Intel i9 13900KF causing Epic Games crash

[NatRat]

Hi all,

This is a 6 month old PC that's been running Fortnite with no issues. Today I moved to the latest nVidia game drivers for the RTX-4080. Then I launched Fortnite and the game loaded, but crashed during 'initiating travel to server'. It did this a few more times and sometimes crashed immediately on launch before even getting to loading screen. I thought this must be the nVidia drivers, so I rolled back to previous version but the issue persisted.

I had a look at the game logs, here is what it says:

[2024.05.10-12.39.11:056][207]LogWindows: Error: === Critical error: ===
[2024.05.10-12.39.11:056][207]LogWindows: Error:
[2024.05.10-12.39.11:056][207]LogWindows: Error: Fatal error: [File:D:\build\++Fortnite\Sync\Engine\Source\Runtime\RenderCore\Private\ShaderCodeArchive.cpp] [Line: 405]
[2024.05.10-12.39.11:056][207]LogWindows: Error: DecompressShaderWithOodleAndExtraLogging(): Could not decompress shader group with Oodle. Group Index: 2333 Group IoStoreHash:0f9991a0bf72ad3e28e22109 Group NumShaders: 27 Shader Index: 29507 Shader In-group Index: 2333 Shader Hash: AB092CF48224A0B11C4EC9C2C050F03D909E7CF0. The CPU (13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-13900KF) may be unstable; for details see http://www.radgametools.com/oodleintel.htm

Having a look at this website, seems it's a known issue with this generation (and the 14th gen) CPUs and being pushed beyond their limits in some cases by the motherboard BIOS. I run a Gigabyte Z790 Aero. I can't say I am totally surprised as I noticed a lot of instability a few months back when trying to render an MP4 4K video file in Adobe Premiere Elements, had crashes all over the place til I looked in the event log and saw:

'A corrected hardware error has occurred.

Reported by component: Processor Core
Error Source: Corrected Machine Check
Error Type: Internal parity error
Processor APIC ID: 48'

Plenty of online threads about all this, with people recommending undervolting the CPU in Intel® XTU, then I was able to export the file successfully. I have however moved to the latest BIOS since then so I believe those settings probably got replaced, or perhaps they are only valid for that Windows session if they are not changed in BIOS. 

I buy the KF or K CPUs because I don't want to mess with any OC or other CPU tweaks - I want stability out of the box.

I have run Intel Process Diagnostic Tool and everything passed. I also ran the CPU Stress Test with AVX2 and it said 'The CPU Stress Test with AVX2 Passed.' I only did the 5 min one though.

Can anyone assist me please?

Thanks.

[pressed_for_time]

I don't have any connection with Intel other than as a user of its hardware.

This is the 'classic' Oodle decompression error that should only be seen in Fortnite DX12. Simple solution, switch to Fortnite DX11 and reset the game settings.

The underlying cause is that Oodle which is Epic's Unreal Engine integrated compressor/decompressor utility is sensitive to Intel CPU speeds. RAD Game Tools is a division of Epic that's responsible for Oodle and say it's not the software that's at fault it's the hardware. Further RAD regard any decompression error as 'Fatal' which means that Oodle exits the game with an error message, which some users perceive as the game crashing. A feature of Oodle is that it is an ultra high speed decompressor and probably loads the CPU more than the game itself will do.

This sensitivity to CPU speeds mainly seems to involve 13900K/14900K and 4080 Super/4090 combinations. The reason may be that the motherboards most users deploy for these combos typically have extreme performance settings as standard that do not correspond to Intel's default settings. So one solution may be to set the motherboard to the Intel defaults rather than the board manufacturers defaults.

[NatRat]

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I have seen this:

https://www.radgametools.com/oodleintel.htm

Must be a pretty big deal and pretty widespread for them to release that.

However, I already made the change to use DX11 yesterday and it didn't resolve it. I am going to try out the BIOS suggestions mentioned in that link above - which is as you've said, recommendations on the motherboard's performance settings. I really don't like messing with the BIOS, and don't think I should have to. I did hear Asus has brought out firmware to address these issues, toning down the aggressiveness on the CPU, but not so with Gigabyte. In fact with Gigabyte, I notice they have actually taken down the latest BIOS revision that I am on, concerningly. No reason given ...

[zzetta]

If you have a Gigabyte board, please read this: https://community.intel.com/t5/Processors/Guide-Addressing-CPU-Instability-on-Gigabyte-Motherboards/m-p/1596899#M72311

[NatRat]

I do. Thank you for this, I’ll give it a go

[NatRat]

Those Gigabyte BIOS settings recommendations didn't work for me (as in, still had crashes), but solution 2 here did:

https://www.radgametools.com/oodleintel.htm

I have been experiencing crashes rendering a 4K Adobe Premiere video because of the CPU instability. When I tried Solution 1, it said the video was going to take 72 hours to export, lol. Reverted those settings and tried Solution 2 with the value set to Medium. Exported successfully in 5 hours (which is what it normally takes for a video of that size). No crashes. Fortnite seems stable too. I am not entirely sure the effect that setting has overall on the CPU so I am in touch with Intel about it.

[NatRat]

When testing in CiniBench R23 (or even 2024), the stock Gigabyte settings cause it to crash during the multi core 10 minute test.

The most stable settings for me seem to be:

XMP = XMP1

Tweaker > Advanced CPU Settings > Turbo Power Limits: Enabled

Package Power Limit 1 - TDP (Watts) 253

Package Power Limit 2 - TDP (Watts) 253

Set Core Current Limit - 307Amps

Turbo Per Core Limit Control Turbo P-Core 0-7 - 53.

But then my Cinebench R23 is only 32546 for multi core and 1942 for single core. Think that's down a fair bit on what it should be according to other people's results I've seen.

I tried with the P-Cores set to 54 and whilst the program doesn't crash, the cores hit 98-100C consistently on multi core. At 53, they stay around 75-80C.