ARC A770 16GB - Games crash or don't start up

[AlchemistRaptor]

Dear Intel support

I have received my new ARC A770 16GB Limited Edition earlier today, and installed it in my PC, very excited! I made sure to clean off all the previous drivers off my system with DDU and do a fresh install of the Intel drivers. A curious thing is that task manager shows driver version 4826, as does GPU-Z. However, ARC Control shows driver version 4577. Strange...

Unfortunately my initial excitement was dampened pretty quickly when I realized that upon starting my main game (F1 23), it would show the intro and the first "press any button to continue" screen, but would crash to desktop right after it started loading the main menu (and other things in the background, I'm assuming). I tried other games as well; GTA Online crashed at first as well, but then I lowered the graphics settings, and it seemed to work for the 15-ish minutes that I tested it.

I tried Rocket League, that ran flawlessly no matter the settings. Now comes the interesting part.

Tried running Rise Of The Tomb Raider, and here I have come to some interesting observations. If I run the game with "Texture quality" set to "High", it runs beautifully without issues. When setting it to "Very high" in the main menu, the game crashes upon loading in. When setting it from "High" to "Very high" when already in game, it shows the message "swapping textures" and after a few seconds it crashes.

I opened task manager on my second screen looking at the statistics and I noticed that on "High" settings, the game uses around 3.8 - 4.0GB of Dedicated GPU memory. When changing it to "Very high" however, as the game is swapping the textures, the memory usage is going up and up and up (which is normal), and when it reaches around 7GB the game crashes (which isn't normal).

This leads me to believe that my card has some kind of memory problem. Rocket League is a very light game and so it runs perfectly on max graphics because video memory usage never reaches 7GB. GTA 5 crashed on max graphics as well but ran once I lowered the graphics some. F1 23 seems to be loading everything right at the beginning when loading into the menu, so the game crashes before it can ever load the menu.

Is there any way I can test the video memory of this card specifically?

Extra info:

- When there is a crash, Steam and Discord often crash together with the game itself which is strange, but there is never any error message, except with Tomb Raider; that one asks me to run a verification on the installed game files

- My PC is relatively new (built a month ago) but has already seen four different graphics cards and I didn't have these exact type of issues with either one of the other three (RTX 2060, ARC A750, GTX 1630 and now ARC A770)

- ReBAR was enabled, is now disabled to see if that makes a difference (but it didn't sadly)

- CPU is an Intel i7 13700 and I have a 850W Gigabyte PSU.

If there is any extra info I can help you with, I'm happy to help!

Also, a swift reply would be very very appreciated because I guess I only have a limited time window in which I can send the card back to the retailer to ask for a refund in case it's faulty.

Thanks so much!

Joe

[AlchemistRaptor]

A little update.

The fact that other programs sometimes close as well when a game crashes leads me to believe that it might be a problem where my whole system runs out of memory.

I have 16GB of DDR5 memory installed and I figured that would be enough for most games, however my suspicions at the moment are that in Windows we have a feature called "Shared GPU memory". This is DDR5 system memory that the system shares with the graphics card memory. In my case this is completely unnecessary since the card itself has 16GB of memory so it's nearly impossible for me to run out of video memory, yet my PC still decides to use shared GPU memory.

My theory is that at the moment for some reason my system prioritizes using shared GPU memory instead of the actual 16 GB of GDDR6 memory built into the ARC graphics card. That may be sipping just enough system memory away to make the game crash as well as the system closing other programs to free up memory.

This is just a theory but I don't see why my system needs to reserve half (!) of all my memory for shared GPU memory especially when my graphics card has an absolute buttload of GDDR6 memory... Does anyone know how to decrease this shared GPU memory? Or how to make the system only use it as a last resort when all the dedicated GPU memory is full? At the moment there is more shared GPU memory being used than actual GPU memory which is frankly ridiculous and unnecessary.

I read about it on other forums but it appears to be a BIOS thing; however I found no option for this in my BIOS.

My motherboard is the Gigabyte B760 Gaming X AX. Thanks!

EDIT: on the other hand, now I tried starting F1 23 again three times in a row and when starting the game, it crashes after just a few seconds of black screen now and the dedicated GPU memory does seem to rise, however the shared GPU usage doesn't seem to rise. So perhaps this isn't the issue after all (please see the second screenshot; you can see the three spikes where I tried to start the game three times and it instantly crashing).

[AlchemistRaptor]

Update!

I had a hunch that it was going to be a memory issue, even though my memory itself never showed even being close to fully utilized. I ended up going to the shops and picking up another identical set of 16GB memory, and installing it in my system, making it a total of 32GB now.

I tested F1, it started up right away, and was able to put the graphics up to maximum without issues.

