I tried with all permutations of vsync and SMT and SMT is definitely the issue.
@Chessqueen, while I don’t think “too many threads” is the best way to describe the issue (because the number of threads isn’t the problem; it’s an issue with any single physical core being able to simultaneously process more than a single thread of execution), there definitely is an issue with SMT in this game on Ryzen 3xxx series CPUs at the very least. I’ve seen threads across the internet about all Ryzen generations having issues with SMT enabled including Rainbow Six Siege, Ashes of the Singularity (with dx12), and Battlefield 1 also.
It seems like this should be an issue investigated by @warhorse, even if their response is to push the issue up to Crytek to debug. My instinct from being a programmer for years is that this smells like a race condition. Access violations don’t happen just because SMT is enabled.
There is no good reason why I should have to disable SMT to run a game. I didn’t buy a CPU with 12 cores/24 threads just to game; I need all those threads to get other work done and rebooting to enable/disable SMT is a massive waste of my time.
If anyone at Warhorse is reading here, I am more than willing to help debug the issue in any way I can.