Mac Client Crashes Frequently

_subjectnamehere_

This issue has been brought up multiple times during beta.

Devs?

It seems there is a memory leak with the Mac client. Setting textures to "high" causes the game to crash about once an hour, on average. Lowering this setting allows you to stay in game longer, but will still crash after some time.

Any updates regarding this issue, devs?

2013 iMac
Mac OSX v10.8.5
3.4GHz Intel Core i7
8GB Memory 1600MHz DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2048 MB
27" Monitor

Moonraker

As with the beta mass test the biggest impact is the sheer number of players logged and in the same place.

On PTS testing the last week I never had a memory crash with the fix in place. There are no reports of crashing every 10-15 minutes as there were the last weekend. Today I have had two crashes after around 3-4 hours hours play and I'm not so surprised given the number of people etc. I have set graphics down now to allow of this for the next few days of launch madness.

Once players spread out and numbers drop I expect it to smooth out.

The long term solution is a 64-bit client which is already in the development consideration.

Publius_Scipio

Yes, @Moonraker‌ and myself (and many others) have been discussing this issue hardcore since the last beta session.

I do know ZOS is on top of things and they do read the forums and fan sites, etc. But for this particular issue they have not come out to specifically mention memory leak crashes.

BTW @Moonraker‌ would you agree that the crashes are much more prevalent on the Mac side of things vs PC? I myself haven't seen anyone PC specific mention crashes.

Moonraker

Publius_Scipio wrote: »

Yes, @Moonraker‌ and myself (and many others) have been discussing this issue hardcore since the last beta session.

I do know ZOS is on top of things and they do read the forums and fan sites, etc. But for this particular issue they have not come out to specifically mention memory leak crashes.

BTW @Moonraker‌ would you agree that the crashes are much more prevalent on the Mac side of things vs PC? I myself haven't seen anyone PC specific mention crashes.

Probably more on the mac as I pointed out they handle memory differently. They probably don't mention it as much on the PC side because of this and also because we are looking more closely at the issue than them. It does happen on the PC because I checked via Bootcamp but not as mush. It does show high memory usage in crowded areas. But then they have more of a CPU issue ATM which limits fps even on the highest graphics card being CPU bottleneck as the cores are not being used efficiently while the Mac does a lot better. It works both ways.

Yshaar

I have the crashes too. Medium on texture helps, like in beta. Another thing I noticed: the settings revert back to high after crashing.

Moonraker

Yshaar wrote: »

I have the crashes too. Medium on texture helps, like in beta. Another thing I noticed: the settings revert back to high after crashing.

Settings will not remain on crash. Only if you log out or quit.

GreySix

Moonraker wrote: »

The long term solution is a 64-bit client which is already in the development consideration.

Really looking forward to that. Perhaps I'll finally be able to play it on my Mac Pro then.

Moonraker

On my sixth hour of questing and no crash. Setting at Ultra-High with Bloom off (cosmetic not performance) This on Stros M'kai and now Bethnik.

It shows me more than ever than judging a client on launch day with many more players than normal all together impacts any computer.

The issue will be to see if the current memory limit is going to work reasonably in PvP. have to wait until decent level to test it properly.

I'm posting this because it's not all crashing every xx hours. In crowded towns I intentionally set setting down especially Texture Quality but others also.

It's going to take a bit of time to get some idea of what's going to be a decent balance for a range of Macs. Simply using default is not the answer because it will always be a best guess and also, different game styles and usage will impact performance. As do server load.

mark.hetrickb14_ESO

For those with duo core iMacs, ours are 2008 and late 2009; The graphics settings seem to have a marginal impact on 3-5 second freezes and total lockups. I have run though busy cities with medium and minimum settings and I get the same glitches when moving past large groups of people. BTW switching to high does not seem to make the glitches occur more often but does seem to effect the severity (i.e. total freeze ups). View distance seems to have a large impact on the number of times the freezes occur. So..... I think at least for the older iMacs the processor bottleneck is more of an issue than the graphics cards. What confounds me is I could zerg in the last beta with graphics set to medium without a hiccup on screen for the half hour I was able to play. Maybe 50 people on screen. If I go to Ariadon I can freeze on low settings in a matter of minutes. There is something in the memory management of this client that needs to be repaired. All in all, I am really disappointed in the quality of the client. If the game itself was not so engaging I would just stop playing and move on. Wish there was some way to help the Devs fix this. But I guess us old iMac players will have to wait for that aha moment when the Devs get an error report that clearly shows what's wrong with the client. I fully agree that a 64 bit client is critical to ESO. The old 32 bit client in WoW eventually made the game unbearable to play on a mac.

