All games crash on Swift 3X with Intel Xe Max

I just bought a Swift 3X and all games crash randomly or become unplayable after a few seconds or perhaps 30 min at most. Some games just crash (Witcher 3 with EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION in logs). Others like War Thunder drop from 60-70 fps to 1 fps and the task manager shows the Xe Max load dropping from high load to zero. Sometimes the screen goes black or freezes for a while and says "Video driver hung and was restarted". It seems like it could be a Xe Max issue. But, from forum posts etc I thought the Xe Max driver issues should be solved by now. Does anyone still have similar issues? What driver versions should work? Should it work by now and is it therefore a probable hardware issue?

Acer lists driver version 27.20.100.9466 as the latest on the homepage and I have 27.20.100.9466 installed according to device manager. I've also tried installing Intels latest drivers, removing all drivers, reinstalling etc but with no luck so far.

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StevenGen

aard6543 said:

I just bought a Swift 3X and all games crash randomly or become unplayable after a few seconds or perhaps 30 min at most. Some games just crash (Witcher 3 with EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION in logs). Others like War Thunder drop from 60-70 fps to 1 fps and the task manager shows the Xe Max load dropping from high load to zero. Sometimes the screen goes black or freezes for a while and says "Video driver hung and was restarted". It seems like it could be a Xe Max issue. But, from forum posts etc I thought the Xe Max driver issues should be solved by now. Does anyone still have similar issues? What driver versions should work? Should it work by now and is it therefore a probable hardware issue?

Acer lists driver version 27.20.100.9466 as the latest on the homepage and I have 27.20.100.9466 installed according to device manager. I've also tried installing Intels latest drivers, removing all drivers, reinstalling etc but with no luck so far.

The Swift 3x (whichever model you have?) with its Intel® Iris Xe Max (last Intel driver is the 30.0.101.1660) and even with its 11th Gen cpu its not a hard core gaming platform, you need to updated all its drivers to their latest Win-11 drivers, this laptop could also overheat hence crashing and black screens if you are playing these games for long periods of time and the laptop becomes hot? Also the EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION error as its also marked by a numeric error code like 0xc0000005, this Windows error restricts PC users from using the app and games usage and they will encounter this error message. For most people, the problem occurs during gameplay or when launching apps like (Java, Visual Studio, Minecraft, etc.) so that is where your problem is.

Yes the Intel® Iris Xe Max is built on the 10 nm process, and based on the DG1 graphics processor and its chip supports DirectX 12 which ensures that all modern games will run on Iris Xe MAX Graphics but with its base clock of 300MHz and a Boost Clock 1650MHz is adequate but, you need to keep its drivers up to date and especially all the Intel drivers up to date by installing the “Intel® Driver & Support Assistant” as that will always keep all Intel drivers up to date as the Acer lists driver version 27.20.100.9466 is old, so install the last Intel graphics driver first. Also, you could change these games “Compatibility” settings as War Thunder or Witcher 3 (were really released for Win-7 and are old) which should make them more compatible and playable as these games should NOT be a problem for the Swift 3x latest models to handle if your laptop is setup properly and is kept cool.

aard6543

I thought I downloaded the latest Intel driver but from my screenshots I can see the version I tested was 30.0.101.1003. I'll see if I can find 30.0.101.1660. I'm not sure how Intel names their versions though. The last part could be just a build identifier. (I have the i5-1135G7 Swift 3X version.)

I know it's not a hard core gaming PC but I am actually happily surprised by the performance. 60-70 fps in War Thunder was more than I expected. Also, playing Witcher 3 in 1080p (Low presets) is also impressive for a laptop built for size, battery life and general convenience (low noise etc).

I measured the thermals (only cpu, open hardware monitor doesn't find a temp for the discrete GPU) but it wasn't terrible. When stress testing (Cinebench R23 etc) it maxed out around 70C and less during games. The laptop also crashed for simple games like dV Rings of Saturn and I can sometimes play for seconds and sometimes for 30 minutes after restarting so it shouldn't be thermals. If the GPU was overheating, the second run should be shorter.