Computer restarts unexpectedly

[soupdog23]

ECS N2U400 Motherboard
Athlon XP 3200+
512MB DDR 400Mhz RAM
Powercolor ATI Radeon 9200 128MB
Creative Labs Soundblaster Live! Platinum

I just got Doom3 and loaded it on my system. I can only get a minute or two of gameplay before my computer restarts. I also d'ld 3dMark2003 and tried to benchmark my system but it also restarted during the second or third benchmark test. I've updated all of the mb drivers(nvidia included), updated the Catalyst drivers to the most current version, and monitored my CPU temp(never rose above 56 Celsius).

After increasing my AGP aperature to 512Mb and enabling the spread spectrum to .50%, my fps and stability increased with 3dMark2003 to where I finished all of the benchmark tests up to the sound tests where it now restarts at. My fps looks good now for my graphics card, and I had actual gameplay on doom3 at the lowest settings for a while, playing for about 30 minutes or so. Now it's crashing and restarting again after just a couple minutes of gameplay....

The only thing I can come up with is possibly that my soundcard is having issues? It's the only thing left that I haven't upgraded in a while. Does anybody know if I actually need a 5.1 card to be compatible with DX9 and/or Doom3?

 

[soupdog23]

quick update:

i read on a forum on another site that if I set the sliderbar in DXDIAG's DirectSound to basic, it should take care of the problems.....We'll see...

I'm gonna try and then I'll post my results.

 

[soupdog23]

no luck on reducing the directsound to the basic setting, anybody elso got any suggestions??

 

[neovan]

what psu? brand and wattage? have you tried running memtest86 on your ram?

 

[Kaspian]

it sounds like u need a bigger (more reliable) psu.... of course when u deal with puters it could b many things but i would starts with swapping teh psu with one with mor power and more reliable

good luck

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: soupdog23
ECS N2U400 Motherboard<BR>Athlon XP 3200+<BR>512MB DDR 400Mhz RAM<BR>Powercolor ATI Radeon 9200 128MB<BR>Creative Labs Soundblaster Live! Platinum<BR><BR>I just got Doom3 and loaded it on my system. I can only get a minute or two of gameplay before my computer restarts. I also d'ld 3dMark2003 and tried to benchmark my system but it also restarted during the second or third benchmark test. I've updated all of the mb drivers(nvidia included), updated the Catalyst drivers to the most current version, and monitored my CPU temp(never rose above 56 Celsius).<BR><BR>After increasing my AGP aperature to 512Mb and enabling the spread spectrum to .50%, my fps and stability increased with 3dMark2003 to where I finished all of the benchmark tests up to the sound tests where it now restarts at. My fps looks good now for my graphics card, and I had actual gameplay on doom3 at the lowest settings for a while, playing for about 30 minutes or so. Now it's crashing and restarting again after just a couple minutes of gameplay....<BR><BR>The only thing I can come up with is possibly that my soundcard is having issues? It's the only thing left that I haven't upgraded in a while. Does anybody know if I actually need a 5.1 card to be compatible with DX9 and/or Doom3?

Does it flash a bluescreen for a second, or are the events in the System eventlog all saying you had an unexpected restart with no memory dump information?

The easy way to test your sound card theory is to disable the sound card and see if the issue is still present.