Freezing in games

[Xionide]

Ok so me and my buddy are working on his computer. We finally get it all set up and everything seems to run great. But then we go to play any game and we keep getting the same problem. While playing the game it will freeze for like 5 seconds and then it will play. The longer the game is on the more it does this. When it finally un freezes the motherboard will beep but I think its due to the ps/2 keyboard and hitting to many keys when it's frozen.

Also We keep hearing a crackling when we are playing the game. Some type of distortion, this leads me to believe it is a motherbaord issue. These problems are happening in all the games we are playing (doom 3, battlefield 2 demo, ut2004). The system specs are:

AXP1700
512mb mushkin 3200
80gb wd sata
EVGA 6800 vanilla AGP8x
DFI NFII ultra infinity
Enermax 450w psu
Windows xp pro with sp/2 and all updates
Latest nvidia drivers for the motherboard and video card

The problem is he bought the video card and motherboard from newegg refurb. And newegg is saying if we want to return the mobo he has to send it to dfi instead of them. So basically we dont know if it is the motherboard or video card messing up and he doesn't want to return good hardware. We dont have another system to test the video card in atm and he only has about a 2 day window where he can send the stuff back and my system wont be ready to test anything till next week. So what should we do?

 

[MoonSword]

Sounds like it may be an I/O bottleneck. 512 MB RAM is okay, but in my experience, you really need more than that for UT2k4, especially if you play online. I can't speak for Doom 3 or Battlefield 2 because I am a heretic who has never played (nor has any desire to play) those games.

It is possible that the games are forcing Windows to use virtual memory. You can check this by observing whether or not there is hard drive activity when the system "freezes". If that's the case, you can do one of two things: add more RAM, or try to tweak the system by unloading as many system services and other memory resident software as you can without compromising system security and stability.

Otherwise, you may just have to take a chance on sending potentailly good hardware back, since you have no means of testing anything, thoroughly, within the allotted window of time.

MoonSword

 

[Xionide]

Originally posted by: MoonSword
Sounds like it may be an I/O bottleneck. 512 MB RAM is okay, but in my experience, you really need more than that for UT2k4, especially if you play online. I can't speak for Doom 3 or Battlefield 2 because I am a heretic who has never played (nor has any desire to play) those games.

It is possible that the games are forcing Windows to use virtual memory. You can check this by observing whether or not there is hard drive activity when the system "freezes". If that's the case, you can do one of two things: add more RAM, or try to tweak the system by unloading as many system services and other memory resident software as you can without compromising system security and stability.

Otherwise, you may just have to take a chance on sending potentailly good hardware back, since you have no means of testing anything, thoroughly, within the allotted window of time.

MoonSword

Hey thanks. We put another 700 megs of ram in and it didnt make a difference. So what we did was take my radeon 7500 in the system and see if it still had problems. Their were none. Then we tried a geforce2. Again no problems. So we are pretty sure its the 6800 which he will be sending back to evga. Thanks!