How do pro gamers avoid crashes?

[moonbogg]

It seems if you are a pro and competing with an audience, you would want to make sure your rig is as stable as possible. No unstable, highly overclocked parts, right? Do they use server hardware or something besides the graphics card? Do they have stringent quality control over their PC, such as making sure registry is perfect, drivers are perfectly clean, event viewer has no errors etc?

 

[Jodell88]

Pro gamers don't avoid anything. The PCs are the tournament organizer's responsibility.

 

[sandorski]

Avoiding Crashes is quite easy. I don't think they worry about it, unless they have been having Crashes.

 

[Annisman*]

haha know what's funny ? Everytime I'm trying to get in a full 64 players server in Red Orchestra 2, if nobody has left in 3, 4, 5 minutes I start getting annoyed and begin to think, why can't somebody's PC just crash ? How are there 64 people with perfectly running PC's lol

Just me being impatient I guess

 

[Atomic Playboy]

All I gather from this thread is that some of you are so bad at building custom PCs that you think regular crashes are commonplace. Also, pros tend to run the games on lower, less demanding settings; they aren't interested in maxing eye candy, they're interested in stability and easily identifying what's happening on screen. The less stuff being rendered, the easier it is to make out the important details, ie "is that a friend or an enemy."

 

[artemicion]

All I gather from this thread is that some of you are so bad at building custom PCs that you think regular crashes are commonplace. Also, pros tend to run the games on lower, less demanding settings; they aren't interested in maxing eye candy, they're interested in stability and easily identifying what's happening on screen. The less stuff being rendered, the easier it is to make out the important details, ie "is that a friend or an enemy."

Wow. Arrogant much? Who said anything about crashes being commonplace? It's a legit question. The infamous Windows 98 BSOD during Bill Gates' presentation proves that crashes will happen at inopportune times, even at "professional" level events.

There's lots of stuff they *could* be doing at the professional gaming scene to reduce the occurrence of crashes that "normal" people generally don't do. Not saying that they actually do any of this, but a list of possible things:

- They don't buy budget components like everyday people do and pay premium prices for premium components (i.e., RAM, SSD, Mobo, etc.)

- They don't have nearly as many peripherals attached to the computer that could cause problems with faulty drivers/software (i.e., printers, phones, webcams, external storage etc.)

- They have minimal software running on the computer, probably just the OS and the game and nothing else, so no crashes from background processes that may exist on "consumer" PCs

- They exhaustively test the RAM, storage, CPU, GPU, etc. using MemTest, etc.

- They don't use bleeding edge components that were released yesterday and may have unknown defects

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Wow. Arrogant much? Who said anything about crashes being commonplace? It's a legit question. The infamous Windows 98 BSOD during Bill Gates' presentation proves that crashes will happen at inopportune times, even at "professional" level events.

There's lots of stuff they *could* be doing at the professional gaming scene to reduce the occurrence of crashes that "normal" people generally don't do. Not saying that they actually do any of this, but a list of possible things:

- They don't buy budget components like everyday people do and pay premium prices for premium components (i.e., RAM, SSD, Mobo, etc.)

- They don't have nearly as many peripherals attached to the computer that could cause problems with faulty drivers/software (i.e., printers, phones, webcams, external storage etc.)

- They have minimal software running on the computer, probably just the OS and the game and nothing else, so no crashes from background processes that may exist on "consumer" PCs

- They exhaustively test the RAM, storage, CPU, GPU, etc. using MemTest, etc.

- They don't use bleeding edge components that were released yesterday and may have unknown defects

You don't even have to do that. Just buy decent (midrange) components and don't overclock (much). Occasional scans with a PC health tool or two will tell you if you need to replace a component without needing to run Prime95 for a week every month.

I only reboot my machine for Windows Updates anymore.

I have had oddball games (older titles, single player titles, and/or games from publishers that went out of business before they could patch it well) crash to desktop sometimes, but anything I play that somebody might play competitively (StarCraft 2, any big-budget MMO, most FPS) I can't recall any of them ever CtD-ing.

