F-4E Crashes constantly

[Flappie]

I'll add your solution to the list.

I'm pretty sure that if you remove the TDR delay you added in regedit, DCS won't crash anymore.

[zaelu]

On 6/20/2024 at 6:42 PM, Flappie said:

I'll add your solution to the list.

I'm pretty sure that if you remove the TDR delay you added in regedit, DCS won't crash anymore.

Can it have bad side effects that registry setting? Thanks.

[Flappie]

11 hours ago, zaelu said:

Can it have bad side effects that registry setting? Thanks.

Bad in the sense that it would damage your hardware? I don't think so.

I quote this website about a 3D video rendering software:

Quote

Before the TDR mechanism was invented, we could only reboot the computer after GPU crashed. So this feature is very useful for ordinary users. But for the development and debugging of GPU parallel computing, especially 3D visualization software that has a large demand for video cards, such as D5 Render (real-time ray tracing rendering), the default value may be too low. Therefore, you need to follow the above steps to increase how long your computer waits for the GPU to respond.

Except that here, we're not rendering videos to be played later on, we're playing a video game (I said the forbidden word ) : the rendering of each frame needs to be super fast because we are watching the action unfolding. It's even bigger than that, we are the action: our inputs constantly change the velocity, the point of view (headtracking, switching views..) and the scene ('splosions!).

A good GPU should answer right away with any game, and if it does not, it's a problem and you'd like to be informed of the problem.

With the default TDR timeout, DirectX tells DCS when your GPU doesn't answer in the expected timing ("DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_REMOVED"). This results in a DCS crash, then you regain control over your PC. It's a failure detection, just as a smart car would automatically stop when it detects the road ends.

With a longer custom TDR timeout, DCS will wait and you will get a freeze instead of a crash. If it's a short freeze, you'll see stutter. If it's an "eternal" freeze, your PC will wait longer, until your custom TDR timeout is elapsed, then DCS will  crash and your will regain control over your PC.

As a conclusion, it's OK to use a longer custom TDR, as long as you know its value, and that you know exactly what happens when your PC starts freezing: your GPU is in a coma, and it should not be.