Acer Swift 3X SF314-510G graphics driver problems

LimaFoxtrot
LimaFoxtrot Member Posts: 8

Tinkerer
in Swift and Spin Series
See this thread for initial workup/management - Acer Swift 3X SF314-510G BSOD Problem — Acer Community

Roll-back to stock ACER drivers after WIndows Update forces the Intel (non-ACER) drivers on you seem to be a solution - see this for how to roll-back the drivers - https://www.intel.com.au/content/www/au/en/support/articles/000008628/graphics.html. 

This is, I strongly suspect, a step too far for many consumers who just want this laptop to work out-of-the-box.  Having your laptop BSOD every day (if not multiple times every day) is a terrible user experience, and especially for people like myself who are dipping their toes in the ACER pond for the first time, it's a terrible sales-pitch for the brand. 

Even with roll-back, the stock drivers are not perfect.  I'm getting stuttering and crashing in games - e.g. in Warthunder, I crash out every hour or so with the error message as attached.  Of course, updating the video drivers is not a solution, it just makes things worse...

So - ACER really needs to step up to the plate here, perhaps with Intel in tow.  

After buying a whole series of Lenovo laptops in recent years for both myself and family, I was looking for an excuse to move to a Taiwanese-based manufacturer - focusing on either ACER or ASUS.  For me, the ACER 3X was the perfect opportunity to do this, bringing together what seemed like a sweet spot of quality, capability, portability and price, with the dedicated 4GB XE MAX being a big drawcard for my use-case.

I'd been warned off ACER due to two issues - (a) quality/reliability, and (b) driver support.  But I went ahead anyway.

It sounds very much like ACER has sorted out their quality issues in recent years.  But driver support is every bit as important as hardware support.  There's no point having a Ferrari if the engine-management software won't let you get it out of the driveway.

As a product waving the flag for XE MAX, Intel has skin the game re: getting this right as well.

So, please, ACER - please get the 3X graphics drivers sorted out ASAP.





Best Answer

  • bwat47
    bwat47 Member Posts: 14

    Tinkerer
    Answer ✓
    Also, shortly after my last post, windows update pushed newer intel drivers again... BUT these ones no longer seem to be broken. Have been running them for several weeks with no instability

Answers

  • AnhEZ28
    AnhEZ28 ACE, Member Posts: 4,292 Pathfinder
    edited March 2021
    For the graphics driver, I usually go download from its brand's website like Intel or Nvidia. Because those places have updated and stable driver. I just don't like how Acer names those graphics drivers as VGA driver, especially for Nvidia with GPU part-number like N18E, N18P. Those names can confuse many consumers.
    Please remember to include @AnhEZ28 when you want to reply back to my comment so that I can check your response.
    Thank you and have a nice day!
  • LimaFoxtrot
    LimaFoxtrot Member Posts: 8

    Tinkerer
    edited March 2021
    Response and my response to that from the Intel support community forum - as below.
    To this I would add - ACER, is there any intent to update the XE/XE MAX drivers for the Swift 3X?  Will you be liaising with Intel re: their future XE/XE MAX driver updates? 


    Bryce_Intel
    Bryce_Intel
    Moderator
    ‎03-24-2021 03:35 PM
    38 Views

    @limafoxtrot 

    Thanks for highlighting the 3 issues!

    1. [BSOD with anything other than stock ACER drivers]  The generic drivers on our Download Center site are said to be generic for a reason, while they support a broad range of systems, they aren't specific to any particular brand or OEM product. OEMs customize these drivers and validate their products to ensure they're functioning as intended. So it makes sense the Acer unit has no BSOD with their customized validated driver, though the non-validated generic driver has a BSOD. It's noted in the Download Center description that if you see issues with the generic driver, you'll need to only use the OEM driver as it appears is the case with this Acer product being a special design.

    At this point, I'm not sure if yours is the same issue as the others are seeing since there was mention of others seeing the BSOD using the Acer drivers as well. I had also thought they only see this while playing games, though you're saying yours fails "at anytime", but I could be misunderstanding that, I'll have to reread the reports. So you seem to have a better experience where at least you can use an Acer driver and avoid the BSOD. If so, your issue is considered resolved.

    2 & 3. [overheating when gaming with USB-C display out active; stuttering/crashing with gaming with stock ACER drivers, without without USB-C display out] I would suggest reporting this directly through Acer, if it's an issue with HW, your product is new and still under warranty for replacement or repair. If it's a SW/FW issue, they could likely offer a downloadable fix like a BIOS tweak or driver customization.

    Hope this makes sense, and hope it helps.

    ‎03-27-2021 04:26 PM
    3 Views

    Thank you for responding, Bryce.

    I hear where you're coming from, and it's a difficult to tease apart the boundaries between the supplier of the part (Intel) and the manufacturer of the product (in this case, ACER).  I have posted all of these issues to the ACER support forums as well, with no response last time I checked.

    Certainly there are a multitude of bug fixes occurring, with many more bugs not addressed (as per this post - Intel graphics driver version 27.20.100.9316 fixes Iris Xe/Xe Max game launch crashes - Neowin).  It is not clear whether those bugs are across all platforms, but I would assume so as it doesn't state otherwise.  I have no doubt the reported issues are are just the tip of the iceberg.  My guess, then, is that, with XE MAX being a new product to the market, the majority of the issues probably lie on the Intel side of the equation, with the drivers yet to reach maturity. 