If the machines at a tournament are being provided by the hosts, chances are they're taking the same tact, for economic reasons. Get a bunch of boxes from Alienware at a discount, image them with a known-good, run them at spec, and only use games that are known to be stable.

 

[sandorski]

Wow. Arrogant much? Who said anything about crashes being commonplace? It's a legit question. The infamous Windows 98 BSOD during Bill Gates' presentation proves that crashes will happen at inopportune times, even at "professional" level events.

There's lots of stuff they *could* be doing at the professional gaming scene to reduce the occurrence of crashes that "normal" people generally don't do. Not saying that they actually do any of this, but a list of possible things:

- They don't buy budget components like everyday people do and pay premium prices for premium components (i.e., RAM, SSD, Mobo, etc.)

- They don't have nearly as many peripherals attached to the computer that could cause problems with faulty drivers/software (i.e., printers, phones, webcams, external storage etc.)

- They have minimal software running on the computer, probably just the OS and the game and nothing else, so no crashes from background processes that may exist on "consumer" PCs

- They exhaustively test the RAM, storage, CPU, GPU, etc. using MemTest, etc.

- They don't use bleeding edge components that were released yesterday and may have unknown defects

I don't find his argument arrogant at all. What exactly do you think these guys are doing that would put them at a higher risk of Crashing? They likely are using less Hardware by default, no Printers for eg.

I suspect they don't even think about Crashing, it's just not an issue that their activities would induce.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Only thing they worry about crashing is themselves. Got to binge on the mountain dew and doritos.

 

[Annisman*]

Only thing they worry about crashing is themselves. Got to binge on the mountain dew and doritos.

Haha so true. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OtXE-XzyrE

 

[Newbian]

I can't recall the last time my main computer has crashed after I built it.

Sounds like your computer is unstable.

 

[bystander36]

As long as you aren't doing extreme OCing, and have a good PSU, crashing shouldn't be an issue. There are some games which have bugs, and those may crash, but everyone has to deal with it in those games. I suppose I might not load a bunch of apps and peripherals that are not needed for gaming, but that's just a matter of keeping your system specific to your needs.

Windows has come a long way since Win 95.

 

[sweenish]

Wow. Arrogant much? Who said anything about crashes being commonplace? It's a legit question. The infamous Windows 98 BSOD during Bill Gates' presentation proves that crashes will happen at inopportune times, even at "professional" level events.

There's lots of stuff they *could* be doing at the professional gaming scene to reduce the occurrence of crashes that "normal" people generally don't do. Not saying that they actually do any of this, but a list of possible things:

- They don't buy budget components like everyday people do and pay premium prices for premium components (i.e., RAM, SSD, Mobo, etc.)

- They don't have nearly as many peripherals attached to the computer that could cause problems with faulty drivers/software (i.e., printers, phones, webcams, external storage etc.)

- They have minimal software running on the computer, probably just the OS and the game and nothing else, so no crashes from background processes that may exist on "consumer" PCs

- They exhaustively test the RAM, storage, CPU, GPU, etc. using MemTest, etc.

- They don't use bleeding edge components that were released yesterday and may have unknown defects

I enjoy that you had to go all the way back to Wn 98 for an example.

This is a non-issue. It wasn't arrogant at all.

Windows has been stable since XP for the most part. And it's only gotten better since. Instability to the point of wondering about it today, could mean a couple things.

OP is just a bit naive on the matter. That's not an insult. They just need to get a bit more educated on the subject.

On further thought, that's probably the main reason. If they built a crappy box, it's not necessarily out of stupidity, but naivete. Just got in over their head without enough information.

It's certainly a moot issue today, though. Instability comes from PEBKAC and hardware malfunctions. The latter can be minimized by using known dependable parts, and it's still a fairly rare issue.

 

[HeXen]

I'm' sure the tournament organizers test it running for at least 24 hours before the big game. Though imagine if they did a competition of a newly released Dice game?

