ANY game on custom built high-end gaming rig crashes, very frustrated!!!

[Jensenator]

Hello everyone, this is my first post. I am not new to building and tinkering with gaming PC's, but this problem has me scratching my head royally.

Mine I know is older but it will still eat through any current game on the market on high settings and keep up the pace with brand new PC's....except for one problem. Originally I built this computer 2 years ago, and it had Windows Vista Ultimate x64 and a GTX 260 which was watercooled.

For nearly a year and a half things were great. Then out came Windows 7 RC Ultimate x64. I had that on my PC until I it expired and I had to get Windows 7 Home Premium, as I couldn't afford Ultimate at the time. Things were good once again until around August of this year, when my GPU failed (had it OC'd very high on water like I said and it finally gave up). Took it into a shop to replace the card as while I have a watercooling system, I do not know how to do upkeep on it or disconnect anything should I have to replace parts (I only know how to add coolant). I figured a shop would know better than I. Anyways, they replaced my GTX 260 with an Asus ATI 5850 DirectCU GPU which I have air cooled and and on stock clock, per their recommendation....

.....ever since that card was put in, EVERY SINGLE GAME I OWN crashes and blue screen dumps no matter what I do!!!!! Crysis.....Assassin's Creed...Star Wars: The Force Unleased...Call of Duty 4 and 5....they all crash. It varies in time length, sometimes they crash right at startup or sometimes they go at max be playable for 15-20 minutes. I have tried updating all my games to the latest patches, which for my extensive library is a PITA. If I use the PC for anything else it's fine, but gaming...no go. So basically I've got a sitting duck, and I've been forced to go on a game fast. It royally bites.

Help, anyone? I posted my specs below. I know this isn't a "show what you got" post but I took this off another forum I posted my PC on with all the specs and layout. Hope it helps. Peace.

Build, circa August 2008: Project Monster Xaser

-Cost: Around 2,500k-3k 2 years ago
-CPU: Phenom 9950 X4 conservatively OC'd to 2.87 GHz
-MoBo: Asus M3A78 Pro
-RAM: G-Skill DDR2 1066, 6 Gigs spread out on four DIMM slots
-Video Card (New Upgrade 08/10): Asus ATI 5850 DirectCU
-Power Supply: Silverstone 1200w Tri-way SLI capable
-Primary Hard Drive(s): Western Digital 300gb Velociraptor 10k RPM X2 in
RAID 0
-Secondary Drives: WD 500gb 7200k RPM, WD 500gb Caviar external SATA hard drive
-Cooling System: Thermaltake Bigwater 760is watercooling 2U drive bay system (cooling CPU only at this time. I used to have an OC'd GTX 260 with a waterblock and watercooled but I fried that and disconnected the piping for the GPU.)
-Sound: Soundblater XFI ExtremeGamer Fatal1ty Edition, internal PCI card
-Misc Internal Peripherals: VisionTek 1080p TV tuner Card, D link DWA552 Extreme N Wireless Internal PCI Adapter
-Optical Drives: Liteon Blu Ray Reader/DVD-ROM (Primary) - Asus 48x DVD Burner (Secondary)
-Card Reader: Asus 15-in-1 Card Reader
-Case: Thermaltake Xaser VI, Full ATX Version
-Monitor: Asus 23" 1080p High Definition, 30,000:1 contrast ratio monitor
-Peripherals: Razer Lycosa DeathAdder 1200dpi Gaming Mouse, Razer Lycosa Gaming Keyboard.
-Speakers: Klipsch 2.1 (and they're LOUD)
-Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium, x64

 

[calvie]

Is the gfx card overclocked?

 

[Jensenator]

Is the gfx card overclocked?

Nope. It was this way on stock clock. I will admit that I am running Asus SmartDoctor, which is a softclock utility, and I have it on AUTO 3d game mode (which MAYBE OC's it like 8-10 MHz)....but even before I had that installed and was running purely on ATI catalyst manager, everything was crashing.

 

[dmoney1980]

run memtest ?

 

[superccs]

Driver sweeper and clean your room 😛

 

[CLite]

Well it is obviously your gpu and nothing else, so either a bad ATI driver or a bad card. What temp does your card get up to after a stress test? Since you only have 1 monitor I would do a windowed stress test like OCCT with CPUID HW Monitor up, see if maybe cooling is an issue.

 

[llee]

Your issues lie either with the HD 5850 that you received or the motherboard. Make sure that guy didn't scam you by replacing that GTX 260 for another faulty card. If possible, see if you have a friend that would be willing to swap motherboards for a day to see if it still runs.

 

[Jensenator]

Well it is obviously your gpu and nothing else, so either a bad ATI driver or a bad card. What temp does your card get up to after a stress test? Since you only have 1 monitor I would do a windowed stress test like OCCT with CPUID HW Monitor up, see if maybe cooling is an issue.

Motherboard? I never thought about about that. But how would I even begin to diagnose a motherboard? Everything SEEMS fine, it's not like the whole system is crashing altogether, just while gaming. I wouldn't doubt it though, it's going on 2 1/2 years old. But how can a motherboard be bad when it seems to look as if it's functioning normally? Not trying to sound dumb...but it has yet to act like it's failed so far. This ONLY happened once I got the new card in and things astarted acting up.

I know I sound like an idiot, but I put the .ISO image for memtest and tried to boot to it at startup...nothing happened. How do I use it so it works? I tried to figure out to use it in windows but I couldn't figure out how. Software isn't quite something I'm so good at.

Your issues lie either with the HD 5850 that you received or the motherboard. Make sure that guy didn't scam you by replacing that GTX 260 for another faulty card. If possible, see if you have a friend that would be willing to swap motherboards for a day to see if it still runs.

