Complete System Lockup w/ Space Marine 2 on ARC B580

[Killian_KW]

Similar to this thread, I am having an issue with Space Marine 2 where my PC will rarely go into a full lock-up that requires a power cycle to resolve. Audio continues for a few seconds after the freeze but then cuts, video display is frozen, and the system stops responding to input.

The main problem with replicating the issue is that the game does run fine 99% of the time, I can play for multiple hours at a time without issue- but it can just lock up without warning, which is not ideal. I've had it happen twice so far; once mid-cutscene (with older drivers, which prompted me to update and see if that resolved it) and once moments after booting the game (with 31.0.101.8132 drivers) a couple of play sessions later.

The card I'm using has given me no issues in any other titles, and as far as I can tell there's nothing wrong with it or the rest of my system otherwise.

SSU report is attached. I have no dump files available, and there are no reports in Windows Event Viewer.

[PatrickV_Intel]

Hi Killian_KW,

Thank you for reaching out to the Intel Community Forum. To assist us in investigating the issue, please provide the following details:

• What are the troubleshooting steps that you tried so far?
• Is the Resizable Bar enabled?
• Have you used Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) to completely remove all residual drivers and installed a new one?
• Which gaming platform did you use to download the game?

If you have any questions, please let us know. Thank you.

Best regards,

Patrick V.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[Killian_KW]

• So far I've only tried updating my drivers; given I have no issues in any other titles, there haven't been any other steps that seemed necessary to take just yet. I did consider running sfc /scannow and such, but didn't get around to that just yet.
• According to the Intel Graphics Software, yes.
• No, though I did use the clean install checkbox in the updater.
• Download was through Steam. I verified my files after the second time it happened and there were no files in need of repair.

It's a very weird and frustrating problem, since I have played the game for several hours without issue over several sessions, and my PC is otherwise perfectly stable so far as I can tell.

[PatrickV_Intel]

Thank you for the update!

May I suggest the following troubleshooting steps:

• Use DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) to perform a clean installation of the Intel Graphics Driver Version 32.0.101.8135.

If the issue persists after this, kindly provide the following information to help us investigate further:

• Crash dump file
• Event Viewer logs

If you have any questions or need assistance with these steps, please feel free to let us know. Thank you! 

Best regards,

Patrick V.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[Killian_KW]

Install's as clean as I can get it, as an older driver version was auto-installed on reboot back into standard mode before I could finish downloading the latest drivers. I'll try again when I have time. I did see a setting in DDU to disable driver autoinstall but I didn't touch that at the time; I can try again with that enabled if necessary.

No promises on crash dump files or event viewer logs: again, this lockup hasn't given me any the two times it's happened so far. If it happens again I'll wait a bit longer before going for the power button to see if I get anything usable, but I can't guarantee it.

I appreciate the diligence thusfar. On my end, I also did a little digging around on Focus/Saber's own techsupport forums recently and it looks like this issue isn't limited solely to B580s specifically or Intel cards generally; there's at least one report in the last two weeks of it occurring to someone with a Radeon card (a 9070XT).

[Killian_KW]

It just occurred again even with the new drivers. I played the game for a couple hours without issue, took a break, decided to start it up again and the lockup occurred around 80% through the first "loading resources" screen. My system remained frozen for ~3 minutes with no response and no further activity, at which point I powercycled.

Nothing in crash dumps or event viewer until the reboot time, except one thing: right before launching the game, the EasyAntiCheat_EOSSys was installed, loaded, and registered with the Filter Manager.

[Killian_KW]

After some further digging and finding what appears to be error logs from the game itself, the issue is definitely GPU-related - something about page faults at address 0000000000000000 and "GPU crash: reason: TDR, marker: PRERECORD_PURGE_GBUFFER0_BEGIN"?

I'm attempting to forward the game's own crash dumps to Saber's support staff. I can upload them here as well if desired, but I don't know if they'll be of much use to you guys.

[JeanetteC_Intel]

Hello Killian_KW,

Thanks for the detailed testing and findings.

Please try these steps:

1. Update BIOS - Your BIOS is outdated. Contact your system manufacturer to update to version F21 (improves CPU stability)
2. Clean driver install - Use DDU in safe mode with "Prevent Windows driver downloads" enabled, then install driver 32.0.101.8135
3. Provide files: 
   1. Updated SSU log after BIOS/driver updates
   2. Game crash dumps if possible, as it will help with further investigating on this issue.
4. Test without EasyAntiCheat - Temporarily disable to see if it helps.

