Intel Arc A770 Baldur's Gate 3 Crashes and BSOD

[Drangueforde]

I am experiencing crashes which result in a black screen with upper portion of monitor displaying partial in game image speckled with distorted pixels of various coloration until computer crashes and experiences a forced shutdown and reboot, usually accompanied by audio distortion and sometimes a BSOD claiming video internal scheduler error.

Here is the information you requested:

1. I am currently using Beta Drivers

* Version 31.0.010.4669
* It is a clean driver installation using DDU in safe mode
* I have tried the Pro driver already

2. Baldur's Gate 3, which you can get on Steam

3. I've included the SSU Report

4. Play the game like you would normally on DirectX11 and enjoy unpredictable crashes that seem to occur with no rhyme or reason. Crashes can occur between 5-30 minutes of game play or you can have hours of uninterrupted game play with no crashes whatsoever. I don't know how to recreate it reliably.

5. It happens so unpredictably that I am never able to capture on video, even if I try to record the same series of events I just did after rebooting and trying again as then the game works without issue as if it knows I am watching it and waiting.

As an added bit of information, you can play the game using Vulkan, but I have already tried that and the crashes still happen. In fact, the game runs worse in Vulkan than it does on DirectX 11; including various display abnormalities such as pixels not rendering (they are not dead pixels, just not being rendered and are just a solid blue color or whatever) strobbing effects in cinematic dialogue tied to lighting, and flickering black boxes.

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello Drangueforde

Thank you for letting us know you were able to do the clean installation of the Operating System, good to know that Project Zomboid is not crashing at the moment, taking into consideration Baldur's Gate 3 is the main game that experienced crashes it would be better to test it before we consider this as resolved, so we will monitor this thread for a few days so you have time to test. Is there any specific date you want us to get back to you?

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[Andres_Intel]

Hello Drangueforde,

Were you able to test Baldur's Gate 3?   

Let us know if you still need assistance.    

Best regards,   

Andres P.   

Intel Customer Support Technician 

[Drangueforde]

Sorry for getting back to you so late. I did get around to running the game and I attempted to recreate some crashes. It booted into the game just fine, it went through character creation without issue, I reloaded a few saves, went through actions that caused crashes in the past and was unable to get the game to crash. I've been playing Project Zomboid a lot, which was another game that was crashing, and it hasn't crashed either.

So it seems whatever was going on was resolved by uninstalling Windows 11 and installing Windows 10. I have no idea if the OS was corrupted, or how it would get like that to begin with. I have no idea if it is an Intel driver issue with Windows 11. All I can report is that the computer has not crashed while playing Baldur's Gate 3, Project Zomboid, or Limbus Company since wiping the computer and installing Windows 10.

Hopefully that is helpful, but I'm not sure what information can be gleaned from this. If the issue occurs again, I will open a new post and link this thread. Thank you for your help and I hope you all have a good day.

Edit: I do want to add that when testing Baldur's Gate 3, I always used DirectX 11 and I didn't check with Vulkan, so I have no idea if the graphical glitches that occurred while running in Vulkan still exist.

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello Drangueforde

Thank you for letting us know. Taking into consideration that the GPU is working fine and there are no crashes on your games after the clean installation of Windows 10 there is a chance that the previous Windows 11 installation was corrupted. The driver should work fine in Windows 11 since there are a lot of systems from other users that do not have behavior like the one you were experiencing so in case you need or want to go back to Windows 11 it will be better so you can test a clean installation of the OS as well and in case you run into any similar issue you can open a new thread and we will be happy to help. Same in case you encounter graphics corruption issues when running on Vulkan, if any, feel free to reach back and we can take a further look at the problem.

We will now be closing this thread and will no longer be monitored but as stated above feel free to open a new topic if you need further assistance and you can reference this thread if the issue is similar.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello Drangueforde

We noticed that you opened a new thread with the title "Intel Arc A770 - Games Crashing Again After 4887 Driver Update" and we understand the crashing issues in your games have returned after updating to the latest driver 4887.

Taking advantage that this thread was not yet completely closed we will continue assisting under this one and will close your new thread to prevent confusion.

A this point based on all the troubleshooting steps we have performed and taking into consideration all the minidumps files you provided point towards a graphics module failing, we have determined your GPU might be defective, we have not received reports of similar behavior in other GPUs which reassures the probability of you PU having a problem and again based on the minidump it would be better to claim the warranty for your GPU.

If you still have warranty coverage through your place of purchase, please reach out to them to process an RMA, in case you run into any issues claiming the warranty from your place of purchase, feel free to reach out to us and we can explore different warranty options.:

U.S. and Canada: Intel Customer Support 

Europe, Middle East, and Africa: Intel Customer Support EMEA  

Asia-Pacific: Intel Customer Support APAC  

Latin America: Intel Customer Support LAR  

We know the stressful and frustrating can be not to be able to play your games or use your GPU as expected and we apologize for the experience you have had so far, so we will be more than willing to help in case your place of purchase warrant period expires.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[Drangueforde]

I appreciate the heads up and have filed a request with the manufacturer. Thank you for your help and patience. How long does it usually take to get a card back or replaced?

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello Drangueforde

Since you are returning the GPU to your place of purchase WWE wouldn't be able to know how long would it take for them to process your warranty request my advice would be to check with them for more information. In case you need to contact us directly through chat, web ticket, or phone call, if there is any issue with your place of purchase our warranty team will let you know the timeframes for a replacement or refund depending on what is available from our side.

Please let me know if you have any other questions, if you would like to close this thread, or if you would like to keep this thread open until you process the warranty with your place of purchase.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[Drangueforde]

Let's leave it open until the return and repair/replacement has been completed.

