Skyrim - Damn You Stormcloaks! Crash

I picked up a copy of Skyrim recently while it was on Steam Autumn Sale 2013. I had read about the game and all the mods for quite some time. So needless to say, I started going through the process of installing the Realvision ENB mods as soon as it finished downloading.

Several hours later I fired up the game and off I went. It was difficult to tell if the mods were enabled because I didn't play vanilla Skyrim.

That was apparently the least of my problems as I couldn't seem to make it out of the opening scene. After some Googling I discovered I wasn't alone but no one had an answer to the problem; the problem known as the "Damn you Stormcloaks!" crash.

Long story short, I was able to get around this little problem by launching the Skyrim launcher, clicking data files, and unchecking everything except for the first 3 items which are official DLC.

After making it through the beginning area, save your game and exit. You can then reload your mods and all should be well.

Click Data Files

Uncheck all but the first 3. (if you have the DLC)

Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2012) Freezes - Crashes

Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2012) is consistently freezing / crashing on PC.

I'm not sure exactly when it started, but will consistently crash in under 2 minutes once I have started racing.

The application log in the event viewer shows the following:

Faulting application name: NFS13.exe, version: 1.5.0.0, time stamp: 0x512cfdc3

Faulting module name: NFS13.exe, version: 1.5.0.0, time stamp: 0x512cfdc3

Exception code: 0xc0000005

Fault offset: 0x008c4878

Faulting process id: 0x132c

Faulting application start time: 0x01cee933d7eadb11

Faulting application path: E:\Games\Need for Speed(TM) Most Wanted\NFS13.exe

Faulting module path: E:\Games\Need for Speed(TM) Most Wanted\NFS13.exe

Report Id: a642e5a7-5527-11e3-b8f6-93f33f22e2c2

Has anyone found a solution to this?

Battlefield 4 - Performance Tweaks (cont)

CPU is spiking.

Are you running crossfire? Are you running the latest catalyst drivers? If so, you may be inadvertently hindering Battlefield 4 performance.

I have experimented with Cat v6, v7, v8, and have found that v6 offers the smoothest experience with vSync enabled in Battlefield 4.

This is on a MSI 6990 with all settings set to Ultra with the exception of MSAA and FXAA which are both off.

I was also experiencing crashes in BF4 fairly often. Exiting out of Steam and Raptr while playing Battlefield 4 seemed to fix that issue. I suspect Raptr was the culprit, but haven't taken the time to determine this for sure.

You can view the full thread on the Guru 3D Forums.

Also, it has been said that disabling core parking will help with performance. If you're unfamiliar with core parking, then let me Google that for you.

Update 11/14/13: The biggest performance tip I can give is, upgrade your video card. :) I just upgraded from an MSI 6990 to a Sapphire r290x and the difference is night and day. If you have a 6990 and you're on the fence about upgrading, do it!

Battlefield 4 - Can't Bind Toggle Gadget

Boom.

If you're having trouble binding gadgets to non default keys, read on. I use the cursor keys for movement, so I needed the gadget bound somewhere besides the 3 key. Unfortunately, no matter what key I would try to bind "toggle gadget 1" to, it just flat out refused to work.

This was very frustrating when playing assault. I could hand out med kits all day long, but I couldn't revive anyone without fumbling through the mouse scroll wheel to whip out the defibrillators. By the time I was ready to yell "Clear!" it was too late. So...many...dead. If only I could have got the paddles out in time!

I spent a while googleing and was coming up empty so I headed to the official forums at which point I ran across a post by wazups2x

The fix is to bind "Select Gadget 1" and "Toggle Weapon Underslung" to the same key.

Battlefield 4 - Performance Tweaks

If you're playing the BF4 beta you may notice that performance is less than expected. First and foremost, make sure you are running the latest Beta drivers for your video card.

Secondly, install the version of DirectX that is in the Battlfield 4 Beta directory.

Navigate to: "{your installation path}Battlefield 4 Beta\__Installer\directx\redist" and run the DXSetup.exe file.

Enjoy greatly improved performance! This has been verified to improve performance on 2 separate machines so far. Let me know if it works for you as well.

The theory is that the version of DX included in the install dir contains enhancements that BF4 is relying on.

Slide 11 of 21
http://www.slideshare.net/DICEStudio/battlefield-4-frostbite-3-mantle?from_search=10

However, this is purely theory on my part as the slide indicates the optimizations were added only to DX11.1 running on Windows 8.

Thirdly, you may see a performance improvement by enabling hyperthreading if you processor supports it. As you can see in the slide above, Frostbite has been optimized to run on as much as 8 cores now.

As you can see, DICE worked closely with AMD to optimize it for their hardware which makes sense since both the PS4 and XboxOne are powered by AMD hardware.

If you currently bleed green, I highly recommend coming over to the #AMDRedTeam Why is that you ask? I can answer your question in one word - MANTLE, but that is a topic for another day.