Is my monitor causing this choppy problem?

[JoeFahey]

Hey. I have just started using my L90D+ Hyundai monitor. I game a lot on Battle Field 2. For the first few days to a week that I used it, everything was fine. A little lag from my wireless conneciton every once and awhile, but fine. I was using my VGA cable. I recently switched to my DVI cable. After using this the game started getting VERY choppy. I dont remember if it happened right away, or after a while. it wasn't lag though, my ping was excelent. So, I just switched back to the VGA cable, and I'm getting the choppy-lag-what-ever-it-is-crap again. Im running off an AMD Athlon 64 3500+, an MSI k8n neo2, a 200 gb hd, and a ATI 9800 Pro Vid card. I dont know what to do. Also, from a result of this stuff, my computer will randomly restart completely RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE of my game!! My choppy game that is! It has only restarted a few times while im in the game, so I dont know if it would do it outside of the game. what can/should I do? THANKS!!

Edit: Oh yeah, and I recently installing a new Logitech Z-5500 speaker system. I cant remember, but I think this problem might have also started around, if not when I installed these.

 

[DaveSimmons]

It's much more likely that you got infected with spyware, adware, virus, trojan and it / they are stealing CPU and possibly bandwidth if your PC is busy shovelling spam or infectous emails.

Check the sticky thread in the Software forum

 

[aatf510]

What settings of BF2 are you running on?

 

[JoeFahey]

Everything on high

 

[JoeFahey]

Well, I ran spybot, and Ad-aware, fixed some things. I played it again, and yet again the stupid thing restarted on me. It was too choppy at all, except this time the graphics were wrongly unusual colors, and some buildings and other stuff went invisble and stuff. So what can I do? THANKS! Oh yeah, and I dont think I mentioned I have a gig of ram, but I dont think thats an issue.

 

[SuperSilicon]

Try some different drivers for your videocard see if that helps anything.

 

[JoeFahey]

I installed the drives. It looks good when I get into a game. However, on the selection screen at the beginning of the online game, I cannot use the mouse or keyboard. The mouse is frozen on the screen. However, when I minimize it using the keyboard, both work fine. Then I maximize, and its the same problem with them not working. What can I do? THANKS!

 

[SuperSilicon]

Did you just start having problems when you got this monitor? Ive never seen problems your posting like this that was due to a monitor. After looking at this post agian I would say it could be a memory issue. Try turning way down on your settings, seeing if the problem occurs while its on a low setting mode then you can narrow down the problem possibly.

 

[JoeFahey]

Alight, well I turned the graphics for the game all the way down. I still had the same frozen mouse and keyboard problem. I do not know about the choppy gameplay and graphics now sinc eI couldn't play since the mouse and keyboard were frozen. And I didn't have problems with the monitor when I first bought it.

EDIT: not to say that this is a monitor problem

 

[SuperSilicon]

Are you only having these "frozen" issues while in game, everything out of game works fine?

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

Random restarts as in your whole computer, or just a crash to desktop?

Two things we need to know.

What power supply do you have?
Is the fan on your video card still spinning?

 

[AMDBOY]

Choppy gameplay and graphics are what I experience when I use the DVI instead of VGA connector. I would like to experience better graphics with the better connection. But, everything lags so much I just go back to VGA.

 

[Rinaun]

? i think that problem might be driver or Video card related AMDBOY. i never have those problems and i use DVI

 

[JoeFahey]

The freezing is only in the game, and when it restarts, the entire system restarts.

The Vid card fan is still spinning, and heating usually isn't an issue. I keep the cover the my computer off.

The power supply is a Thermaltake Purepower 420 Watt.

And to the best that I can remember, these problems began when I switched to DVI, but I've switched back to VGA, and it still has problems.

EDIT: oh, and before this issue, and I dont think since its this issue has started, it randomly minimized. It does this on several things though.

 

[zagood]

Originally posted by: JoeFahey1
The freezing is only in the game, and when it restarts, the entire system restarts.

The Vid card fan is still spinning, and heating usually isn't an issue. I keep the cover the my computer off.

The power supply is a Thermaltake Purepower 420 Watt.

And to the best that I can remember, these problems began when I switched to DVI, but I've switched back to VGA, and it still has problems.

EDIT: oh, and before this issue, and I dont think since its this issue has started, it randomly minimized. It does this on several things though.