Tested Tomb Raider as well, turned up the settings in-game to "very high" textures, I watched the dedicated GPU memory rise, it went up and beyond 7GB this time without crashing. F1 got up to 9.8GB of dedicated memory usage and the "Shared Memory Usage" graph is staying flat.

Seems like these ARC cards are not only more memory-dependent, but also much more memory-hungry than the competitors (for some reason). I have played both of these games at these exact settings for hours without issues on my RTX 2060 before this, so I really didn't think it was going to be a memory issue, but apparently it was... The thing that gave it away to me was seeing other (unrelated) programs closing themselves as the game crash was happening.

Not sure if this is something that could potentially be improved in the future with a driver update or so, but if anyone else faces similar issues, as a first step of troubleshooting you can try getting more memory. Please don't close this thread yet as in the coming days I will be testing it further, I really hope not to report any more crashes.

[killezm]

rocket league has worked well since i bought this card when it came out, now with the last update it crashes after 1 minute of play time everytime. doesn't matter what I do. 

[AlchemistRaptor]

Do you get crashes in other games too? How much memory (RAM) do you have in your system?

[AlchemistRaptor]

Update:

I'd love to say that the problem is resolved, but sadly it's not. It's gotten a lot better, for sure! After installing the extra memory, I didn't have the constant, easily reproducable, predictable, sometimes game breaking crashes anymore. However, with graphics set to ultra in Forza Horizon 4, the game does crash straight to desktop every now and again. F1 23 also crashes occasionally which is really annoying.

I'm a firm believer that this is caused by HALF of my actual memory being hogged for "shared GPU memory" for some reason, which is just absolutely ridiculous. I now have 31.8GB of total RAM in my system, and the game I'm playing is crashing if I go anywhere north of around 18.4GB of utilization. I've never experienced this before and it's especially ridiculous because as said earlier, the card itself has an absolute metric buttload of dedicated memory built in.

Sadly I can't seem to find a way to decrease the memory hogging on my main RAM caused by the shared GPU memory. Even though only around 1 - 2GB of shared memory is being used at all times, half of my actual memory is being constantly hogged by it. I read that adjusting this can be done in the BIOS / UEFI, however I cannot find said option in my UEFI. Seems like I'm destined to either upgrade to 128GB of memory in the future (of which 64GB will be unusable) or change to a different motherboard?

What I'm interested about at the moment is weather this is also the case with a graphics card from a competitor? I have not experienced any kind of crashes that are similar to this with my RTX 2060 which "only" has 6GB of dedicated memory. So, if anything, the shared GPU memory usage should be even higher with that one. I really don't know, I'm quite discouraged.... Wish someone from Intel responded to this thread...

[Andres_Intel]

Hello AlchemistRaptor,

Thank you for posting on the Intel®️ communities. As a gamer I understand is very annoying when a game crashes, I am more than happy to help you with this.  

To understand the situation in a better way, please answer the following questions: 

• After adding more memory RAM, did any game you mentioned work properly?
• In case we need to replicate the issue, take screenshots of the game settings.
• To know your system environment, download and attach the report for the following tool Intel® System Support Utility for Windows (SSU), you can find the steps on the link How to get the Intel® System Support Utility Logs on Windows. 

Regards,  

Andres P. 

Intel Customer Support Technician 

[AlchemistRaptor]

Hi Andres

Thanks for your reply! You'll find the requested SSU bundle attached.

And to answer your question; to me it seems like the metaphorical bar has been raised. By that I mean that when games used to crash at X memory usage, they now crash at 2X memory usage (due to the added memory) but if I go high enough with the graphics (but still within the range of what the card can handle obviously) F1 and Forza Horizon 4 still crash.

Unfortunately I don't play a very wide arrangement of games so I don't have much to test with.

- I have tested with GTA Online for a very short amount of time and it seemed fine but I didn't test long enough to draw a conclusive result.

- I have tested with Rocket League but the game isn't really heavy enough to put any kind of strain on the system memory so that runs fine for sure, didn't have a crash with it (yet).

- I have tested with Forza Horizon 4 on ultra graphics preset, the game runs beautifully... until it doesn't. It just crashes to the desktop occasionally while just driving around, I have my task manager open on my second screen and it seems to crash when the system memory (so not the GPU memory) reaches around 18.4GB ouf of a total of 31.8GB, so just about 57% of RAM usage, which isn't normal. It crashes straight to desktop with no error message.

- I have tested with F1 23, on the highest graphics (except for ray tracing being turned off) I could replicate a crash pretty reliably when loading into Time Trial mode on Imola, loading up a car setup and when trying to open the setup to edit it, it crashed to desktop two times in a row until I just lowered the graphics settings in general and then it worked again. It crashed at random times otherwise too, while driving around on track. Straight to desktop with no error message.