Phaedros

Thanks for this. I get a lot longer between crashes by running textures on Medium.

/salute!

Moonraker

mark.hetrickb14_ESO wrote: »

For those with duo core iMacs, ours are 2008 and late 2009; The graphics settings seem to have a marginal impact on 3-5 second freezes and total lockups. I have run though busy cities with medium and minimum settings and I get the same glitches when moving past large groups of people. BTW switching to high does not seem to make the glitches occur more often but does seem to effect the severity (i.e. total freeze ups). View distance seems to have a large impact on the number of times the freezes occur. So..... I think at least for the older iMacs the processor bottleneck is more of an issue than the graphics cards. What confounds me is I could zerg in the last beta with graphics set to medium without a hiccup on screen for the half hour I was able to play. Maybe 50 people on screen. If I go to Ariadon I can freeze on low settings in a matter of minutes. There is something in the memory management of this client that needs to be repaired. All in all, I am really disappointed in the quality of the client. If the game itself was not so engaging I would just stop playing and move on. Wish there was some way to help the Devs fix this. But I guess us old iMac players will have to wait for that aha moment when the Devs get an error report that clearly shows what's wrong with the client. I fully agree that a 64 bit client is critical to ESO. The old 32 bit client in WoW eventually made the game unbearable to play on a mac.

Sorry but you are talking about a Mac around 5-6 years old. It's very little to do with the 32-bit client but with the computer specification. What graphics card do you have in your iMac? Just the duo-core will be suffering in these conditions. The mac ESO client has been fixed since beta with a memory fix which will auto ramp down certain settings, so there is no way it is going the opposite direction.

mark.hetrickb14_ESO

I have an ATI Radeon HD 4670

Moonraker

mark.hetrickb14_ESO wrote: »

I have an ATI Radeon HD 4670

It's a 256MB graphics card trying to drive a 27 inch screen at native resolution on 2560 x 1440. Coupled with a core-duo CPU. The issue is not the 32-bit client (which is not ideal but also perfectly capable for most of the games demands).

It's not impossible to get it running moderately in questing etc but will need some amount of tweaking and compromise to do so especially at native resolution. Which in fact one of the strengths of the way they built the clients cross platform for older computers.

Pawkette

It's really bad in AvA. Crashing on anything but Low, every 30-45 minutes.

Zhengshi

I am also still having the same issue. Much better than recent betas where it was ~15 minutes. I am now showing about every 2 hours. Normally just standing or running when it happens. I have had a ticket open with ZOS support since 02/09/2014. They closed my ticket on 03/22/2014 stating that it is a known issue with my graphics card specifically... GTX680mx ... Something about a driver issue with apple and it should be fixed by release(I don't buy it). I have since reopened my ticket as the issue still exists. The support team has been frustrating to deal with and unknowledgeable at best.

Moonraker

Zhengshi wrote: »

I am also still having the same issue. Much better than recent betas where it was ~15 minutes. I am now showing about every 2 hours. Normally just standing or running when it happens. I have had a ticket open with ZOS support since 02/09/2014. They closed my ticket on 03/22/2014 stating that it is a known issue with my graphics card specifically... GTX680mx ... Something about a driver issue with apple and it should be fixed by release(I don't buy it). I have since reopened my ticket as the issue still exists. The support team has been frustrating to deal with and unknowledgeable at best.

Yes, that's a totally inaccurate support response. /sadface. I imagine they are mixing up the Intel Iris Pro (now fixed) & Intel Graphics HD 5000 (fixed , broken should be fixed soon) issues.

