCleaner and Spybot (in fact i removed Spybot recently as an experiment because there was always some knind of message in event viewer about it just before BFV crashed) and there is the absolute minimum processes running in the background and for the most part it is very stable, it never crashes when playing other games for long periods and the freeze while watching YT was very rare so it mainly seems to be BFV related but possibly only since I installed new RAM.
 
Last edited:
Don't forget that while you have RAM that is guaranteed to run at that speed, your motherboard is not. XMP is overclock part of your motherboard, which means it may not work. Your RAM may be fine but your motherboard is not. So yes, it sounds very much like you are pushing your motherboard too far. Tweak the RAM settings down a little.
 
Don't forget that while you have RAM that is guaranteed to run at that speed, your motherboard is not. XMP is overclock part of your motherboard, which means it may not work. Your RAM may be fine but your motherboard is not. So yes, it sounds very much like you are pushing your motherboard too far. Tweak the RAM settings down a little.

Turn down what, the frequency?

Turn XMP off and see if the issue remains.

That's a good idea, I'll do that first.

This is what it looks like currently:

51924014713_416411b327_o.jpg


51922945332_89c75af75f_o.jpg
 
Last edited:
The only options I have for XMP are Auto, Manual, XMP 1 and XMP 2 so I guess I want Auto for now? I seem to remember I had instability with XMP 2 but for the most part XMP 1 worked fine. The games crashing to desktop are not so frequent (like once a week at most) so it'll take a while to see if there is any improvement with XMP set to Auto. If I can help it I don't want to permanently have XMP off because IIRC it sets the frequency to just 2666Hz or something like that.
 
If I can help it I don't want to permanently have XMP off because IIRC it sets the frequency to just 2666Hz or something like that.

If you disable the xmp setting and it stays stable then you can start to manually increase the speed again (in steps) for a week or so at a time until it starts to crash again. You can also see if your motherboard has software that allows you to down clock your system when you play that one game that causes the crash and try that. Then you can keep your settings for most games
 
If you disable the xmp setting and it stays stable then you can start to manually increase the speed again (in steps) for a week or so at a time until it starts to crash again. You can also see if your motherboard has software that allows you to down clock your system when you play that one game that causes the crash and try that. Then you can keep your settings for most games
So by Disabled, do we mean Auto on my board?
 
I've set everything RAM related to AUTO and manually set the frequency to 3200Mhz so I'll see how I get on with that. I'll still do a Memtest over night in a few days time.
 
Left everything else at Auto for the min because I can't find what voltage I need for my RAM.
Look at the SPD tab of CPU-Z. Gaming memory can't usually run 3200 Mhz at 1.2v, but some OEM/JEDEC timings ram can. I expect it will be at least 1.35v. If you're running default timings it may run at that speed, but since you're testing for stability here, effectively undervolting your RAM doesn't seem wise.
 
Back
Top Bottom