o7 CMDRs,
I was searching about a problem I recently had with Elite Dangerous Odyssey, in particular when I was doing Exobiology. I scan a planet, and descend to start scanning the bios, three time each bio. I get to the first Bio, disembark, run to the Bio and scan it. I run back to my ship, embark, and start searching for a second sample, and then after for the third sample.
At one point, when I'm scouting with the ship, searching for the additional samples, the GPU cooling fans increase their revs to 100% and lower down to normal. I continue scanning and scouting with the ship, however then later after 5 - 15mins I'll get a black screen, GPU fans to 100% and only a reset will get me back to the Desktop. I launch the game again, continue with my Exobiology process, and after an intermittent time I get the black screen again.
I tried to use different settings, including High settings, however no matter what, it simply crashes to the black screen. This is a new machine, with the possible high end components including the MSI Suprim X RTX 3090 24Gb GFX card, Core i9 10th Gen CPU, 64Gb Ram, SSD, you name it. I read a lot of forums and tried a deal lot of solutions, including even replacing my 850W PSU to a 1000W PSU, even separating the GPU power cables. I ran all sort of benchmark software, including the MSI Afterburner (the later with 8 instances of the same application to utilize all the GPU's VRam. I checked literally everything including the DRams one buy one. I updated the MB bios with the latest firmware and reinstalled Windows 10 from scratch.
After a lot of frustration I was about to give up on the game that I love. One of the forums suggested to check the crash dump files using
WhoCrashed to give me a rough idea what is actually crashing the system, was it hardware, drivers, or the game itself? Ultimately I found out that the nVidia drivers were crashing the system, I tried uninstalling them using
Display Driver Uninstaller and installed them a fresh, but problem still persisted.
I've never had such a problem not even when I played the Alpha and then the 'final' release. What came to my mind was the following:
1. I play other massive games, GPU hungry, like MSFS2020, Forza 5, Star Citizen, using the maximum ultra+++ possible video settings for hours without crashing. I've monitored both the temperature and the VRam consumption of these games and were way beyond those when playing Odyssey. This means that the hardware is in perfect condition.
2. I remembered that when I started playing Odyssey when it was released, I didn't had these problems as I got to Elite in Exobiology without a single crash. So the problem could have been either from the game's updates or else from the nVidia drivers being updated regularly.
I uninstalled the nVidia drivers and downgraded to a sixth older version, and that solved my problem. I can now grind Exobiology without crashes. My only question would be, Is the game being updated with the latest graphics drivers requirements? New drivers offer better performance, more FPS, bug fixes and stability. While other games benefit from these enhancements, is Odyssey doing the same? I can now do Exobiology with an old driver, however I'm not benefitting from the enhancements from the latest nVidia driver especially when other high end games like MSFS2020 plays fine for hours.
Hope this article helps others facing similar frustrations. I love Elite, and I never gave up on it, however after spending €8000 on a new rig to be able to play ED Odyssey 4K at 30 FPS (while I play MSFS2020 4K at 60 FPS using the ultra settings for hours) and then all it does is crashing, you can understand the frustrations and sadness one can have.
o7 CMDRs.
18.313,-36.500,48.250)ly NormalFlight
www.x-plane.com
