1-2 second freezes?

[FusionKnight]

Hi guys,

I just purchased myself a DFI LanParty SLI-DR motherboard along with an AMD 3800 x2 (manchester) processor. To top that off, I picked up an eVGA 7900 GT CO. I'm having problems playing games such as FEAR and Rise of Legends - every 25-30 seconds I'll get a 1-2 second freeze. The whole thing locks up - the audio freezes and nothing moves - and then it picks up again where it left off, usually. While I have CPU-Z open I've also noticed that the HTT bus will fluctuate within 10 or so MHz. So I'll watch it go from 200MHz to 192MHz and then back up to 200MHz within 1-2 seconds. I would imagine the problems are related but I'm not entirely sure what that problem is.

The power supply I've got is a 520W RAIDMAX which I think might be the problem - it's by no means an enthusiast power supply so some of the rails could be dropping under strain. I've been told over at dfi-street that the board requires a minimum of 480W power supply connected with the 24-pin connector. My RAIDMAX has only the 20-pin connector and it's connected directly to the mobo with no 20-pin to 24-pin adapter.

Memtest says my memory's fine, and I can run Prime95 for a full day without any errors cropping up (although any overclock at all will cause the system to either lock up or reboot during Prime95).

Upping the voltage to the processor, chipset and LDT lessens the problem but doesn't eliminate it, and I'm a little worried about increasing the voltage more than +0.1v on the LDT.

Heat doesn't seem to be an issue - 32-33 degrees idle, roughly 38 at load.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
FK

 

[PurdueRy]

:oes the get a new power supply dance::



Provided that you have checked for CPU usage when not gaming to see if you get spikes there

 

[FusionKnight]

Originally posted by: PurdueRy
:oes the get a new power supply dance::



Provided that you have checked for CPU usage when not gaming to see if you get spikes there

I've run Prime95 and watched it spike. Does that count?

I was told elsewhere that such spikes in HTT was somewhat normal. Are you saying it's not?

Edit: Love that dance.

Thanks,
FK

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: FusionKnight

Originally posted by: PurdueRy
:oes the get a new power supply dance::



Provided that you have checked for CPU usage when not gaming to see if you get spikes there

I've run Prime95 and watched it spike. Does that count?

I was told elsewhere that such spikes in HTT was somewhat normal. Are you saying it's not?

Edit: Love that dance.

Thanks,
FK

I don't believe you should see spike in CPU usage(in tast manager) when your computer is idle is what I mean. If you do, this issue may be attributed to a background program, virus, or even a virusscan program. Check that.

If you don't see any spikes while idle then I would probably just go get a new power supply. I wouldn't want a nice computer like that running on a time bomb anyway.

Yes the dance is very nice

-Ry

 

[thescreensavers]

do you have aim,Gaim with guifications,Yahoo,MSn, any IM client that has thous pop ups in the corner of the screen?

 

[FusionKnight]

Applications in the background aren't an issue. Fresh windows install as well, so I'm fairly sure there are no viruses running on the PC. I'll double check though - better safe than sorry

One of my buddies said that because I have a dual core processor that the freezes are caused by the system trying to offload cycles onto the second processor. I can fix this, apparently, by setting the "affinity" of a process either to core one or core two in the process in the task manager. This sounds a little iffy to me, but I'm at work now so I can't test this. Anyone ever hear of this?

Thanks,
FK