Your experience is closer to mine. The memory fix went in. It hasn't solved the problem but has elevated it somewhat. it basically ramps down the Texture Quality at a certain level of memory usage. That level needs tweaking until it can reduce the crashes as far as possible while not trashing visuals totally outside more intensive activities like AvA.

Moonraker

Pawkette wrote: »

It's really bad in AvA. Crashing on anything but Low, every 30-45 minutes.

Thanks for the feedback Pawkette. I'll open a thread tomorrow and ask everyone to start submitting copy/ paste of crash reports so we have better data on 'time to crash' and see what can be done to improve the memory performance.

The last beta weekend feedback helped a lot to identify the issue and hopefully we can improve on that by feeding it direct to the developers, as well as bug reports and Tickets where appropriate.

KhajitFurTrader

Moonraker wrote: »

Pawkette wrote: »

It's really bad in AvA. Crashing on anything but Low, every 30-45 minutes.

Thanks for the feedback Pawkette. I'll open a thread tomorrow and ask everyone to start submitting copy/ paste of crash reports so we have better data on 'time to crash' and see what can be done to improve the memory performance.

Hi there Moonraker,

client uptime as stated in the crash report could be deceiving. With texture settings on medium, I was able to play the entire island of Stros M'Kay and a bit of the Betnakh content in one session yesterday. But within 5 minutes after zoning back to Daggerfall, the client crashed, as it is sadly still wont to do.

Nevertheless, I'm interested in seeing and comparing crash reports as well, so I'm going to contribute. Just a general precaution: when posting crash reports here, delete any personal information like the UserID and perhaps the machine's hostname from it.

zauberfalke

Mac Pro 2008, 2x QuadCore, 32 GB RAM, ATI Radeon 5870 1GB

Regular crashes, mainly in town but also outside if there is "much going on",
but crashes not as frequent as in beta.

Just crashed the mac completely, needed 15 min to reboot ....

mark.hetrickb14_ESO

BTW I am on a 22 inch screen at 1920X1080 so not quite as bad as a 27 inch. Some of the issue is server side I believe. Was on at 10pm and the lag was terrible. Couldn't log on 3 out of 4 times and once on in KR everything lagged bad. Logged on to a character in Au and could move with just a few glitches even though there were more people around. Could this be an instance issue as opposed to a client issue? I would sometimes see riderless horses moving like merry-go-round horses and no one else around. I could reload ui and then the area filled with people. Over time the crowds would thin and riderless horses would appear again. Weird? No it's not my internet speed, tested at 40mbps and 21 ms latency. I am beginning to think some of our issues are server side problems magnified by a much less than ideally optimized client. Will be interesting to see how fast they fix both before the mass of non-ESO addicted players start signing up to play. See you all in Tamriel.

fezworthy

My wife and both played yesterday (1st gen 15" retina MPB and new iMac 27" running Nvidia 780m 4gb)
The crashes were occurring anywhere between 20-30 minutes in a high population location, but more spaced out 1-2 hours of play per crash) once we got out of the cities. This is no change for us from the beta client.

I'll try and update when I get home and play tonight with the crash reports.

Kuiper

iMac 27" 680MX & iMac 27" 775M, both crash to desktop every 2 hours or so. Same frequency as in weekend stress test betas. Turned off bloom and dropped to Medium graphic detail quality - will see if that extends playtime until subsequent crashes.

Vinth

Kuiper wrote: »

iMac 27" 680MX & iMac 27" 775M, both crash to desktop every 2 hours or so. Same frequency as in weekend stress test betas. Turned off bloom and dropped to Medium graphic detail quality - will see if that extends playtime until subsequent crashes.

Same configuration, it's unplayable between real crashes and disconnections.

Moonraker

KhajitFurTrader wrote: »

client uptime as stated in the crash report could be deceiving. With texture settings on medium, I was able to play the entire island of Stros M'Kay and a bit of the Betnakh content in one session yesterday. But within 5 minutes after zoning back to Daggerfall, the client crashed, as it is sadly still wont to do.

Nevertheless, I'm interested in seeing and comparing crash reports as well, so I'm going to contribute. Just a general precaution: when posting crash reports here, delete any personal information like the UserID and perhaps the machine's hostname from it.

