My machine has stability problem before, and I have solved it by disabling the "Command queuing" of the nforce4 SATA port. I just hope this information would be helpful to people who encounter the same problem. (Please look at my sig for system config)
Symptom: My system was completely stable under memtest (>12 hrs), Prime95 for 24 hrs+, and many hours of gaming. Never a blue screen. However, in several occasions when there are plenty of page faults (happens when memory usage is high), it would suddenly freeze. No blue screen, no record in the event viewer, but it just totally freezes. Mouse cannot move. Everything back to normal after reboot. It does not happen under normal loads, but can be reproduced easily by running Prime95 torture test using plenty of memory (e.g 80% of system memory), and then trying to launch other memory hungry apps.
Solution: I've read several posts from the web talking about the NCQ problem with nforce4 chipset (Most notably AMDGamer). I never thought it would be relevant for me as my Hitachi 7k250 drive, despite being SATA, does not have the NCQ ability. However, when I look at the nvidia controller setting (in device manager), there is a checkbox that says "Enable Command Queuing' and it's checked! Upon unchecking it and rebooting, i cannot reproduce the freeze problem again! Now my system is finally completely stable under whatever load.
Discussion: Though i have solved this problem, I am still disappointed about the nvidia chipset/driver. If at some point i do get an HD with NCQ, i would hope that i can use it. However, it seems to have caused problem for many people, even with the newest driver version 6.53.
Addy
Antec Sonata, Seasonic S12-430, Nexus 120mm front fan, Evercool 120mm case fan, AMD Athlon64 2.0GHz Winchester 3200+ (w/ Zalman 7000 Alcu at 5V), Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe (w/ Zalman NB47J), ATI X800 XL, Hitachi 7k250 SATA 160GB, Maxtor DM9 IDE 160GB x 2 on RAID 1.
Symptom: My system was completely stable under memtest (>12 hrs), Prime95 for 24 hrs+, and many hours of gaming. Never a blue screen. However, in several occasions when there are plenty of page faults (happens when memory usage is high), it would suddenly freeze. No blue screen, no record in the event viewer, but it just totally freezes. Mouse cannot move. Everything back to normal after reboot. It does not happen under normal loads, but can be reproduced easily by running Prime95 torture test using plenty of memory (e.g 80% of system memory), and then trying to launch other memory hungry apps.
Solution: I've read several posts from the web talking about the NCQ problem with nforce4 chipset (Most notably AMDGamer). I never thought it would be relevant for me as my Hitachi 7k250 drive, despite being SATA, does not have the NCQ ability. However, when I look at the nvidia controller setting (in device manager), there is a checkbox that says "Enable Command Queuing' and it's checked! Upon unchecking it and rebooting, i cannot reproduce the freeze problem again! Now my system is finally completely stable under whatever load.
Discussion: Though i have solved this problem, I am still disappointed about the nvidia chipset/driver. If at some point i do get an HD with NCQ, i would hope that i can use it. However, it seems to have caused problem for many people, even with the newest driver version 6.53.
Addy
Antec Sonata, Seasonic S12-430, Nexus 120mm front fan, Evercool 120mm case fan, AMD Athlon64 2.0GHz Winchester 3200+ (w/ Zalman 7000 Alcu at 5V), Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe (w/ Zalman NB47J), ATI X800 XL, Hitachi 7k250 SATA 160GB, Maxtor DM9 IDE 160GB x 2 on RAID 1.
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