Happen in any other games or just BF2? If only BF2, check patches for the game. If no patches newer than any you have, uninstall and re-install.

Make sure you shut down any applications you might have in the background. Might be an "always on top" app or a popup message that's crashing your machine. Happens with fullscreen games or if you're running the game in another window and mouseover another app.

If other games also, sounds like a video card problem. If it happened when you changed connectors and continued after, you might have jostled the card. Re-seat your card in the slot.

EDIT: Did you install new drivers for the speakers? Do you have a soundcard or are you using onboard? If you're using onboard with 5.1 you're stealing CPU power for 5.1 accelleration. Lower your in-game audio settings, set your speakers to Stereo, turn off EAX, etc.

-z

 

[SuperSilicon]

Just to be sure check your machine for viruses, are you having any probs in other games? If not I would consider a re-install of bf2. If your STILL running into problems and have exhausted everything and you are fed up I would consider a reformat but thats just a suggestion. Reformating is nice to do every now and then anyways.

Going out on a limb, if you have the option try another monitor but I highly doubt this is your problem.

 

[JoeFahey]

Ive been having several problems, like longer than normal boots, and shut-downs, all this stuff, and other things that shouldn't be hapening. I was actually thinking about starting all over, and reformatting. Now, how should I go about doing thisn if I decide to? Back-up all my files of course, but what do I do next?

EDIT: Oh, and Thanks ZAGOOD, I completely forgot Im running onboard sound. That maskes perfect sense since this problem started when I started using the speakers!! Im gonna reduce all the settings for the speakers and stuff, and look for a new sound card soon, THANKS!

 

[SuperSilicon]

For reformating, first you need a bootdisk from here http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

I personally use the windows 98SE OEM version(only need one floppy disk), but they all work about the same (except that you need more floppy disk's (ewww )

Plop the boot disk in your floppy drive let it load up, type fdisk create your partition format the disk by typing fdisk. Reboot set bios boot from cd-rom have your windows disk in the cd-rom drive and load it from there. Install windows, install your motherboard drivers first. Don't think im leaving out anything, if I am I will edit.

Hope that helps

 

[zagood]

Originally posted by: JoeFahey1
Ive been having several problems, like longer than normal boots, and shut-downs, all this stuff, and other things that shouldn't be hapening. I was actually thinking about starting all over, and reformatting. Now, how should I go about doing thisn if I decide to? Back-up all my files of course, but what do I do next?

EDIT: Oh, and Thanks ZAGOOD, I completely forgot Im running onboard sound. That maskes perfect sense since this problem started when I started using the speakers!! Im gonna reduce all the settings for the speakers and stuff, and look for a new sound card soon, THANKS!

No problem man, hope that solves it.

Out to battle the rain to get my NYE on...

-z

 

[JoeFahey]

Alright thanks for the formatting instructions. I think I will do that sometime in the near future.

For now though, I lowered all the settings for the speakers. I kept the graphics levels at high however. I ran the game again, and the mouser and keyboard still froze. Again, this is only in the game. What can I do? THANKS!

 

[Rinaun]

i think its a bug in the game, or your motherboard. Im note sure what you can do.

 

[bob4432]

first off you need to realize that using the game pushes the cpu usage to 100%. have you done this with any other program? like prime95? you may experiencing a power or heat problem you would not normally see unless the processor is maxed out for long periods of time.

second, run memtest overnight to see if you have any errors in the ram.

last, take a look at the bf2 ram usage link i have in my sig, it will give you an idea of what setting use how much ram, although it is biased towards my machine

if you can run prime95 stable overnight and have memtest run fine overnight, then i would look for other issues, but until this, i would still keep heat and power as possible problems.

good luck

 

[JoeFahey]

Whats Prime95?

 

[bob4432]

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm

a program looking for a certain type of prime #, but it has a torture test in it that will max the cpu to 100%

it is a good way to torture test your rig. whenever i build a new rig, i run prime95 for ~12-24hrs, then i know it will be good to go. if prime fails, you have either power, cpu, memory or a combination of problems.

 

[aatf510]

Originally posted by: toattett
What settings of BF2 are you running on?

I am pretty sure BF2 won't do well with a 9800Pro w/ everthing on high.
I occationally play on a pc w/ 9800Pro w/ everything on med, and it get choppy when the battlefield is busy.