PC - I keep getting crashes in multimen matches

[cloudropis]

I have a i5 4690k + RX 580 4GB + 8GB RAM PC. Game runs great maxed out at 1080p, but it gets extremely crash heavy with too many *active* wrestlers in the ring.
I tried doing multiple 8-men elimination matches and all of them led to a crash after only a few minutes. I then tried doing a six-men ladder match and that one also crashed, albeit it lasted quite a few minutes more. I did however manage to complete a 4 vs 4 tag match, which makes me think the problem is having too many wrestlers interacting with each other at the same time rather than just being in the match. 
The crash is completely sudden, I don't know what kind of information I could provide about it. It's not even preceded by performance loss or anything like that (even though simultaneous 8-men matches make the framerate dip below 55 sometimes), it just goes and crashes.
Any help?

[Cave Waverider]

Is it just a crash to desktop, does your system hang or do you get a blue/green screen?

In any case, check out the Windows Event viewer under Windows Logs->Application and Logs->System to see if the game, driver or anything else reports something at the time of the crash which may give a hint at what the culprit could be. Also check Reliability history of your system and see if anything pops up there.

It might be that like your system is unstable for some reason.

Since it's summer, could it be a heat problem? How hot are your GPU and CPU cores etc. when the crashes occur? Are they within specs?

If you have any overclocks active on CPU, memory or video card (also any factory overclocks on the video card, XMP on the memory etc.), try to dial them down and see if that helps. You could also try to disable 

Maybe your PC is running out of memory, too. If you're running Windows 10, you could try to install Intelligent Standby List Cleaner and see if that helps (run it and click the "Start the app minimized and auto start monitoring" checkbox so it remains resident and cleans up your standby memory list once it gets close to full). Having this tool run is a good idea anyway, due to the Windows 10 Standby List issues that will fill up all your memory and cause performance to degrade over time.

You could also try completely uninstalling your video card driver using Display Driver Uninstaller (choose the Safe mode option) and installing a new version to see if that helps.

[cloudropis]

@Cave Waverider thanks for the help

>what kind of crash

I get Windows' "[name of the executable] stopped responding" and it simply crashes to desktop

>event viewer

I get the regular crash report under Logs > Application, WWE2k19_x64.exe crashed with generic 0x0000005 code. Nothing related to the time of crashes under Logs > System though. I had to check this stuff the last few days due to having crashes with another game (luckily I can 100% guarantee it's a common, well reported issue and not my machine's fault for that one), and from there I learned that if there are no events under Logs > System comparable to the time of the application crash it should mean lack of memory probably isn't to blame. Is that right?

>heat

When I tested for that other game, just a couple of days ago, my hardware temps were good, GPU peaking at 67 degrees celsius on a game much more intensive than 2K19 (it was Hitman 2 for reference). I moved my machine to my dedicated summer room which has temps below 30 all the time, plus it gets great airflow. Heat shouldn't be an issue, it's pretty much one of the coolest places in my whole nation lol.

>OC

Nope, everything is at stock clock.

>Intelligent Standby List Cleaner

First time I hear of this, sounds pretty cool and will definitely give it a try. I upgraded from W8.1 to 10 a few months ago and I did notice that games are a bit more crash prone since then. I heard nightmarish stuff about this Creator update, so it's may be worth a shot (even though I usually don't get microstutters and I always close my most RAM intensive programs before playing games). I may also give a memtest run and see how it goes.

>DDU

Yep, this was on my to-do list after slightly botching driver installation when I got this GPU (I installed the outdated catalyst suite on top of the current one by mistake, and it kept nagging me every system startup). I'm currently at the lastest driver and system is generally very stable, but the few times I get BSODs and such I get error codes vaguely related to driver issues. Looks like it's time to use DDU

 

Again, thanks for the help so far. I know I can try lowering some graphical settings, including disabling the new lightning according to this. This is not a solution obviously, but do you think it may be worth testing the game under those conditions I crashed in with reduced settings to help pinpoint the problem?

 

[Cave Waverider]

4 hours ago, cloudropis said:

 Again, thanks for the help so far. I know I can try lowering some graphical settings, including disabling the new lightning according to this. This is not a solution obviously, but do you think it may be worth testing the game under those conditions I crashed in with reduced settings to help pinpoint the problem?

You could try, but since you are getting BSODs and other errors on the system as well, it isn't likely to really help (there could be a placebo effect).

Running memtest overnight isn't a bad idea as bad memory can cause all sorts of issues, although make sure it's a 64 bit version so it can actually address and test all the memory in your system. Sometimes disabling XMP on the memory in the BIOS and manually setting the same speed, timings and voltage XMP does on the memory can help with system stability as well (yes, it sounds odd, but XMP seems to be more and more flaky these days).

Definitely uninstall the drivers using DDU in safe mode, then reinstall the latest drivers (check out the Guru3D AMD Radeon Drivers forums for the latest drivers). Since reading about your driver conflicts, I have the feeling it is likely to solve your issue. Always use DDU in safe mode before installing a new GPU driver to prevent any issues.

If that doesn't help, especially since you mentioned an upgrade from Windows 8 to 10 and crashes appearing thereafter, it might be a good idea to do a clean installation (wipe your OS drive's partitions and let Windows 10 create a new one during installation) of the latest version of Windows 10 (download the latest version of the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool from Microsoft and create an installation DVD or USB stick with it) instead, without installing any older versions first (also use DDU to uninstall the stock drivers that come with Windows 10 first and install the latest ones then, of course). Don't forget to backup all the important stuff on the SSD/HDD the OS is installed on beforehand, though.

[cloudropis]

22 minutes ago, Cave Waverider said:

You could try, but since you are getting BSODs and other errors on the system as well, it isn't likely to really help (there could be a placebo effect).

Running memtest overnight isn't a bad idea as bad memory can cause all sorts of issues, although make sure it's a 64 bit version so it can actually address and test all the memory in your system. Sometimes disabling XMP on the memory in the BIOS and manually setting the same speed, timings and voltage XMP does on the memory can help with system stability as well (yes, it sounds odd, but XMP seems to be more and more flaky these days).

Definitely uninstall the drivers using DDU in safe mode, then reinstall the latest drivers (check out the Guru3D AMD Radeon Drivers forums for the latest drivers). Since reading about your driver conflicts, I have the feeling it is likely to solve your issue. Always use DDU in safe mode before installing a new GPU driver to prevent any issues.

If that doesn't help, especially since you mentioned an upgrade from Windows 8 to 10 and crashes appearing thereafter, it might be a good idea to do a clean installation (wipe your OS drive's partitions and let Windows 10 create a new one during installation) of the latest version of Windows 10 (download the latest version of the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool from Microsoft and create an installation DVD or USB stick with it) instead, without installing any older versions first (also use DDU to uninstall the stock drivers that come with Windows 10 first and install the latest ones then, of course). Don't forget to backup all the important stuff on the SSD/HDD the OS is installed on beforehand, though.

Today I got a full BSOD during a 6-men match, I ended up taking the whole thing to Tom's Hardware because it really looks like there's some deep rooted issue in my machine here. I've actually been getting those kind of BSODs since I built it three years ago, albeit rarely, and most of them were vaguely related to running out of VRAM, so I assumed that after upgrading from my GTX 960 it would sort itself out. After the last few days it's apparently a much bigger issue, so yeah, I'm gonna play around with updates, drives, memtests etc for the next few days. 

Thanks a lot for the help so far, hope I'll manage to get to the root of this, will report if successful (also, WWE 2k19 will basically be my benchmark tool to test whether I fixed the issue or not)