    I appreciate that is a massive task, given the years that AMD and NVIDIA have been working on their discrete graphics solutions and drivers, not to mention the commercial imperative for software developers to ensure their products are compatible with them (vs a new Intel product).

    For what it's worth, for issue 1, I will confirm that with any of the Intel released drivers, my Swift 3X was crashing with the aforementioned BSOD at random occasions, whether that be office tasks or gaming.

    With issues 2 and 3 - essentially issues encountered when gaming with or without an external display, noted mainly with Warthunder (my game of choice), but also with Rainbow 6 and The Division 2 - it seems from info released with the XE MAX Intel driver updates (Intel graphics driver version 27.20.100.9316 fixes Iris Xe/Xe Max game launch crashes - Neowin) that Intel IS working to try and address bugs/crashing during gaming. 

    But are you suggesting that the best way to report issues and get issues onto the bug list is to go via ACER; and then presumably ACER will liaise with Intel? 

    As a new product to market, with limited roll-out ("Iris Xe Max will launch in just three laptops to start: the Acer Swift 3X, the Asus VivoBook Flip 14 TP470, and the Dell Inspiron 15 7000 2-in-1" -  First Tests: Intel Iris Xe Max Is No Gaming Powerhouse (pcmag.com)) - I would have hoped that Intel would be working very closely with Acer, Asus and Dell to NOT release XE MAX driver updates via Windows Update that cause any of the limited number of machines on the market to crash.  From your response, this (dishearteningly) doesn't seem to be the case.

    I'll add that I have also noticed that stuttering and crashing appears to happen faster when graphic details are turned up higher (MEDIUM on Warthunder), vs when details are turned down (LOW in Warthunder) - they still occur on LOW, but seem to take longer to appear.

    I appreciate that Intel is not a company with unlimited resources, and the cohort of XE MAX users is miniscule compared to the competing demands of your other customers.  But it is hard to see how XE MAX market share will increase against the strong competition of AMD and NVIDIA with the current state of the drivers.  And I can see it would be very easy to put DG1 to the side in favour of increasing development and support for DG2. 

    Nevertheless, as somebody who took a deliberate (and perhaps, as it may turn out, reckless) jump away from the AMD SOC platform I (and many others over the last 12 months) was originally set on purchasing, I hope XE MAX/DG1 will not end up being a functionally stillborn/orphaned product.

  • bwat47
    bwat47 Member Posts: 14

    Tinkerer
    In my experience acer is quite slow to update intel graphics drivers. See: https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/543762/1803-update-bricks-intel-graphics-on-aspire-e5-576g-5762/p1

    Given that past experience with an acer laptop, I suppose I should have expected this kind of issue... fool me once and all that.

    I really like this laptop when it comes to the hardware, but acer has a long way to go when it comes to driver support.

    I've NEVER had intel driver issues with any other laptop brand, so I'm puzzled why acer has so many intel driver issues


  • LimaFoxtrot
    LimaFoxtrot Member Posts: 8

    Tinkerer
    Thanks for the info, @bwat47.
    That's not very promising... :(
  • diagon_swarm
    diagon_swarm Member Posts: 1 New User
    LimaFoxtrot>

    As a person who wrote about 500 laptop reviews in last 15 years, I can tell you that such issues are not Acer specific. The issues where the Windows Update forces installing a driver that is not compatible with the laptop is very common across all laptop vendors. Acer is not unique in this at all.

    Anyway, I am just testing Swift 3X and perceived the same. Typical BSOD comes when I start a 3D game (SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION, igdkmdnd64.sys). It happens like once per two days - but only if I play games (it never happened when I used the laptop for office/web/video). I also experienced other issues like a frozen desktop on an external screen. It seemed like the laptop crashed hard, but it just required disconnecting the external screen. Everything was fine on the internal screen.

    I blame Intel for all these issues. There are very few laptops with Iris Xe Max (three? four?). I would assume that the team that develops the drivers has access to all of them. The original driver installed by Acer seems to be generic too, so the laptop does not require vendor-specific modifications. Intel should work harder on this. I see that people have troubles not only with the dedicated Iris Xe Max but also with other 11gen Iris graphics cores.
  • SigneHvidberg
    SigneHvidberg Member Posts: 3 New User
    Currently I am having trouble playing galactic civilization 3 - it just keeps crashing after a while. I have the Acer, Aspire 5 laptop with the Intel iRIS xe graphics and intel core i5 - what can I do to solve this?

    Kind regards
    Signe
  • bwat47
    bwat47 Member Posts: 14

    Tinkerer
    LimaFoxtrot said:
    Thanks for the info, @bwat47.
    That's not very promising... :(

    it looks like acer has updated the DG1 driver to version 9040

    so far no issues, but I have only been running it for a day
  • bwat47
    bwat47 Member Posts: 14

    Tinkerer
    Answer ✓
    Also, shortly after my last post, windows update pushed newer intel drivers again... BUT these ones no longer seem to be broken. Have been running them for several weeks with no instability
  • LimaFoxtrot
    LimaFoxtrot Member Posts: 8

    Tinkerer
    I'd given up on this for a long time, but just downloaded latest Intel drivers and, as per bwat47, seem to be going ok.  No BSOD so far, with 2nd screen attached, and for the first time was able to run Warthunder, running at 60fps in HIGH settings and, again, no BSOD, plus no flickering edge-block artefacts (which was a major issue).  It took a year, but it looks like we got there eventually!  No thanks to Acer, I'm afraid...thank you Intel.

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