I'll investigate further once you provide the results.

Awaiting your response.

Best regards,

JeanetteC.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[Killian_KW]

Saber Support asked me to perform a clean boot, and I was able to play the game for 2~3 hours without issue with minimal other programs/services operating. I tried playing again later the same day with a few more programs active and whilst it was fine for a while, it locked up towards the end of the first Operations mission I tried.

As for steps:

1. I've never done a BIOS update before, so I'd rather treat this as an absolute last resort if possible - especially given that everything else runs just fine. I also don't have any spare USB sticks laying around, so it might take a bit to get my hands on those.
2. Easily done.
3. Game's own reports are attached to this post. No report was generated from the most recent incident unfortunately, but if I can get any more I'll attach them.
4. I'll give it a shot. I haven't had trouble with EAC in the past, but there's a first time for everything.

[JeanetteC_Intel]

Hello Killian_KW,

Thank you for the detailed update. It's good to hear that the clean boot let you play for 2-3 hours without problems, which indicates background programs might be causing the issue.

To help with my investigation, could you please share:

• Which applications were running during the successful 2-3 hour gaming session?
• What additional programs were active when the lockup occurred?

I understand your hesitation about the BIOS update, so we'll set that aside for now. I'll wait for your EasyAntiCheat test results before proceeding with further troubleshooting steps.

Best regards,

JeanetteC.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[Killian_KW]

When the game runs fine, it often does so for multiple hours at a time, really. Like I said, I was able to complete most of the main story and the initial side-story missions in a day with only the one freeze. It wasn't until it happened again when I tried to play later the same day that I started to think that it was maybe more than just a one-off because of some issue with the cutscene it happened in.

• The only one I actively launched myself was Steam, because that was mandatory to play the game on account of it being tied to that platform. Background processes would be anything that would start normally with Win11 Home on a clean boot; as few services and extra programs running as possible, that sort of thing.
• My usual spread of programs is Telegram, Discord, Firefox, Thunderbird, and Steam. I often (but not always) have Process Explorer running out of habit, and then I have the Intel Graphics Software and maybe one or two other odds and ends. I also usually have one or two Explorer windows open. This doesn't give me any trouble in any other game - you name it, it runs fine. I've tried shutting off a few of the main set of programs whilst running, and disabled hardware acceleration in some of them if it wasn't already, but none of that seemed to help.

Other tests/changes to resolve the issue that I've tried have included;

• Setting Render Resolution to Dynamic
• Setting Dynamic FPS target to 60
• Enabling V-Sync

Unfortunately none of these were successful in resolving the issue. One of my next tests will be if running the game in Fullscreen rather than Borderless mode can help at all (I run most other titles in Borderless without issue). I was also able to do a proper clean install of the drivers earlier today as well, but I haven't tried playing again yet.

Have the game's crashdumps been insightful at all? I haven't heard anything back from Saber support after their initial response asking me to run the clean boot test.

[Killian_KW]

Most recent test was more promising in terms of duration but the game still locked up part way through an Operation. I reduced other programs to just Discord and Steam, had a full clean install of the 32.0.101.8135 drives, and set the render mode to Fullscreen as previously described. No crash log was generated this time despite waiting for a minute after the freeze.

The game either seems to lock up within maybe 15-20 minutes at most, or else is able to run for hours with no other programs in the background. Most recent incident I think I got about an hour of gameplay judging by timestamps on the report folders.

Next test on my list is to run it with other programs besides Discord to see if that's the culprit somehow.

[RandyT_Intel]

Hello Killian_KW,

Please proceed with your testing and share the results afterward, as this appears to be closely related to the low FPS issue that may be causing system lock-ups or stuttering. Kindly refer to the article provided and use CapFrameX to capture your results.

Please record 3–5 minutes of gameplay and send the data over so we can attempt to replicate the issue on our end.

Regarding the error message you encountered (TDR), this could be partially related to a motherboard issue. As a final isolation step, please try updating your BIOS.

I’ve thoroughly reviewed the thread and was wondering, could you kindly share the exact make and model of the PSU you're currently using?

Looking forward to your response.

