Choosing MSAA over FXAA in game makes my 17R4 restart

Hello everyone,

I am facing a strange issue.
I update my Nvidia drivers frequently (when a new on comes out) and lately, when I choose MSAA over FXAA my 17r4 (7820HK/GTX1080) randomly restarts.

I saw that when using MSAA, the power usage seems bigger as I see that it's draining the battery (power button changes color) and it doesn't seem to be the case when using FXAA.

To test this, I used a little overclock : 36x on all cores, with a -125mV undervolt.

Anyone one of you got any idea on how to fix this?

I don't get why the computer would restart (example would be playing Destiny 2 everything almost on max settings, at 1440p and VRAM usage is under 3Gb and my 1080 as 8Gb).

Thanks in advance for your help.

Cheers,

Speedsweep.

 

MSAA is a lot more taxing than FXAA. The latter is more of a glorified intelligent filter while MSAA is rendering multiple inages and rendering them into one while doing edge detection. This pushes the load higher and your PSU cant keep up. To combat thid you can undervolt the gpu. But some fault in your hardware can cause the reboots. For example too high thermals.

 

Probbaly overheating.

 

Nope, no overheating.

I had a long work on my laptop, one fan was changed for a stronger one, I repasted/repaded not with LM though but with Kryonaut, modded my PCH with a custom heatsink.

My temps are overall good: between 65-70 for the CPU, 55-65 for the GPU and the PCH hovers around 70 in game, with all settings maxed out on a 1440p screen, gsync enabled.

 

does this happen in all games? And it still could be a cpu or gpu related component overheating such as the vrms.

 

Frankly I haven't played in a while, but lately I have been on Yakuza 0 and Destiny 2 and it just happened on Destiny 2.

Could it be driver related? ( I am updating Nvdia drivers as soon as they get out).

 

Have you checked decreasing undervolt values?

 

What power supply are you using?
A 330W PSU is more than sufficient for a 3.6 ghz 7820HK and a GTX 1080. You can't possibly draw more than 330W.
I mean, I can pull 230W through a (modded) GTX 1070N and with a 4.5 ghz 7820HK, I still can't reach 330W. I'm not sure if the Alienware has a 150W Vbios or a 190W vbios but it doesn't matter. MSAA or even Supersampling AA won't exceed your GPU's rated TDP, so there's no reason for the system to shut off.

How does the system shut off anyway?

A PSU overload would mean the PSU light shuts off and it switches to battery power. This STILL will not cause a shutoff. I've tripped my 230W PSU by trying to run it with a 190W TDP 1070 and the PSU just turned off after the entire system exceeded 250W, and it switched to battery power.

I blame something else here. Bad Bios, bad firmware, defective hardware somewhere, I really don't know.