Thank you again for your assistance and patience. I hope you have a good day.

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello Drangueforde

I wanted to follow up on this, Have you received an update from your place of purchase in regard to your GPU replacement? Or if you received it already, have you been able to test it? Please let us know any updates on the status of your replacement.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[Drangueforde]

Hello,

I have went through the process with the manufacturer as Newegg's return window is laughably short and useless. Unfortunately, Intel stopped making the original Intel Arc A770 16GB LE available for regular consumers back in June and they are only able to provide a refund instead of a replacement. I decided to get the Sparkle Intel Arc A770 16GB Titan OC Edition instead, as trying to get the original card requires spending $80 USD more than I spent on it back in March. I will not receive the replacement card until some time later today, then I will test it and see how it goes. I will provide an update afterward.

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello Drangueforde

I saw from your previous post you were getting the new GPU around 3 days ago, so I wanted to check if you have had the chance to test it and how is it behaving, have the crashes stopped?

Best Regards

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[Drangueforde]

Hello,

The crashes have stopped. The new card is working well, even though it is also an Intel Arc A770 16GB LE AIB by Sparkle. I tested Project Zomboid and Baldur's Gate 3 and experienced no crashes.

I did experience a different matter entirely, though. Whenever I updated the drivers they would get automatically rolled back after a monitor screen flicker anywhere from 3-5 hours. Windows would then claim it was ready to install my GPU drivers, reverting them back to old drivers from June. I did some searching online and was able to figure out a solution and the drivers are no longer rolling back. If anyone else is curious, here is what I tried to resolve the issue:

1. Intel recommended installing the new drivers over the old drivers installed by Windows without doing a clean installation.
2. You can deactivate driver updates in Windows Update by going to System, Advanced System Settings, Hardware tab, and Device Installation Settings. You can turn it off in there.
3. Using regedit and navigating to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows and then creating a new key called WindowsUpdate and then creating a new DWORD (32-bit) value named ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate and then going into that and setting the value to 1.

This worked and now the driver rollbacks have stopped happening. Currently waiting for the refund process to get wrapped up.

[Drangueforde]

I encountered a brand new issue:

Last night I was assisting a friend with their stream set up. I was using the Discord program and attempted to join their stream, which resulted in an immediate Discord crash. I had never tested this until now, but I was able to stream without issue. I had upgraded to the 4900 drivers earlier that day. I checked with other friends to see if it was isolated and it worked for some and didn't work with others. There seemed to be no explanation, I did all of the actions recommended by Discord such as disabling hardware acceleration, the experimental stuff, etc. and nothing helped so I shelved the issue until today.

This morning I installed OBS, then I was talking to a friend and we started to suspect that maybe it was the 4900 drivers, since I did pretty much everything I could think of to resolve the issue. I uninstalled the 4900 drivers and reinstalled the 4887 drivers, then checked and I was able to connect to the stream without Discord crashing. Another friend suggested I load the 4900 drivers and see if it works on the browser version of Discord. So, I did that, and it worked on the browser version of Discord. Then I went back into the Discord program and it worked there too.

I have no idea what happened. I don't know why it is suddenly working now. But I figured you might want to be aware of the issue. I can share the Discord crash logs, if that is helpful, at all? I don't know. But it seems to be working now, so yay?

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello Drangueforde

Thank you for letting us know. So it definitely seems the previous GPU was defective since the crashes have stopped with the new one you bought, but it is great that you are now able to play and enjoy your games without issue I know it took time for the issue to get resolved and it could have been a frustrating process.

In regards to the driver rolling back, perhaps Sparkle has an older version published on their website and that makes Windows roll back to a previous version, good to know you found a workaround for that, and thank you for sharing the files with the community, another way to stop Windows for rolling back to an older driver version would be the installing the driver through device manager:

1. Access Device Manager page then select the Intel® Graphics under display adapter.
2. Right Click the graphics adapter and select properties.
3. Go to the Driver tab and select Update driver.
4. Select Browse my computer for drivers, then select Let me pick from a list of available drivers on my computer.
5. In the box that lists your graphics drivers, select the latest Intel® Arc Graphics Driver  or Intel® Graphics – Windows* DCH Drivers, for example, version 31.0.101.3802 then click Next. It will apply the driver version by reinstalling the .inf file.
6. Reboot computer for the changes to take effect.

I see you are processing the refund with us through an internal case, so we will continue to help you from there to wrap up that process, in regards to this thread, please let me know if you would like to close since the main issue seems to be resolved now.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Inte Customer Support Technician.

[Drangueforde]

You can close the thread since the original issue is resolved now with the new card. Thank you for your patience and for your help.

Just a fair warning for anyone considering to get the Sparkle Intel Arc A770 16GB card:

If you are using a 90° case, like I am with the Alta F1 for example, the temperatures for the GPU seem to be abnormally high, reaching 89°C. When I turned the case onto its back and reconnected everything so the air flow would mimic a traditional set up and the GPU would be seated horizontally, the temperatures while performing the same actions dropped to 63°C. I was using Baldur's Gate 3 to run this test and had the video settings on ultra and the refresh rate set to 165. So, something is up with the AIB version of this card by Sparkle. I do not think it is compatible with being seated vertically.

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello Drangueforde

We appreciate your patience and apologize once again for the inconvenience with the first GPU you got since did not work as expected. We are glad we were able to help and thank you as well for the tips and fixes to the issues related to driver rollbacks and temperatures, however, please know in case you happen to experience any issue related to temperatures you can feel free to open a new thread and we can further assist.

We will now proceed to close this topic, not the thread will no longer be monitored by Intel.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.