Intel processors cause crashes in games

Intel desktop processors seem to not run stably on some computers right out of the box. This is indicated by reports on Steam and in game developer forums that have been popping up for months. Reports are increasing, especially in conjunction with games using Epic Games' Unreal Engine 5.

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the The most recent example of this is the adventure game “Nightingale.”which according to user reports often crashes with the following error:

“Out of video memory while trying to allocate a display resource. Make sure your video card has the minimum required memory, and try lowering the resolution and/or closing other running applications. Exiting…”

translator:

“Insufficient graphics memory when trying to allocate a display resource. Make sure your graphics card has the minimum required memory, and try lowering the resolution and/or closing other running applications. Quit…”

Intel processors are responsible

As it turned out, in the vast majority of cases, contrary to the wording of the error message, it was not the graphics cards that were to blame, but calculation errors in the processor. Windows displays this as a hardware error in Event Viewer under Windows Logs > System.

There's a common denominator in the reports: most use Intel's Core i-13000K and Core i-14000K series processors. Intel allows these models to have high clock speeds, with full-core turbo of 5.4GHz and beyond. Some gamers were able to fix the errors by lowering clock frequencies in BIOS or using the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU).

This indicates stability issues, which mainly appear when interacting with the DirectX 12 graphics API in Unreal Engine 5. DirectX 12 puts more strain on the CPU than previous generations like DirectX 11.

Suspected stability issues can also arise without manual overclocking. However, automatic overclocking functions or lax power options that motherboard manufacturers like to install on earlier devices may exacerbate the problem.

Developer feedback

The errors occurred mainly when the CPU decompressed the data, and sometimes during shader compilation at the beginning of the game. RAD Game Tools has commented on this on its website It also provides recommendations on BIOS settings that can increase stability. The company is developing a decompression middleware that Epic Games has integrated directly into Unreal Engine 5 under the name Oodle.

RAD Game Tools also blames unstable processors. Unreal Engine 5 and its decompression mechanisms will basically work as intended.

Reports may also be increasing for Unreal Engine games due to the graphics infrastructure being particularly popular. There are more reports in the headlines, among other things “Fortnite” from Epic Games, Relic 2 from Gunfire Games And the “Warhammer” games from Fatshark. Epic Games acknowledges the issue on the help pagebut he does not provide any useful advice.

The “Nightingale” developers discussed the bug in a total of four posts on Steam. in the meantime They recommended making changes to the ini files as a workaroundWhich was intended to reduce the burden on processors. This mitigation has now been incorporated into a hotfix patch that aims to make the game run more stable.

Statement from Intel

In response to a request from Heise online, Intel wrote that the reports are currently under investigation. No immediate help: “Intel is aware of reports of issues with unlocked 13th and 14th Gen desktop processors in certain workloads. We are reaching out to our partners and analyzing the reported issues. We will provide updates as soon as possible.”

(MMA)