Whenever I play VRChat, my PC sometimes suddenly reboots with blue-screens. I’ve had a similar issue before, and the crash logs seemed to point to the NVIDIA graphics driver. The strange part is that other games run normally. VRChat is the only game that consistently triggers this problem.
Things I’ve already tried:
Used DDU to uninstall and reinstall the NVIDIA driver;
Tried different/reinstalled NVIDIA drivers;
Checked Windows crash logs and minidump files;
Last time I had a similar issue, the only thing that fixed it was reinstalling Windows.
I’d like to ask:
Could this be related to VRChat, Unity, NVIDIA drivers, shader cache, leftover driver files, or possibly GPU/power stability?
Has anyone with an RTX 50-series GPU experienced similar reboots or blue screens in VRChat?
Is there any thorough troubleshooting or cleanup method besides reinstalling Windows?
The only think I personally could recommend if you haven’t done already is to make sure your BIOS is up to date and that the latest AMD chipset drivers are installed. Maybe also disable any sort of overlays like steam and discord.
If that still doesn’t do it I would try to revert any changes you may have made in the bios so that it is stock to try and find the corporate. I hope you don’t have to just wait for a new graphics driver update :\ that would blow.
The last thing i could find when looking into this is to maybe clear the DirectX shader cache and let it rebuild if you haven’t. I hope by some luck this helps! Lmk!
I’ve updated my BIOS several times, but it doesn’t seem to have made any noticeable difference.
I also suspect that DirectX might be related to the issue. Previously, after installing a certain version of the NVIDIA driver, I couldn’t launch VRChat because of a DirectX error. Uninstalling the driver didn’t help, and I eventually had to reinstall Windows before I could get back into the game.
I’ve also noticed that after blocking all non-friend avatars, the BSODs seem to happen less frequently.
Hmmm okay yeah seems like its not a BIOS issue at all.
Have you looked at your blue screen error code? You can do Win+R then ‘perfmon /rel’ or you can simply search ‘reliability’ in the windows search to open the Reliability Monitor and you can check the time and date the blue screen happens and look for Critical Events.
You can right click them and click ‘View technical details’ where you will see things like a source, summary, and bug check code (ex:0x00000113). Incase of a faulty driver you may see a file name like ‘nvlddmkm.sys’ or something.
Then you can hopefully look up your bug check code/anything else you find there to get a clearer picture.
I’d also like to ask if you are launching in VR mode or desktop mode and if there is a difference when trying to do so. If you are using VR are you using SteamVR or anything like Virtual Desktop/Quest Link?
Maybe related, maybe not, but figured I’d chime in here too!
I have similar specs, only a 7800x3D vs your 9950x3D and in the last two weeks I’ve noticed some very tangible impacts to performance in VRCHAT. I can’t say exactly when it occurred and I haven’t yet began troubleshooting, but it’s been noticeable. I saw your post and figured I’d mention something.
In instances I normally would be capped in frame rate I will sometimes sit at 70 FPS. (Not hard capped there, just in that ballpark) I can crank the render resolution to 500% and still be at the same frame rates.
I suspect it’s a recent Nvidia driver or the recent Steam VR patch. Either way I’ve not experienced any BSOD or hard crashes. But figured I’d throw this out there. I’m going to roll back to the last know driver that worked well for me and see if that makes an impact. (596.49)