lockups in 3d games w/ sound

[johnnyx]

system specs:
CPU - AMD Athlon K7 650MHz
Motherboard - Asus K7M
Video Card - ATI Radeon 64mb
Sound Card - Turtle Beach Montego II Quadzilla
Network Card - Linksys LNE100TX
Hard Drive - Quantum Fireball 8.4GB 5400RPM
RAM - 128MB PC100 SDRAM
CDROM - Creative Labs 52mx
CDRW - Hewlett Packard 8100i

whenever im playing newer 3d games my system locks up.
the three main games it happens in are quake3, baldur's gate 2 and the radeon arc demo.
im almost positive its my sound card causing it because all the radeon demos with no sound work fine and quake3 will run if i dont have my sound card installed (i havent tried baldurs gate2 w/ 3d and no sound yet though). for some reason half-life runs fine though.
i have all the latest drivers for my hardware, directx8 and windowsme. ive tried direct x 6, 7, 7.1 and 8 as well as windows 98, windows 98se and windows me. i've also tried putting a diamond mx300 sound card in and it still screw up, i've tried different pci slots and the sound card is not sharing an irq with anything.

does anyone have any idea how to fix this problem?

 

[erub]

Those are the exact system specs I have, except Diamond Viper V770 Ultra and IBM 75GXP and an Asus 50X CDROM, and a different NIC (Kingston and SMC Nics). I have the same problem - espically under win2k its unstable. The sreen will just blank out with the sound playing repeatedly. I have seen this on new Athlon TBird system too that I have helped my friend troubleshoot.

 

[johnnyx]

have any idea how to fix it?

 

[PC Freak]

i had the same problem when i installed my GeF2 card.
turned out it was because i was o/c'ing my cpu. went back down to 300 from 450 and everything works like a champ.

 

[geoff2k]

johnnyx: do you have another video card you could try (even an old TNT or something)? Just to see if it is the video card that is causing the problem?

 

[johnnyx]

i had the same problems with my old tnt2 ultra card, i was hoping the upgrade would fix the problem but it didnt make a difference.

 

[WNxCaptCrunch]

i dont have simular pc , but my machine locke up alot of times , i tried evrything to fix it switch this switch that, finally i switched my MOUSE, i was using Microsoft intelli optical eye mouse. Guess what , it was the mouse. Went back to an old 2 button packard bell mouse , never had a problem after that

 

[skemlawn]

On some systems when A3D is enabled, it will eat up your swap file then when you system needs to accsess the swap file lock your computer. There are also some sort of difficulties w/ Via and Aureal chipsets. I can't be specific there. Of course the K7M uses the AMD 750 chipset, but that might be the problem too. I have a K7 700 and an Asus K7V and had similar problems. Eventually it "just fixed itself". I no longer have to put up with it. I found that the sound gets all staticy then after a minute or so locks. If you hear the static just try quitting the game, then restarting.

3 possible solutions
solution1:increase the size of your swapfile (or enable it if disabled)
solution2:let windows handle swapfile
solution3:buy more ram (ram is unbeliveabley cheap right now)

Sorry I don't have any definate cures.

Now tell me why my Hercules Geforce GTS only reports 16 megs of ram

 

[johnnyx]

i currently have windows handling the swap file, i havent been tweaking the os much at all, just trying to get this problem worked out first.

when playing quake 3, if i let the id logo movie thing play it usually wont even get past that, if i skip it i can usually play a couple single player levels before it freezes but i never get any static.

 

[holdencommodore]

Just an incompatibility with the KT133 & KX133 look:

For audio cards that use A3D audio chip there appears to be an incompatibility that causes the KX133 system to deadlock when system traffic is heavy. The reason for this is that the A3D chip issues one memory read request cycle to the North Bridge and expects a grant within 4 mico-sec of latency time. If PCI TRDY# is not asserted after 4 mico-sec, the A3D hardware will de-assert the FRAME# and REQ# to terminate the operation. However, the A3D audio software driver cannot acknowledge the termination and continues waiting for hardware response. Hence the system hangs. This issue will only occur during heavy system traffic when the North Bridge cannot grant access to A3D audio chip within the 4 mico-sec latency time. There is no known work-around for this issue, and the principal advice is not to use A3D-based sound cards with the ABIT KA7 or other KX133 based motherboards. Source: VIA Application note Serial #AN137 Date 07/05/00.

This information found at BrokenPixel.

Some people have trouble, and some don't...

 

[johnnyx]

my system doesnt use KT133 or KX133.

 

[johnnyx]

i don't know when this started but its locking up in windows now too.

i can play halflife and starship troopers and use mame (an arcade emulator) without any lockups but everything else (mp3's, windows sounds, most games) the screen freezes.

 

[johnnyx]

i just noticed this, when i wait around 3-4 minutes after it freezes it gets a blue screen that says it cant write to c:, but it only happens when the sounds turned on.

 

[johnnyx]

its fixed, i bought a sb 512.

 

[Bakwetu]

Sorry for gettin so late into the thread Johnny. Did you use the refererence drivers for the soundcard (Aureal 2048 drivers)? If your still interested in trying them out they can be dl:ed here