Morrowind - white noise effect

[serpenscaput]

Software information
Playing Morrowind with latest MGE XE, shaders and per pixel lighting enabled. My issue is with the entire display being replaced with an animated white noise/snow effect, after which my laptop reboots itself in a minute or so. This happens in three different circumstances:

• If I don't play for a while and leave my computer unattended, I get white noise. If I reboot my laptop, everything is fine again. I can only guess this has something to do with Windows going into sleep mode in the meantime.
• If I enable anisotropic filtering and/or antialiasing in MGE XE, I get white noise no matter what. The game is completely unplayable with these settings.
• Very rarely it happens in regular circumstances as well. I've just had it happen after an hour of normal gameplay, which prompted me to post this report, because I'm getting concerned it might become a bigger issue.

My GPU and chipset drivers as well as firmware are up to date. I have also replaced my thermal paste and am running a temperature monitor to make sure my hardware isn't overheating (it's not).

System information
GPU: Radeon RX 6500M
Driver: 24.12.1
Wine version: N/A
DXVK version: 2.5.2

Morrowind_d3d9.log

[WinterSnowfall]

I would first rule out this being a 2.5.2 specific problem, because there is a known regression which affects d3d8/9 games, that has been since fixed. Try this build: https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/actions/runs/12655592414/artifacts/2396922630

However, the laptop rebooting is not a good sign at all and may ultimately indicate a problem/fault with your hardware (GPU or VRAM chips).

I have not played Morrowind extensively as of late, but from quick tests it appears to be fine.

[Blisto91]

If I don't play for a while and leave my computer unattended, I get white noise. If I reboot my laptop, everything is fine again. I can only guess this has something to do with Windows going into sleep mode in the meantime.

Do you mean that when the white noise appears it will also show on desktop until you reboot? As in it isn't restricted to Morrowind itself

[serpenscaput]

I would first rule out this being a 2.5.2 specific problem, because there is a known regression which affects d3d8/9 games, that has been since fixed. Try this build: https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/actions/runs/12655592414/artifacts/2396922630

However, the laptop rebooting is not a good sign at all and may ultimately indicate a problem/fault with your hardware (GPU or VRAM chips).

I have not played Morrowind extensively as of late, but from quick tests it appears to be fine.

I sure hope it's not my GPU, the laptop is only two years old. Still, I had been extensively playing The Talos Principle 2 before Morrowind and encountered no issues at all. The white noise issue only started showing up after I installed DXVK, beforehand everything was stable (but much slower, which is why I'm not willing to give up on DXVK despite the issue; it's such a miracle for framerate).

I will test the build you linked later today.

If I don't play for a while and leave my computer unattended, I get white noise. If I reboot my laptop, everything is fine again. I can only guess this has something to do with Windows going into sleep mode in the meantime.

Do you mean that when the white noise appears it will also show on desktop until you reboot? As in it isn't restricted to Morrowind itself

Ah, good question, I forgot to specify that. If I close and reopen the lid of my laptop, I get dumped into the Windows login screen which displays normally. I'm then able to log in and have a few seconds to quit Morrowind normally before the white noise appears again. It then does NOT show up on desktop afterwards.

[serpenscaput]

Update: the build you linked did not help. What now?

[WinterSnowfall]

An easy way to rule out hardware issues is to grab a Vulkan benchmark (such as FurMark 2, for example) and see if you can reproduce the noise/artifacting and/or your laptop restarting without dxvk being involved.

I'd be careful to keep an eye on the temps though, because it can dangerously heat some laptop GPUs if they aren't properly cooled, and cooking the GPU is not the objective here - rather putting a heavy load on the video memory and core to see how stable they are.

[qinlili23333]

• If I don't play for a while and leave my computer unattended, I get white noise.

If the game with DXVK is not running and you get white noise, this may be sound card driver issue.
I can remember that when I installed wrong version of driver for Realtek sound card on my Surface Pro 8, I got white noise when idle. Installing official driver released by vendor fix it for me that time.

[WinterSnowfall]

If the game with DXVK is not running and you get white noise, this may be sound card driver issue.

Pretty sure "white noise" in this context is meant to convey random visual noise, akin to untuned TV sets of old if you will, not audio problems 😉.

[serpenscaput]

An easy way to rule out hardware issues is to grab a Vulkan benchmark (such as FurMark 2, for example) and see if you can reproduce the noise/artifacting and/or your laptop restarting without dxvk being involved.

I'd be careful to keep an eye on the temps though, because it can dangerously heat some laptop GPUs if they aren't properly cooled, and cooking the GPU is not the objective here - rather putting a heavy load on the video memory and core to see how stable they are.

Sorry it took a while, I had to wait until Morrowind acts up again for me. It happened today and it was one of those cases when my laptop doesn't reboot soon after, so I pressed Alt+Tab, and closed and reopened my laptop's lid (which, as mentioned before, clears the snow effect), then closed Morrowind on the taskbar. I then ran GravityMark, making sure to select Vulkan API, and tested it with both my integrated and discrete GPUs. Everything worked well. I then ran Fallout New Vegas with DXVK (the build you linked in this thread) installed. Again, it ran fine. And then I launched Morrowind again just to make sure, and got snow. I'm not sure what to think about these results.

[WinterSnowfall]

Are you able to reproduce this in vanilla Morrowind (d3d8), without MGE XE (d3d9)?

I'm asking because I am guessing the problem may be caused by some of the extra shaders MGE XE is using, but without an apitrace capturing the problem it's really hard to tell.

The unmodified game has (always) worked fine here.

[serpenscaput]

Are you able to reproduce this in vanilla Morrowind (d3d8), without MGE XE (d3d9)?

I'm asking because I am guessing the problem may be caused by some of the extra shaders MGE XE is using, but without an apitrace capturing the problem it's really hard to tell.

The unmodified game has (always) worked fine here.

Yeah. Vanilla Morrowind runs just fine when MGE XE "snows out".