Also, I play on a 1080p display, so despite the graphics being high I get good framerates. Plus the card itself is quite powerful when it works which is nice! It does have a lot of coil whine but that's not really the topic of the conversation...

Extra info: I scrolled through the SSU and saw that it says: "Intel ® Graphics Driver Version:"Not Available"" which is strange. All the results above were on driver 4826, but I upgraded just an hour or so ago to version 4885 with a clean install. I'll test with this driver too, and let you know.

My main suspicion is still that shared GPU memory is way too much and it's hogging actual system memory meaning that when the system memory is needed, the system runs out and the program in the foreground crashes. I asked Gigabyte about how I can adjust the amount of shared GPU memory that's being allocated and they seem to have referred me back to you. Please see "Gigabyte answer.png"

Thanks for the help!

[Andres_Intel]

Hello AlchemistRaptor,

Thank you for your response, and all the information provided, it has been really helpful.

Please answer the following question for clarification:

• I see you mentioned you clean installed the graphics driver to version 31.0.101.4885, did you clean install it using Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU)? Otherwise, please follow the article How to Use the Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) to Uninstall an Intel® Graphics Driver.

Please keep me informed of the results.

Regards,  

Andres P. 

Intel Customer Support Technician 

[AlchemistRaptor]

Hi Andres!

Initially when I got my ARC, I used DDU when I cleaned the previous Nvidia drivers off my PC, however this time, since I only had Intel drivers on my PC, I just used the "Clean install" option within the ARC driver installer itself, that's what I meant.

Despite doing a clean install with the ARC installer, the version number in my ARC Control still doesn't match the actual driver number., see the attached screenshot... no idea why this is the case. Have others reported this as well or is it only happening to me?

In any case, I'll do a full clean with DDU now and reinstall 4885 from scratch. I do have to say, I increased the size of my paging file and the crashes are a lot less frequent now. I still don't know what exactly is eating up all my memory or why. With 32GB of system memory and 16GB of video memory, I shouldn't even be close to running out of memory, let alone need a paging file at all to be fair...

A helpful friend of mine has offered the opportunity to test with his RTX 3090. I'm curious to see if any similar memory shortage issues arise with that card when running high graphics settings, or whether it's ARC specific. Just like the ARC, that one has the raw horsepower to run basically anything at any graphics level, and a generous amount of video memory as well.

I'll inform you of the findings.

Kind regards

[AlchemistRaptor]

Hi

Just to add to my previous reply, I now started DDU and noticed that my UHD and my ARC have two different driver versions. I'm guessing ARC Control is displaying the UHD graphics driver version. A bit strange to me that they both have their own separate driver versions? Is this intended?

Anyway, I'll proceed with the cleanup now.

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello AlchemistRaptor

I understand that you will be doing a DDU installation of the latest driver, please know there is also a newer version 31.0.101.4887 so you might want to test that one as well.

Answering your questions regarding the driver discrepancy between iGPU and dGPU, the driver version should be the same so after you do the installation it should be either 4885 or 4887 for both depending on the driver version you choose. I would recommend disabling your iGPU from BIOS to make sure only the Arc graphics are being used.

Also, in regards to the system memory, you will always see most of the time that half your RAM is taken as GPU shared memory, this happens regardless of the GPU you use and is an OS choice. This does not mean the RAm is not available for other system tasks, the shared memory is only used when VRMA runs out, however, you will see it partially used for files the games save in RAM while playing. Check the following:

Frequently Asked Questions for Intel® Graphics Memory on Windows® 10 and Windows 11*

Calculating Graphics Memory

In addition, something I want to make sure based on one of the screenshots you shared, that task manager shows a location of PCI Bus 3, Is the GPU installed on the very first PCIe slot from top to bottom as recommended by the motherboard manufacturer? Based on the motherboard documentation the other PCI slots are capped to the 3.0 version and run at x1 instead of x16, so I want to make sure you have the ARC GPU installed on the 1st slot to avoid any limitation (see attached)

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello AlchemistRaptor

I wanted to check if you had the chance to complete the driver installation using DDU and if the issue persisted, please let us know if your GPU is installed in the very first PCIe slot of your motherboard which recommended slot by the manufacturer.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[AlchemistRaptor]

Hi Hugo

Thanks for your reply! Unfortunately I've been ill for the past few days so I haven't been able to fully test it.

I did complete the full reinstallation with DDU and I'm happy to report that the driver version displayed in ARC control now matches the driver version displayed elsewhere.

In my (very) limited testing I'm happy to report that I haven't had crashes anymore in F1 or GTA, but Forza Horizon 4 crashes straight to desktop as soon as I try to leave my safehouse. I have uninstalled it and I'm redownloading FH4 as we speak, but my internet isn't very fast.

