My system isn't the most up to date as I'm running a Core i7-920 C0 @ 3.8 GHz but I have Windows 8 Pro, 12 GB of RAM and GTX 680 SLI so it is still more than capable of running all current games at maximum settings, especially I still play games at 1920x1200, which is a relatively moderation resolution by today's standards.
Anyway, I've been playing and enjoying Tomb Raider on the PC but can only play it for about an hour with everything maxed out or on (except for AA at 2xSSAA) before it freezes my system and I have to reset my PC. The benchmark returns an average framerate of 50 fps on the settings I'm using by the way. I'm currently using the v314.14 betas but I've had the same thing occur with the v314.07 and v311.06 WHQL drivers. I've tried disabling TressFX and tessellation and that allows me to play for longer than a few minutes but it still crashes. The longest I've been able to play was two hours. With tessellation enabled the game hitches for a split second, usually during an auto save (TR icon in the bottom right corner) and sometimes for 1-2 seconds during a QTE sequence. These usually increase as I play leading up to the game freezing.
I'm so disappointed with all the bugs and glitches because it is actually a really good game; it looks great, the framerate is far superior to the PS3 version I've tried and it is so much fun. It's the PC equivalent of Uncharted and I just can't get enough of it.
These are the other bugs I've experienced so far:
1. AA keeps resetting from 2xSSAA to FXAA every time I start the game;
2. There are various lighting, blood and water effects missing when playing the game in fullscreen, which only show in windowed mode;
3. Rain sometimes shows under shelter (such as near the radio tower) though that is hardly a big deal I know compared with the other issues the game has;
4. Despite having a 1920x1200 resolution monitor, the image looks different between Auto and 16:10 aspect ratio settings when they should be identical! Seems Auto either isn't detecting 16:10 properly or 16:10 is not actually 16:10!
5. I got a "Failed to initialize Direct3D" error upon starting the game which turned out to be caused by the Exclusive Fullscreen (EF) option being checked. I could play the game with EF disabled but in order to enable it I had to switch the Aspect Ratio from 16:10 to Auto, drop the resolution to 1920x1080, load the game with EF working, exit it then finally switch it back to 1920x1200 which then allows it to run with EF enabled as confirmed by the in-game Graphics Options!
6. I've had two corrupted save games, probably a result of the freezes occuring during a save, but I was thankfully able to recover them by deleting the Remote folder in the 203160 folder in the Steam UserData directory. This then allowed the saves to be restored from the cloud. Last night before I exited the game, my save game showed 2% completion rather than 44% after I'd exited the menu, necessitating yet another cloud save restore.
Phew! I think I should probably just leave this game well alone until it is patched and there are new optimized drivers out for it as it is proving to be a oddly enjoyable yet, at the same time, immensely frustrating experience. Oh well, I guess there's always the PS3 version even if does only run at 15-20 fps!!!
