Just updated driver, game keeps crashing

[ValiantBlu]

Hey so I'm having trouble running the game consistently.

When I downloaded the game I had 0 issues until about a day in when I experienced my first crash. Since then the crashes have been increasing in frequency, to the point where the game crashes (sometimes resulting in a blue screen) on launch. Anyways, I checked out my drivers and discovered that my graphics card driver was outdated, so I updated it. Since updating my driver the blue screen crashes have ceased, but the game is still unplayable for me; now the game crashes when I load the character select screen, occasionally, but consistently it crashes whenever I switch maps (take the train, enter an instance, etc.)

Asus laptop (Republic of Gamers)
i7 processor, 9th gen
GeForce RTX 2060

16gb RAM
8gb GPU
Windows 10

What the heck

Edited November 18, 2020 by ValiantBlu

[GM Tock]

It'd be helpful to know what the BSOD error was.  Driver issues notwithstanding, there's a few BSODs that are indicative of other problems.  If you remember the day it happened, you may be able to find it in the System Logs in Event Viewer.  (Control Panel > Administrative Tools)

Does the laptop happen to run other games alright?  (Granted, Solitare isn't a fair measure: something with full screen 3D game play should be sufficient.)  Also, you mentioned it's an ASUS ROG.  Would it happen to be a Zephyrus by any chance?  We've had user reports of hardware issues on some models when playing City of Heroes.  (Unfortunately, I haven't heard of a single solution... most folks were within the return window and selected another gaming laptop instead.)

Edited November 19, 2020 by GM Tahquitz

[ValiantBlu]

4 hours ago, GM Tahquitz said:

It'd be helpful to know what the BSOD error was.  Driver issues notwithstanding, there's a few BSODs that are indicative of other problems.  If you remember the day it happened, you may be able to find it in the System Logs in Event Viewer.  (Control Panel > Administrative Tools)

Does the laptop happen to run other games alright?  (Granted, Solitare isn't a fair measure: something with full screen 3D game play should be sufficient.)  Also, you mentioned it's an ASUS ROG.  Would it happen to be a Zephyrus by any chance?  We've had user reports of hardware issues on some models when playing City of Heroes.  (Unfortunately, I haven't heard of a single solution... most folks were within the return window and selected another gaming laptop instead.)

It is, in fact, Zephyrus. The laptop runs every other game I've put on it just fine minus KOTOR2 (but that game gets really finnicky with newer systems I'm told, and mods have helped with that as well).

As an update to my problem, I've changed the graphics settings and haven't had an issue since. I had it set to Ultra mode since the game prompted me to from the  beginning. Interestingly, my exact process was switching to "recommended" settings, then I customized my settings to be identical to Ultra mode (without using that preset), and ever since I did that the crashes have stopped altogether. Frankly, the game runs smoother than ever, even before it started crashing it would stutter constantly, and now it just works.
 

Edited November 19, 2020 by ValiantBlu

[Ura Hero]

Taking a stab at this since I have nearly the same laptop, it's probably heat or power settings.  The 2060 runs hot anyway and in a laptop it runs even hotter.  Heat would be my first guess since Ultra settings really beat on a graphics card.   Power settings are also a possibility, laptops are notorious for setting the power saving in really stupid ways when plugged into an outlet.  Usually the very first thing I do when I get a new laptop is go into the power control for the wall power setting and set everything to take full advantage of speed; CPU  min/max 100%, USB suspend to off, etc.   Battery power I usually leave as-is.