Dying in warthunder can cause graphics cards to crash
This is something that happens especially often with high end NVIDIA Graphics Cards using the 12V High Power Connector.
This is not the graphics driver crashing, but the graphics card itself.
Symptoms
This will result in a black screen and the fans going to 100%.
Other applications like Discord or Spotify will still be running fine (audible).
Retsarting the graphics driver (ctrl + shift + win + b) won’t fix the problem.
Only a restart of the system will fix this issue.
Source of the Problem
For some reason, dying causes the GPU to be subject to an immediate huge load, which causes high transient spikes in the Voltage.
While this is something which should be addressed by the Manufacturers like NVIDIA and PSU manufacturers, there is also the problem on the side of Warthunder. The huge loads on the GPU, when one dies.
I believe that the huge stress on the GPU when one dies is a bug and not an intended feature.
Since more and more cards will use the 12V HPWR connector, I believe that the issue within Warthunder itself should be addressed.
Workarounds
Here are some workarounds that might help in reducing said crashes or completely eliminating them.
Hardware Side
- Alternate 12VHPWR connector
- Alternate Power Supply Unit (PSU)
Software Side
- Limiting the FPS of the game via the graphics driver
Warthunder Side
- Reducing the texture quality
- Reducing the mesh Quality
- Switching away from DX12
I hope that this might help some people out there and that this bug might be addressed…
