Hello all
I have been working on a problem with two identical systems I purchased back in January and was hopping some one could help me out here. Actually, I am fighting two problems, but I am assuming that they are both related.
The first problem;
While playing the game (any graphically intensive game) it will just ?Hang-up?. The system is not locked up. I can still move the mouse, though I can click on nothing, and the keyboard still responds, though the keys pressed will produce no results until the computer has returned from la-la land. However for 10-60 seconds the game is just frozen. Most often, it will come back and continue playing and you will get a fast foreword effect where everything which has happened in the ?Hang-time? is compressed into less than two seconds.
The second problem;
While playing the game it will lockup. When this happens there will be no response from the mouse or keyboard and it will not come back. Most times this is preceded by strange electrical clicking and beeping sound barely audible through the speakers. When this happens, I have to do a hard reboot. I have noticed that this problem inevitably follows two or three of the ?Hang-ups? I detailed above.
After swapping parts out and trying different things I am now pretty sure this problem is coming from the MSI 6800 PCI-E card installed in the systems.
I have read the other posts about the 6800 cards locking up. The reason I started a new post is that the problem I am dealing with is not on an AGP card. I want to know if there are others out there with the PCI-E card experiencing this problem.
First the hardware list:
Intel D925XEC2LK MB
MSI NS6800 256MB DDR PCI-E (problem child)
2x Kingston 1GB DDR PC2-4200 533Mhz
Intel P4 3Ghz 1Mb 533Mhz FSB
2x Seagate 200GB SATA in RAID 0
Modstream 520W modular PS
SB Audigy 2 ZS
Thermal Take Liquid cooling system (CPU only)
XP Pro fully patched
Ok now things I have done?
I have reinstalled the OS several times.
I have downloaded the newest drivers I can find for all of my peripherals.
I have updated the bios on the MB.
I have taken the SATA down to non RAID configuration.
I pulled the SATA out and installed the OS on an IDE drive.
I have removed the SB and played game with no sound.
I have tried different versions of the NVIDIA drivers including the 71.20 off MSI?s web site.
Nothing has helped. Though it Hangs/locks in every game I have tried, including ?World of Warcraft?, ?Rome Total War?, ?XIII? and ?DAOC,? the game I use to test is ?Prince of Persia Sands of Time? (also patched for the 6800). I am using ?Prince of Persia? for two reasons. First, I can duplicate the problem every time (given enough time) and it happens to be one of the games which came pre packaged with the MSI 6800 card. The time to Hang-up/lockup varies, but after so long of playing POP it will stutter and eventually lock up. Once it locks up I can not get out of the game. I can not ALT TAB nor can I CTRL-ALT-DEL out. The only thing I can do is reboot the system. If I leave the system locked up after a period of time (few hours) the system will reboot itself. If this happens some times when it comes back, I will get an error reporting and after sending the report to MS it comes back and tells me to turn off hardware acceleration. I tried this also once but then the game would not even start, so that is clearly not an option.
At the suggestion of some of the other posts, I have downloaded and installed PowerStirp and RivaTuner. I looked in the BIOS to turn off fast writes but could not see that option in the MB BIOS. I was also unable to locate any thing like that while in RivaTuner or PowerStrip. I was able to find the sliders to change the clock and memory speed for the 3D side but when I switch to the 2D side it just says NA and I can not move the sliders.
So any way, that is what I have done and I?m still stuck with a card that seems to lockup during game play. I think I can go out and buy a different card but seeing this one ran me $325 and was a special order I can not return it. I am not ready to toss that investment aside and pay another $xyz to try a different card.
Any one have any thoughts as to what to try next?
Lee
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