The GPU is indeed installed into the first PCIe slot. I have no reason to stick it into any of the other slots unless you think it would be beneficial to test it that way.

You also said: "I would recommend disabling your iGPU from BIOS to make sure only the Arc graphics are being used."
I read about a feature called "Intel DeepLink technology" that allows the iGPU to work together with the ARC GPU to enhance performance. Won't I lose performance if I disable the iGPU? Or is it only available on certain motherboards? Also, if I disable my iGPU and then for whatever reason my ARC breaks, won't I be left with no image output? Or will the iGPU still provide an image output while in the UEFI?

Thanks for your advices! I'll come back to you with further updates.

[AlchemistRaptor]

Hi Hugo

A quick update on the FH4 situation; I reinstalled the game and the same thing kept happening. As soon as I left my safehouse the game would crash to desktop.

I got a little frustrated so I was like screw it, I'll put the settings to the lowest possible and see if that works. On the lowest settings the game ran fine and I could exit the safehouse and drive around without problems! I went one step higher to low settings, and it still worked. One step higher, medium settings, and the problem has returned.

After writing down all the differences between the low and the medium preset, I started to change options one-by-one, and the game finally stopped crashing when I got to the MSAA setting!

To verify, I put every graphical setting on ultra, but left MSAA turned completely off, and the game works like a treat!

Is MSAA something that's not supported by the ARC cards at all? Is this something I need to avoid in all games? Or is this a problem with the card / drivers?

TL;DR - Ultra, High and Medium preset all have MSAA set to 2x by default, whereas the Low and Very Low preset has it set to "Off". Discovered that this is what made all the difference. Turning MSAA off allowed me to run the game again at ultra settings as well.

Kind regards

[killezm]

same thing happenly even after the last update. still having issues with rocket league crashing after 1 minute of gameplay. no other games have this issue for me. 

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello killezm

This thread is at the moment related to crashing issues not only on Rocket League but on other games as well so if you are experiencing crashes only on Rocket League, please open a new topic so we can assist accordingly.

Best Regards, 

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello AlchemistRaptor

Thank you for letting us know. I see the crashing issues on GTAV and F1 seem to have stopped, if the games are working fine there is no need to disable the iGPU since the issue seemed to be a corrupted driver. I also see you are facing crashing issues when playing Forza Horizon 4 with MSAA.

We need to keep one issue per thread in order to prevent confusion when troubleshooting, so my advice is to test the previously affected games that you reported in your original post and check if there are no crashes so in case the issue is resolved we can go ahead and focus this thread specifically on Forza only and in case any other issue comes up please report it on a different thread so we can ask for information specifically for one issue.

We will continue to monitor this thread so we can make sure there are no more crashes on the other games if crashes continue to happen this might continue to be a driver/hardware issue, but if only Froza continues to crash with MSAA we might need to debug only that game. So please let us know the results once you are able to test the other games.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello AlchemistRaptor

I wanted to follow up on this, I wanted to know if you had the chance to continue to test the games that were previously crashing and if the crashes are now only happening on Forza Horizon 4. Please let us know.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello AlchemistRaptor

We wanted to check back on this since we have not heard back from you. Based on your previous post most crashes in the game you first reported have been resolved after doing a clean installation of the driver. If you still happen to be experiencing crashes in Forza Horizon 4 when using MSAA, feel free to open a new topic so we can assist accordingly. Please note this thread will no longer be monitored.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[AlchemistRaptor]

Hi Hugo

Sorry for my late reply!

Lately things haven't been crashing anymore (as long as I avoid specific things like MSAA in Forza). The thing that "fixed" it for me is that I increased my paging file dramatically (to 30GB of paging size!!) and my PC is paging the memory onto my SSD the whole time. This is less than ideal but it's the only way I found to get everything running in a stable fashion. Still not sure why my PC has been struggling with memory use ever since I have the 770...

See attached image. If anyone else reading this is having similar crashing problems, either buy an obscene amount of memory (64GB at least, maybe best 128GB) or just increase your paging file size to obscene amounts and that will hopefully fix everything...

Still; it would be great if Intel found a way to fix the memory issue. As long as I had my NVidia I never had problems with memory (and back then I had 16GB instead of the 32GB that I had to upgrade due to getting the A770).

Also another tip for people: so far from what I've noticed, when it comes to Anti Aliasing in games, the AMD specific options seem to yield better results (visually) and better performance as well than the Intel (DLSS?) options. Pretty strange.

To Intel; not sure if you guys have something like a guide to game settings, what options you recommend for graphics settings in games that work best for the ARC cards; CMAA, DLSS, MSAA, FXAA, etc etc. If not, it would be really handy to have one!

Kind regards