Crashes to desktop and strange graphical glitches

[Zeozark]

Hey again, back from 3 hard days of testing out everything imaginable x3

 

It turns out that the problem is my video card. As I said in my previous post, I had tried the game with an old nVidia 9800 card that I had lying around, and I played the game just fine for more than an hour with no crashes. Afterwards, I borrowed my dad's card, an nVidia GTX 750, and it ran with no problems at all, the game appears to crash only on my current card, the GTX 650 Ti.

 

I honestly have no idea what's wrong with it, it doesn't overheat, I've changed the thermal past twice now, and it has no problems or artifacts or blue screens or anything on the desktop, unless I'm gaming.

Most games I have are crashing now, Skyrim, State of Decay, Payday 2, Marvel Heroes, Half Life 2... Which I think are all DirectX games, right?

But I think openGL games I have, like Awesomenauts, are running fine, which makes me think that DirectX is messing up my video card somehow?

 

So yeah, I don't think the problem is directly linked to either Skyrim or my mods, I think it has more to do with my card, and more specifically, the software of the card? I have no idea anymore...

[WraithSlayer]

It's certainly not an DirectX vs OpenGL issue. Odds are the only reason Awesomenauts doesn't cause any problems is because it's not using the parts of the GPU that are damaged, due to being a less demanding game. You could always try a OpenGL GPU stress test if you really wanna make sure though.

[demack]

It may be a shader. I am working on a mod at the moment and CK keeps showing an exception error in the shader part of the code. I am set on ultra high. I expect on lower settings this won't happen.

[Zeozark]

It's certainly not an DirectX vs OpenGL issue. Odds are the only reason Awesomenauts doesn't cause any problems is because it's not using the parts of the GPU that are damaged, due to being a less demanding game. You could always try a OpenGL GPU stress test if you really wanna make sure though.

 

You're right, Awesomenauts is openGL but yeah, it's a 2d sidescroller, so I wouldn't think it would stress out my card too much, but I have no idea what it could be.

I've had a couple of BSODs in the past, and a couple of them started with "dx", which is why I thought of that, but I honestly know very little about programming or graphic stuff, so I'm just guessing at this point.

 

It may be a shader. I am working on a mod at the moment and CK keeps showing an exception error in the shader part of the code. I am set on ultra high. I expect on lower settings this won't happen.

 

A shader, huh...? I have already tried running the game on Low from the launcher, which includes Low shadow detail, I think? But yeah still crashes after that, no matter what graphics quality setting I have on. :c

[Zeozark]

Hiya!
I am extremely sorry about the massive thread necromancy, but I just wanted to update on the fact that I finally fixed my problem after a month of crazy fixes, late nights and dead ends.

It seems the problem was not the game at all, nor my video card, hard drive or anything software related; it looks like the problem was a faulty SATA cable that went from my motherboard to the hard drive where I keep all my games. According to a friend of mine, the cables can get damaged, rusted, the ports widened up due to heat, internal damages, etc. Which means that probably mine was one or some or all of those.

 

Got a couple of new cables, replaced the one going to my games and the one going to the SSD where I keep my system, just because why not, and everything appears to be fine. I've played a couple of hours now with no problem at all, and it appears to have fixed all my other problems with my other games, Skyrim was not the only crashy game I had going on.

 

So yeah, massive thanks to aareyn and the others for your replies, they will help make my Skyrim experience better as well, and thanks for all the fixes you suggested.

Just thought I'd update this thread after so long just in case someone has a problem similar to mine and stumbles onto this thread, hope it can fix their problems too.

 

Cheers! <3