Best regards,

Randy T.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[Killian_KW]

Can do. In the meantime, my PSU is a "550W Cooler Master MWE Bronze v2 230V PSU" according to the invoice. I'm not sure if I can get you anything more specific than that without disassembling my computer due to the case design. I had the machine put together by a company I've bought from before since it would actually have been cheaper than trying to build it myself and I like the peace of mind that a warranty brings. Wouldn't surprise me if they cut corners a tiny bit with the PSU, but it's been fine in everything else.

Keep in mind that;

• I don't get an actual BSOD screen with an error message; I'm just trying to make sense of the YAML files that come with the crashdumps. The whole system just locks up and video display freezes, whilst audio loops for a few seconds then stops entirely. All secondary lights (keyboard scroll/num/etc. lock buttons) sometimes turn off out too. I used my smartphone stopwatch and it stayed frozen for upwards of 3 minutes one time, so I don't think the system is able to bluescreen or otherwise recover at all without the powercycle.
• The only other title I get remotely poor FPS in is Darktide, and only then when tons of particles are being simultaneously spawned very close to the camera (it was really bad during the "Rotten Armour" event in July/August, as certain enemies would explode into gas clouds on death). This issue tends to promptly resolve itself, notably without killing my entire system, and FPS during gameplay is otherwise fine.
• Whilst I don't keep an FPS tracker up ingame, the FPS seems fine to my eye, and I've not had any major stutters or other issues in Space Marine 2 besides the actual full-on freezes. I also don't keep an FPS tracker up in Darktide or anything else though, so maybe I'm missing some frame drops somewhere.

I did leave all the other graphics settings at default after launch though, and I think most of them are set fairly high -- I didn't feel any need to touch them yet as the game has been fine otherwise and the card performs perfectly well in every other title I care to throw at it, the most intensive ones probably being Darktide, Cyberpunk 2077, and Helldivers 2. Do you think it might be worth dialling some of the graphics settings down for future tests to see if that helps?

Anyway, I'll grab CapFrameX and see what I can do. I'm also passing this thread's URL along to Saber's tech support as they finally got back to me and hopefully it'll either help them figure it out and/or save me having to type a bunch more to catch them up on what we've tested thusfar.

[Killian_KW]

Attaching CapFrameX data to this post. I recorded twice in the same gameplay session;

• The first, shorter test was taken on the Battle Barge and was just me wandering around, checking interface, and so on.
• The second, longer test was active gameplay from Operation 06 "Ballistic Engine", which I matched into using Quickplay.

During the latter, during the final encounter, the game abruptly froze again. Given that mission has the fairly intensive dust storms going on and the mass swarms, I suspect this probably contributed to the issue - it's not the first time I've had a full freeze during the final encounter of Ballistic Engine.

This was not a completely 'clean' boot as I simply shut down firefox/discord/etc. rather than go from a fresh start.

I'm also attaching screenshots of all my Video settings ingame.

[Killian_KW]

Since editing posts isn't allowed, I should clarify my wording a bit: the second test during Ballistic Engine was specifically during the early-mid part of the game where you're moving to the depot and preparing the warhead for transport. I didn't have FrameCapX recording during the final encounter where it froze.

[JeanetteC_Intel]

Hello Killian_KW,

Thank you for sharing these helpful details.

Could you please test the newly released driver version 32.0.101.8136? I recommend using DDU in safe mode for a clean installation. Please let me know if you continue to experience the issue after this update.

Additionally, have you had an update regarding the issue with updating your BIOS?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,

JeanetteC.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[Killian_KW]

Running tests with my usual spread of programs up in the background now. I was able to clear a random operation, will try Ballistic Engine next specifically since that seems to be a "known troublemaker" as it were.

Holding off on the BIOS update until the weekend when I have more time and energy in case it goes wrong.

[Killian_KW]

I've been able to clear two full runs of Ballistic Engine, one on Trivial, one on Average. Whilst this is far from conclusive, it is a very promising start. Taking a break for now but I'll test more later today.

[Mike_Intel]

Hello Killian_KW,

Thank you for the update and that is good to hear.

Please send another update once done for me to document and do further checking on this issue.

If you have questions, please let us know. Thank you.

Best regards,

Michael L.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[Killian_KW]

I've now completed Ballistic Engine twice on Substantial and two other random Operations on the same difficulty. I'm not willing to say it's definitely absolutely 100% fixed based on such a small data set, but the results are still looking good.