It won't tell us exactly the history of crash events but it does give the total uptime (at least it's what I understand currently) and also time since last load i.e. new zone, way shrine teleport etc. It also notes world location and zone.

I helps too when players can post accurate times between crashes but unless using a stopwatch it is easy to estimate to much or too little. But estimate is at least better than nothing. The crash report gives us the recorded time which is the advantage though no use if it doesn't launch the ZOSCrash Reporter.

Once I get through new posts, I'll add a new thread for this.

GreySix

zauberfalke wrote: »

Mac Pro 2008, 2x QuadCore, 32 GB RAM, ATI Radeon 5870 1GB

Regular crashes, mainly in town but also outside if there is "much going on",
but crashes not as frequent as in beta.

Just crashed the mac completely, needed 15 min to reboot ....

Have a dual-processor, 2 each quad-core 2010 Mac Pro with updated graphics card and 48 GB of memory.

This game does not officially support the Mac Pro. I can get it to run for a short while by booting into Windows 7 and shutting down all but half of a processor, but the crashes eventually happen anyway.

Also, setting the game on medium-level graphics settings seemed to delay crashes.

So found I have to play the game on my 2012 MacBook Pro, if I don't want to suffer continuous crashes.

Never had the game crash the Mac Pro outright though, so that's a new wrinkle.

Kuiper

No amount of graphic setting fiddling eliminates the crashing; in fact toggling stuff really does not extend playtime between crashes. I found the Mac portion of the 'bug fixes' in Build 0.182, which is the Early Access build we're playing now:

Mac Client

General

• Fixed an issue where the game window would not close until you moved your mouse when you quit the game.
• Fixed an issue where your screen would go blank (white) while attempting to switch between the game window and other windows using command + tab.
• Fixed an issue causing an “x” to appear next to every keybind character in the tutorial UI.

No mention of stability fixes.

Moonraker

Kuiper wrote: »

No amount of graphic setting fiddling eliminates the crashing; in fact toggling stuff really does not extend playtime between crashes. I found the Mac portion of the 'bug fixes' in Build 0.182, which is the Early Access build we're playing now:

Mac Client

General

• Fixed an issue where the game window would not close until you moved your mouse when you quit the game.
• Fixed an issue where your screen would go blank (white) while attempting to switch between the game window and other windows using command + tab.
• Fixed an issue causing an “x” to appear next to every keybind character in the tutorial UI.

No mention of stability fixes.

We are on launch build version 1.0 and patch notes were posted since those. ZOS don't include all the fixes in their Patch Notes especially client ones. No mention of PC fixes anywhere.

Above you say that it is about 2 hours between crashes which is improvement over the beta weekend by quite a bit.

Tweaking does make a difference as it directly effects the amount of memory being used.

Tweaking will eliminate the crashes to a negligible level in normal questing/ dungeon PVE play. I played a week on PTS with no crashes at all which better reflects play outside of launch week.

The issue is in crowded situations, like launch day with hundreds of players spawned into a town for example. The number of players directly effects the memory. And especially when trying to play in AvA big battles with loads of players together.

And that's why I'm asking for crash reports and details to pass on directly to developers so they can look to improve the situation.

Zhengshi

@Moonraker‌ , Do you work for ZOS? I ask mainly because you have been so involved, which is great. A stark contrast to the labeled "agents" I have been dealing with. That being said, I crash 1-2 hours apart. This is far from negligible by any stretch of the imagination. Yes a huge improvement from the extremely frustrating beta, but by no means an acceptable "fix". I monitor my ram usage when playing the game sense beta (you may recall I posted on this issue a few times with stats) and at no point do I get 4gb out of the client committed when it crashes. It is normally lower. 3-3.5 GB and sometimes in 2Gb. Confirmed in ZOS crash logs as follows:
mem.current = 2814
mem.peak = 2814
mem.physical = 24576

I could be reading that wrong, or they could be pulling the wrong metrics... but from what I can tell, I am not meeting the max memory allocation of a 32bit app when it crashes.

The concept of only crashing during crowded areas would make sense with the only exception that I have crashed in the wilderness with no one around and note the previous memory usage. Even crashed in instances with no one around. It would be ludicrous to even consider that players in a non-instanced zone are affecting me due to having to draw them.