Not questioning you, but how could this be a bad card if I have no interlaced lines or artifacting coming up on my screen? How so I do a stresstest (with CPUID?) This is a brand new card I had ordered, and they even gave me the box and all documentation for it. I am going out on a limb and giving them the benefit of the doubt (hopefully), but I highly doubt the shop would do this. I personally know the tech and the owner, it is why I took it there over anywhere else. And they even gave me the old card back, not sure why they'd try to scam me

As far as driver sweeper, what a joke! It would run the update, then the application would lock up and then Windows would automatically shut it down. I went to manually analyze my drivers using the left hand menu...and it sure "cleaned my system" alright.....it went back to a 800X600 res at reboot because it removed the drivers completely and I lost my video, sound and mouse drivers. THAT was interesting.

Is there a program that JUST identifies old or conflicting driver conflicts? I just don't get why when I do high load things like graphics design in photoshop and watch bluray movies I have no issue but playing a game at 1920X1080 res.....it immediately locks and blue screens.

 

[llee]

Well didn't mention your connection with the owner or the fact that you bought the product yourself. With that in mind, it's probably the motherboard that is causing issues, like a damaged PCIe x16 slot or something.

Basic things to do:
Reset the RAM DIMMS by unlocking them and re-locking them into place
Make sure that the CPU is properly seated and locked in place.
Make sure that the GPU is properly seated and locked in place with a screw near the i/o ports.

 

[Jensenator]

Clarification: the store RECOMMENDED me the card and I bought it through them. It took 3 days to show up and I was there the day they put it in when it was coming out of the wrapping, so there was no funny business (I hope).

For an older processor like this, what's a reasonable durable and gaming MoBo that will accept this processor and RAM....should the worst be correct? I also need it to be able to reaccept all my original components? I don't need 2 PCI Express slots or quad SLI.

Might be nice to upgrade to the Phenom II too.

 

[llee]

before you go off on a shopping spree, call the guys at that tech shop to have a look at your pc (since it has failed to work properly since that visit!) and have them swap the motherboard to see if the gaming issues can be replicated.

 

[hulkhelton]

just wondering if you have had the same windows install for all of these 3 years also?

 

[ShreddedWheat]

My vote goes to video card if everything else is working fine. Try lowering 5850 to default specs of 725 core/ 1000 memory and see if it works and is stable. If so card just can't push the 850 core/memory settings.

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

Have the shop check it out since you seem like a total noob. Could be a number of things. Power supply could be on it's way out since it seems under load the rig blue screens. Could be a bad card. And yes even brand new cards are bad right out of the box. Maybe something came loose on the way to the shop or back home. If you really want to get your hands dirty and fix it yourself you're gonna have to do some research.

 

[Jensenator]

Okay:

Did some homework and some research...I think my CPU is failing, specifically the 2nd core on my Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition....:|

The reason why I suspect this is a hardware problem and not a driver issue is because of the following:

Called the shop, stating my above problem. The tech there suggested I update to the latest ATI catalyst drivers that came out 12/13. Did that. At that point he highly doubted it was the video card driver, or any driver at that point causing the issue. He told me to download a stress test program called Prime95 for 64 bit systems that would do a torture test on the CPU and RAM. He said his feeling was that if something was failing hardware wise during the test, it would BSOD in less than 60 seconds....

....well, it BSOD'd in about 25 secs...crazyness. And it ONLY does this on stress testing or games!!!

I took a picture of the blue screen so everyone can see it to help confirm my worst fears.

...I will admit with the watercooling system I had this thing OC'd 400MHz from the stock 2.6GHz for well over a year and a half and it was stable. It's saying the 2nd multiplier is not receiving a clock interrupt within the allocated time? What does that mean?

And if I end up having to replace the CPU, what is compatible with my ASUS M3A78 Pro MoBo? I don't have the box for it anymore but I definitely know it's only a DDR2 compliant board and I think either socket AM3/AM2+ or just socket AM2+. All I know are two factors.

1.) I do NOT have the money to do a complete upgrade to a newer CPU/MoBo/RAM combo. The fact I can't use newer Phenom II CPU's as they need DDR3 RAM limits me. What is a good processor that is still on the market for my socket that will match the performance of my Phenom and not break the bank?

2.) Whatever CPU I get, it needs to meet the requirements of Call of Duty: Black Ops which I just got. I read on the back of the case that it needs a Phenom X3 8450 MINIMUM so this concerns me.

-Thanks.

EDIT: Poked around the internet some, supposedly I have an AM2+ socket and AM3 CPU's will work on my AM2+ board, thanks to both DDR3 and DDR2 memory controllers. But if I could still be guided in the right direction, thanks.

 

[lyssword]

did you try pulling out some memory sticks and try with 1 or 2 only?

 

[Jensenator]

Apparently I had a n00b moment and forgot that when my CPU started to act up after the year and a half at 3.0GHz, I backed it down to 2.87....which is still overclocked.. Someone noticed that on one of the other forums I post on (which is a car forum in the off topic section) that on my specs I had the CPU OC'd. He suggested even stating he knew nothing about computers, that I should set everything back to stock as I am running it faster than normal and see how that goes.

Well, I de-clocked my CPU back to the stock 2.6 GHz and ran Prime95 again. Did the stress/torture test. I didn't let it go for long but all four cores were running 100 percent load for a good ten minutes without any trouble, and the RAM was running at 50 percent. I think this might mean problem solved and I can continue to run on this current setup until it REALLY, REALLY gets outdated and I am forced to update to keep up with the current games.

It's too late now but I will play some COD4 and a few other games under normal conditions and report back tomorrow.

-Thanks