 

[DragonBorn]

I think it's simple: they use high end PCs and the upgrade them regularly. If no part of your PC is more than a year old, then it's highly unlikely a game will crash (unless it's a bug or something).

 

[Markbnj]

Other than when I mod a game like Skyrim I very rarely see crashes in mainstream PC titles anymore.

 

[moonbogg]

I'm' sure the tournament organizers test it running for at least 24 hours before the big game. Though imagine if they did a competition of a newly released Dice game?

Yeah, good luck with that. Crash city.

 

[Annisman*]

Idk I remember playing STALKER when it launched on the newly released Vista.

Let's see here, buggiest operating system in years + by far the buggiest game at release = Me quick saving literally every 45 seconds

 

[bystander36]

If you want stability, you never use a new OS its first year. XP was just as bad if not worse than Vista at release. Win 7 was a bit better, but not perfect. Same goes for 95 and 98. ME was never fixed. Win 8 also had issues on release, besides the whole UI thing.

I guess that is a decent rule to follow. New games aren't used at tournaments for the same reason.

 

[Annisman*]

I'm just saying there are always perfect storms !

 

[Fallen Kell]

Idk I remember playing STALKER when it launched on the newly released Vista.

Let's see here, buggiest operating system in years + by far the buggiest game at release = Me quick saving literally every 45 seconds

The only things "buggy" in Vista were hardware drivers from venders who didn't want to support the change to Vista and a couple UI persistence items (i.e explorer forgetting that you put it into thumbnail mode and opening in list view). The vista system I built in summer 2007 only rebooted 8 times (3 for the install, and 5 more for service pack updates and patches) until I converted it to Win7. Otherwise it was on 24x7 for 4 years with no crashes. But as I said, I specifically purchased hardware which had full vender driver support for Vista. If you tried to use just any 1-3 year old hardware at Vista launch, yeah it was a crap shoot if it worked, but again, that was driver issues, not the actual OS.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

The most unstable aspect of a game is typically the game itself, and its generally because it has its own bugs which you can't really do anything about - i.e. if the game code is unstable, server grade software won't help

after that its generally ISP connection issues that are the primary cause of "crashing" and its not really a crash, just a player losing connection (which can be just as bad if not worse if the connection goes down and stays down, whereas a crash might just require ~30 seconds to reboot and get back into the game). Half the time these instances are entirely on the ISP end and there's little if anything you can do to get around that, although some times it is a hop that goes down and you can use a VPN to get around it, but that's pretty rare. Otherwise the other half is the user's own network environment, e.g. shitty router and/or sharing the connection with unregulated housemates. Get a good router and configure it up properly and then just cross your fingers your ISP doesn't shit the bed on you.

Otherwise you seem to be insinuating that hardware is the cause of crashes, which it can be if you're lazy or stupid with your installs. Even heavily overclocked rigs should be perfectly fine for competitive games (in fact they're preferable due to performance advantage) as long as proper stress testing has been performed to check for stability, it really isn't hard to push a computer harder with stress testing software than any game can hope to.

Basically, if we go back to the first point, one thing professional gamers often do is meticulously explore the depths of a game's settings in order to perhaps tweak/lower/disable certain settings to not only gain a visual advantage (less distracting clutter) but this can also have the added bonus of reducing/eliminating chances for bugs that can cause instability.

 

[DigDog]

Wow.

actually, i agree with AP.

 

[imaheadcase]

Competition games are held on the same PCs the whole tournament by the organizers themselves. They are always made from the sponsors hardware. Crashes just don't happen when everything being used is already proven and the same.

You can't BYOD to competitions with huge prize money. I think they only thing they allow is keyboard and mouse change outs. But most don't do that anymore.

 

[Smoblikat]

Once my PC gets setup, it doesnt crash unless I was messing around wit it on purpose. I imagine pro gamers have a clue and ran some IBT/OCCT before they show up for an event. This is assuming they use their own computers, which they probably dont.