Game(s) freezing after a couple minutes. No idea what to look for?

[dadams312]

e8400 @ stock
msi nx8800gt OC @stock
gigabyte ep35-ds3r
windows xp sp2

Not sure if it is the game or if it's a problem with my computer. But, I've been playing Half Life 2 for the past 5 or 6 days with no issues, everything runs and looks great. Last night when playing it will completely freeze my whole computer after running for a few minutes. Picture freezes, sound stutters then it just locks up. I have to reboot the computer to get anything done.

Any ideas where to start troubleshooting the issue? Nothings changed with the computer since I installed and started playing the game up to this point.

 

[jtvang125]

I was having a similar problem. If I run any 3d app for about 10 minutes my comp would hard lock and have to reboot. If I'm running in only 2d it'll be completely stable.

I first thought it was my psu but after reseating my video card and blowing out all the dust on the video card's hsf and the cpu fan, it's perfectly stable now. Looks like it was a overheating issue with mine.

 

[Tempered81]

get rivatuner and turn your "fan speed" to 100% on your 8800gt.

 

[dadams312]

Computer is only about 10 days old at most, and clean, so it's not dust/dirt. I used rivatuner and turned the fan up to 100% and it still locked up. Seems to do it in the same spot in the game too.

 

[Tempered81]

can you actually hear the fan roar up? The noise of going from 29 to 100% is very noticeable. Also, are you checking your cpu & gpu temps as the crash occurs?

 

[dadams312]

The fan noise is noticeable at 100%. I actually updated the driver, and turned off anti-aliasing options in game and it didn't freeze. I'm not totally sure if the updated driver helped the situation or turning off the AA is what solved it, but either way it didn't crash after updating and rebooting.

 

[Gliese 581]

Hey guys. Just wanted to pop in with a tip in case it helps you out.

I have the same card as you dadams312 and it took me 5 days of many hours of reading and trial and error before I stumbled upon a solution that worked for me, although in my case I was trying to get Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines to run instead of Half-Life 2. They use the exact same engine though unless I'm mistaken so you could give it a shot.

I'm able to play the game at maxed out settings (even forced AA and stuff that can't be enabled in-game) by lowering the CPU clock from 660 to 550 and the Shader clock from 1650 to 1375 (shader clock linked to cpu clock) using Rivatuner. I saved a profile for it in the program and now I just have to select and run that profile each time I want to play. I might have been able to lower just the shader clock as I think that was my problem (error log talked about shaderapidx9.dll), but someone told me it's more stable to use linked clocks for the cpu and shader.
I'm okay with this since I can still use the card at full effect for newer games like cod4 and crysis without problem.
Best of luck!

 

[tigersty1e]

uh-oh...

This sounds a lot like the memory bug on the 8800 GT.

Is your memory factory overclocked above 900?


If so, bring that down to 900 and try running your game. If you search google for "8800 Gt memory crash" (or something similar) you'll learn more about it....

 

[error8]

It's should be a bad factory overclock of the video card. Sometimes the producer doesn't test the card throughly after it overclocks it. Had that problem on a 6600 GT Extreme, that used to artifact in some games, but when I reduced the clocks it worked smoothly.

So Gliese 581 gave you a very good advice, so follow it. If it doesn't work though, you should tell us what is your PSU.

 

[taltamir]

52% seems to be the sweet spot for that fan for many people (it is for me) where it keeps it sufficiently cool, but isn't too noisy (53 makes it noticably noiser). You might want to try that.