I have had a ticket open since 02/09/2014 03:52 PM concerning this issue with no actual resolution. I could rant for an hour on how horrible their support has been up to this point. Not reading previous messages, trying to misdirect, trying to blame unrelated systems on the issue, and most recently closing my ticket because : "Also, we have been keeping an eye on mac issues. It appears other mac users have been having issues when they are using the GTX 680. Please check for updates on the apple store. If not, please be aware that we are aware of this issue and are diligently working on a fix with the drivers for this video card in relation to mac." after I had given them the links to our previous forum posts regarding this issue showing that there were more than just 1 video card seeing the issue.

it basically ramps down the Texture Quality at a certain level of memory usage. That level needs tweaking until it can reduce the crashes as far as possible while not trashing visuals totally outside more intensive activities like AvA.

If their "fix" is truly to gimp my graphics and to use some slight of hand to change my high or ultra settings, then that is a bandaid. not a "fix". I did test on Medium and didn't see much difference in any test outside of the beta (I did notice a change of 15 minutes to 1-2 hours in the beta).

If you do work for ZOS, I would love to schedule some time with you and maybe the product managers to figure out why this is deemed acceptable. If not, thank you for the effort you have put forth and maybe we could get an official word in here. They comment on things like why we can't get out vanity pets, maybe this isn't such a big deal to them as long as we have our vanity pets.

Loeppi

Hi there,
I am looking forward to play with my group. Unfortunately i also encounter frequent crashes (every 10-15min) with low graphic settings.
My specs:
Late 2009 MBPr
2,66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT 256 MB
Mavericks.

Many thanks for any tips and fixes!

Pi

Moonraker

Loeppi wrote: »

Hi there,
I am looking forward to play with my group. Unfortunately i also encounter frequent crashes (every 10-15min) with low graphic settings.
My specs:
Late 2009 MBPr
2,66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT 256 MB
Mavericks.

Many thanks for any tips and fixes!

Pi

Hi. Thanks for posting the details and feedback.

To begin to analyis and improve this memory issue we really need to get crash reports and feedback (as you have provided with System detail)I made a new thread to focus all these here.

Please post any crash reports you encounter (usually the window that's opened after a crash) I posted instructions there.

The more we can gather the better.

On the system details you gave, I can see that you have a graphics card with 256MB which is a bare minimum for the official ESO Mac System Requirements.

This will mean graphics settings at Lowest or Low especially in more crowded areas. PvP I think will not be possible.

Also 4GB of RAM is the minimum and while the Mac client is 32-bit and limited to 4GB< other apps running in the background can impact the memory usage too.

I suggest rebooting your Mac before playing. Close the Launcher when logged to game as it's not needed and just another process in the background.

60GB free space is not really enough. The Launcher and requirements state 60GB but you also need to allow at least another 15% free space on that for OS etc. Trying to run close to full on this can cause. issues.

The have gone to a lot of effort to support computers up to 5 years old so it's possible you can get it playable but possibly only for questing solo or a small group.

WHAT ARE THE MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS FOR MAC?

Updated 03/28/2014 11:06 AM Published 12/03/2013 10:07 AM
Mac Minimum System Requirements:

Operating System: Mac OS X 10.7.0 or Later
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo processor
Memory: 4 GB System RAM
Hard Disk Space: 60 GB free HDD space
Video Card: Intel HD Graphics 4000, NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M, ATI Radeon HD 6490M or better
Resolution: 1024X768 minimum display resolution
Media: DVD-ROM
Mac Recommended System Requirements:

Operating System: Mac OS X 10.7.0 or Later
Processor: Intel i5 processor
Memory: 4 GB System RAM
Hard Disk Space: 60 GB free HDD space
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M, ATI Radeon HD 5770 or better
Resolution: 1024X768 minimum display resolution
Media: DVD-ROM
*A persistent internet connection is required to play.

**System requirements are subject to change over time.

rebelcoder

Constant crashes in Cyrodiil, and frequent crashes everywhere else. What is the ETA on a fix for this?