Search Unity

Question Single user repeated crashing, Malloc & GC_malloc_uncollectable (dmps included)

Discussion in 'Windows' started by malkere, Jun 30, 2021.

  1. malkere

    malkere

    Joined:
    Dec 6, 2013
    Posts:
    1,212
    I've got a burst of new players thanks to the ongoing Steam Summer Sale. One of them was reporting his game crashing repeatedly, even to BSOD sometimes in Windows 10:
    Unity.Collections.LowLevel.Unsafe.UnsafeUtility:Malloc?
    He sent me some player logs and they all looked like they were Vegetation Studio Pro attempting to allocate memory or something, so I suggested he try turning grass off (disable VSPro in my game) until I can look at it further.

    He says the game ran for a good few hours after that without problems, but then eventually did have another crash:
    GC_malloc_uncollectable?
    I suggested he run the memory diagnostics tool and said his memory is "heavily overclocked," but that he's never had problems with any other games...?

    I've attached a with grass and without grass crash dump and logs though admittedly have never figured out how to work with dumps myself =[ I always seem to just get stuck loading symbols and never deduce anything useful... I'm still inclined to believe it's his memory, but can anyone offer an other advice or insight w/ or w/o the dumps?
     

    Attached Files:

  2. Tautvydas-Zilys

    Tautvydas-Zilys

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Jul 25, 2013
    Posts:
    10,674
    Either their system is running out of memory, or the system is unstable. The fact that they're also getting BSODs make me suspect the latter. Both dumps show failures in memory allocation routines.

    Overclocking is tricky business. It's not really possible to prove that an overclocked system is completely stable, you can only prove that it's stable for a particular scenario, by running that scenario over and over again for several days straight. Then you think your system is stable, run a different scenario only to run into crashes...

    I would tell the player to try running your game after turning overclocking off, and see whether that makes it more stable. If it does, then you're in the clear :). If it doesn't I'd love another dump from a non-overclocked computer as there ones don't make much sense (and that's normal when hardware is unstable).
     
    malkere and Joe-Censored like this.
  3. malkere

    malkere

    Joined:
    Dec 6, 2013
    Posts:
    1,212
    I'm onboard with all of that, he's just convinced it doesn't happen in other games. I asked him if he knew of any other Unity games he plays, and he named 2 and said 1 of them crashed frequently... I don't have crashes from any other players. I can see a rare one once in a while in the Unity Services anonymous diagnostics, but not to the point that anyone brings them up to me.
     
  4. malkere

    malkere

    Joined:
    Dec 6, 2013
    Posts:
    1,212
    So, I'm still in dialogue with this one player.
    "I played Medieval Dynasty for 8h straight ( gpu at 100% load most of the time ) with no issues
    there are no instabilities in my system
    1440p Ultra ( max ) settings
    90-110 fps"
    He's run and shown me MemTestPro results, and even turned the off the memory overclocking but was still getting errors.

    Again, I don't have other players experiencing this, so it's clearly something specific to his system, but it doesn't seem to be happening with other games?

    How/what can I/we try to narrow down what is causing this?

    I do a lot of instantiating and destroying as players move around in my game, so there is definitely a lot of memory usage going on.
     
  5. Tautvydas-Zilys

    Tautvydas-Zilys

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Jul 25, 2013
    Posts:
    10,674
  6. malkere

    malkere

    Joined:
    Dec 6, 2013
    Posts:
    1,212
    I've heard back from my user. He/she says they spotted WHEA errors in the system logs and was able to find a voltage setting that wasn't providing sufficient voltage left on "auto," I assume due to his overclocking. He/she thinks they've solved the problem, so I'll leave it at that for now.
    o7
     
  7. Tautvydas-Zilys

    Tautvydas-Zilys

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Jul 25, 2013
    Posts:
    10,674
    Yeah, when you overclock, hardware draws more power than in stock settings. Insufficient voltage would cause random crashes.