Is there a way to force it to run on just one core? (test)

As reported in the crash thread, I'm getting a BlackSOD (full crash to black screen - video output stops, audio buffer continues, only solution is hard power-off) that is consistent with my experience on another game that would crash after a few (variable) minutes in-game that was solved by using an option to run on one core.

So, per the title, I wonder if there is a config setting in the many files that I can set and give it a try? So far my attempts to set processor affinity via the task manager has resulted only in CTD. However, I prefer CTD to hard freeze.

ums

edit: currently testing with release to see if I get the same crash in the event of an undocumented bugfix.

edit2: no, this time I didn't get through the tutorial before crashing. I've seen a lot of discussion about people having gpu temp issues. I will continue monitoring this, but I honestly don't think this is the problem. I play a lot of games at native res (1680x1050 here) and on the higher-end graphics settings. My card is nothing spectacular, I know, but when I have zero crashes outside of certain games, I have to immediately ask what the program is doing (while doing due diligence and making sure something on my end hasn't just let the smoke out).

Check out the end of the most recent launch log... very suspicious stuff there at the end, will Google it and see if I can find what's up. I don't like where that last message suddenly clips.

Yep, that looks like your video card is locking up on something. You can try lowering the texture and world details to see if it fixes it for you.

What specific video card and drivers do you have?

9800GT, not overclocked, using the latest drivers as of 1/23 (release, not beta) 266.58. I did lower all the settings as far as they could go, leaving the resolution the same, and it still black crashed on me.

edit:

Also, just to be clear in this and my other messages, the last time I had this kind of black/dead issue required playing on a single CPU core not a single GPU. Obviously the 9800 is a single-core. If you google around on the Unreal Engine forums (over at Epic), though, you'll find that this error and similar screen freezes have occurred in the engine before. Some of those folks, however, were running multicore GPU's and had to trim that back down to one.

Well not really a surprise here, but just confirmed that the update did not change this (video driver related) issue. Steam offered to issue a refund, but I'd rather not burn their offer on less than $15 so I guess you got me Uber. Gratz.

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Is this type of issue on the private known issues thread? When a program doesn't cooperate with video hardware, it needs some kind of graceful exception handling. If for some reason this is "too much" for my card, then things need to run slowly and not smooth as silk.

It all runs great until boom. And frankly I'm not cool with any more hard reboots without some indication that something has changed.