Shadows Crash My Graphics Driver

[amangiafico]

[FONT=&quot]My system includes an AMD RX 5700XT, and my previous graphics card was an AMD RX 590. In T:ANE, TRS 2019, and TRS 2022, when I enable shadows at any quality and any resolution, the game crashes after 2-10 minutes of editing or driving any route. Shadows seem to render fine, but the AMD control panel reports every time that the graphics driver has crashed.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]I've tried many, many steps to troubleshoot this issue including disabling or setting all graphics settings in TRS to the lowest settings, and setting all options in the AMD control panel to "let the application decide." I've tried setting all graphics settings (apart from developer settings) in TRS to every different value, and only disabling shadows fixes the issue.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]If there are any developer settings that I can enable to fix this issue, or any logs that might be helpful to submit, please let me know. I've never had an issue like this with any other game other than TRS, so I would assume that it's a game engine issue.[/FONT]

 

[ColPrice2002]

Hi,
just a couple of random thoughts:-
have you tried changing from DirectX to OpenGL from the launcher?
check your GPU’s cooling/temperatures - Trainz uses the GPU quite hard

Drivers - Eliteangerous players with AMD GPUs have reported problems and have had to use older drivers…or wait for another update..

regards
Colin

 

[amangiafico]

Thanks for the reply! Unless I'm missing something, the only option I see under "renderer" in the launcher is DirectX 11. My GPU is staying cool, and according to the AMD control panel it's not going above 60% utilization with shadows on. My drivers are also up to date and that hasn't fixed the issue either.

I actually have played Elite for a long time now and have never had any issues running that game on max settings, and given that this has been happening to me since T:ANE released through many many driver updates and two different GPUs, it seems to be a game engine issue or an issue with DirectX implementation.

 

[ColPrice2002]

Thanks for the update,
I guess I’m out of ideas…

good luck!

Colin

 

[MarcoLiondor]

I would like to add to this. I'm using a 6700xt with the 22.5.1 version of the drivers. I'm also running on an Intel 9700k. Temps are not an issue with this card, as well. However, in addition to shadows causing the drivers to crash, sometimes it'll also cause total visual corruption of my desktop until I can power cycle my GPU (usually by putting my computer into hibernation). When *not* using shaders, I get massive visual artifacting and render glitches which can become quite disruptive when rendering lots of items. Also when the game crashes my drivers, it becomes unresponsive and has to be force closed through task manager, neither using the close button or Alt+F4 will work.

 

[Tony_Hilliam]

If it's the driver crashing then it's a driver/hardware issue. A google search on "22.5.1 crashing" shows plenty of issues.
It sounds like full uninstall of the drivers and a reinstall may help.

 

[amangiafico]

As I stated in my initial post, this same issue also happened on my RX 590 with drivers from a couple years ago, so if this is a driver compatibility issue, it hasn't been solved by AMD in the last couple years. It's definitely not this driver version, it seems like an issue with how shadows are handled in TRS on RX-series AMD cards. In addition, even though OpenGL is supported on RX-series cards, it doesn't show up as an option in the launcher. Also, it bears restating that TRS is the only game I've played that exhibits behavior like this, including games that are known to have issues with AMD's drivers, and also games that are much more demanding on the GPU.

EDIT: I'm going to try Radeon Pro drivers and see if that has any effect.

EDIT2: Radeon Pro drivers had no effect, but setting all graphics settings to maximum, setting compatibility mode to "stream objects," and setting the render distance to minimum hasn't caused a crash yet. Seems like turning the render distance down prevents the driver from timing out for some reason.

 

[MarcoLiondor]

If it's the driver crashing then it's a driver/hardware issue. A google search on "22.5.1 crashing" shows plenty of issues.
It sounds like full uninstall of the drivers and a reinstall may help.

I've already done more than one fresh install of these drivers, using DDU, too. That hasn't done a thing.

I'm just going to go ahead and assume that the only option here is to submit crash reports to both AMD and the Trainz team and hope someone can fix it.

 

[clam1952]

Latest Drivers need the latest update to the OS, which may not help if using a new driver with an out of date OS build or an Old Driver with a New OS build.

Historically AMD GPUs work better with the latest blockbuster games often IMO at the expense of legacy stuff or unsupported by AMD ones. And I'm not Anti AMD I Have 2 Rigs with AMD CPUs, but prefer the reliability and overall compatibility of Nvidia GPUs.

If a GPU is working properly it should be close to 100% utilisation, less that that would indicate throttling by the CPU, meaning it can't keep up with the speed the GPU wants the data. What's that looking like Usage wise?

Is the PSU rating sufficient for an RX 5700XT which needs 600 watts, preferably of a high quality make, cheap PSU's are invariably not capable of the claimed wattage and insufficient power could cause a driver or PC crash.

Trainz is very demanding especially on the GPU so comparing with other "Games" won't help much especially if they are CPU bound rather than GPU bound games.

I'd suggest
1: Running UserBenchmark and post the results here, may indicate if there is a hardware issue, may not but gives us an indication of your setup https://www.userbenchmark.com/

2: Can I run it (for TRS22) Here https://www.pcgamebenchmark.com/trainz-railroad-simulator-2022-system-requirements

 

[amangiafico]

If a GPU is working properly it should be close to 100% utilisation, less that that would indicate throttling by the CPU, meaning it can't keep up with the speed the GPU wants the data. What's that looking like Usage wise?

Is the PSU rating sufficient for an RX 5700XT which needs 600 watts, preferably of a high quality make, cheap PSU's are invariably not capable of the claimed wattage insufficient power could cause a driver or PC crash.

I have an EVGA 1300 watt 80+ gold power supply, and my gpu doesn't go above 60% utilization with all settings apart from shadows on lowest quality. I may do some more testing with render distance to see what level causes instability, but for now, the game seems to be stable with all settings on maximum and render distance on minimum. I can't speak to other users' posts, but in my case the game is not gpu bound and my power supply is more than adequate. Seems like this is an AMD driver issue, so I'll try and reach out to them again.

In the meantime, for anyone that has this same issue, try turning the render distance down to minimum and increasing it from there, as that seems to prevent crashes while shadows are enabled.