L4D issues post 4/21 DLC, possibly borking video cards

[iandh]

Many users including myself have experienced massive crashes since the 4/21 DLC.

There are various issues that somewhat follow along the same path.

This could be sensationalism, but several users that continued to attempt to play (particular those with 8800GTX's) after experiencing the crashes are ending up with dead GPU's. I'm not trying to be sensationalist either, but just wanted to give everyone a heads up... if you are experiencing these issues and continuing to play L4D, it may be a good idea to hold off until this gets sorted. The issue effects both NV and ATI GPU's, but NV GPU's seem to be getting the worst end of it.

I am 101% sure these issues were caused by the DLC, as no hardware/software changes occured prior to the update, and L4D functioned perfectly prior. The crashes kills my display driver so badly that IE (or almost any program that relies on an animated UI or graphics such as my CAD) won't usually start, and when it does flash errors pop up. A restart is required to restore functionality.


Normally I would have posted this in the games section, but as it involves a possibility of hardware damage (although probably minute), I figured it was at least worth a thread... if mod(s) see the need, then please move to game section.

edit: Oops, forgot link to thread in steam forum: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=846415&page=39

 

[phanbuey]

I just had to repair my vista install because of one of these crashes. The OS failed to boot even in safe mode, although my GFX is fine.

 

[DanishDevil]

Dead GPUs? Whoa, that's insane. I've never heard of a software problem bricking hardware unless it was somehow related to frequencies or power. I haven't downloaded the DLC yet, but I'm definitely looking into this first.

 

[mrw1986]

Been playing the DLC perfectly fine with several friends...odd. We all have different GPU's too and different hardware setups.

 

[iandh]

Been playing the DLC perfectly fine with several friends...odd. We all have different GPU's too and different hardware setups.

Yes, it is definitely odd.

The DLC is working perfectly fine for some and causing massive crashes for others.

A bunch of steam forums trolls/sycophantic steam forum mods are trying to defend Valve and blaming the entire issue on the users. It is obvious to anyone who looks at the numbers that this DLC is overstressing the GPU horribly on some setups and just plain crashing out on others, and it has something to do with the update, meaning it has something to do with the game code. A steam moderator actually came out and said it is impossible that the game code is killing hardware. We all remember the 4870/Furmark debacle don't we? Software CAN and WILL kill hardware in certain cases.

If it is impossible for software to kill hardware, then why did ATI release a driver that throttled back Furmark shortly after users reported dead cards from running it?

Some users have experienced massive framerate drops, while in my case I have experienced a HUGE increase in load temps. Normally L4D would be about 65C load on my 4890 (Crysis for reference would average about 68C), now with the same settings I am hitting 80C post-patch. L4D SHOULD NOT give me higher GPU load temps than Crysis for pete's sake.

 

[DanishDevil]

Interesting. I might do some pre vs post DLC temp readings...

 

[iandh]

Interesting. I might do some pre vs post DLC temp readings...

Keep in mind, only a couple users have reported temp changes, and some are just experiencing massive crashes/artifacting.

 

[Mussels]

i've noticed worse framerates after the DLC, but thats all here on ATI.

one of my old 8800GTX's died a few months back, it could just be that the 88GTX's aer actually dying of old age, and its mere coincidence?

 

[iandh]

i've noticed worse framerates after the DLC, but thats all here on ATI.

one of my old 8800GTX's died a few months back, it could just be that the 88GTX's aer actually dying of old age, and its mere coincidence?

I think it has been pretty much agreed over in the thread that some or most of the cards were on their way out, but the bad code in the update tipped them over the edge.

My main point was that the update is overstressing hardware, and it can be seen in the form of high temps (only in a couple cases), bad framerates (in more of the cases), and crashes (in most cases).

Also, there are more users in the steam forum thread, that like the poster above, have had their entire windows install destroyed by the patch.