Odd Freezing in Call of Duty

[HolyBob]

Ok, I have searched all over and I can't find a similar issue to mine, so i thought I might ask you guys as you have helped me in the past.

I don't know when this started, but it has gone on for a long time. Every once in awhile, say every 30 seconds to 4 minutes, Call of Duty Multiplayer freezes for a few seconds and then returns to normal, I'm running the drivers with the disk that came with my card. I am doing that because if I install the latest Cataylst drivers, instead of CoD freezing, it crashes and I have to restart. I have tried reinstalling many times with no success. I really need to fix this as it is reflecting in my performance in my clan. It also occurs in United Offensive if that is relevant at all... Does anyone have any clue what is causing this and how to fix it?

My System is:

Chaintech VNF3-250
Athlon 64 3000+
MSI Radeon 9800 Pro (XT Core)
512 Crucial Ram

Thanks for your help.

 

[BFG10K]

Any overclocks/mods/BIOS flashes to the card?
Do you have the latest BIOS & chipset drivers for your system?

 

[Drift3r]

Originally posted by: HolyBob
Ok, I have searched all over and I can't find a similar issue to mine, so i thought I might ask you guys as you have helped me in the past.

I don't know when this started, but it has gone on for a long time. Every once in awhile, say every 30 seconds to 4 minutes, Call of Duty Multiplayer freezes for a few seconds and then returns to normal, I'm running the drivers with the disk that came with my card. I am doing that because if I install the latest Cataylst drivers, instead of CoD freezing, it crashes and I have to restart. I have tried reinstalling many times with no success. I really need to fix this as it is reflecting in my performance in my clan. It also occurs in United Offensive if that is relevant at all... Does anyone have any clue what is causing this and how to fix it?

My System is:

Chaintech VNF3-250
Athlon 64 3000+
MSI Radeon 9800 Pro (XT Core)
512 Crucial Ram

Thanks for your help.

I believe this might be an issue with the new ATI drivers and punkbuster. I heard about this somewhere a while back ago. Try playing without punkbuster and report back.

 

[imported_JeReMY]

Maybe it's your net connection.

 

[HolyBob]

Nope, no overclocks or anything of that sort and I have the latest BIOS and stuff...

Tried running without PB, still had the issue.

Nope it's not the net connection, my brother runs a different system on the same connection and doesn't have the problem.

Thanks for your suggestions guys, I think it is either a video card or driver issue...anybody have any other ideas?

 

[Cawchy87]

ATI has a problem with Open GL games. My 9600xt used to crash all the time. I know the 9600 series had a major issue with that game, but this is the first i have heard of the 9800series. I would say drivers.

 

[Fuzn]

No idea if this would help since I have a Geforce 6800 GT. But I did have the exact same problem with freezing, so I just disabled fastwrites in the bios and it hasn't done it once at all.

 

[HolyBob]

Tried disabling Fastwrites, no help. Then I tried Omega drivers and played for about 20 minutes with no problems. Then just as I decided that I had reached success, the game crashed. Reinstalled old drivers so that it only freezes not crashes....getting a little desperate here, anyone have any more ideas?

 

[HolyBob]

Bump, are there any other drivers that might help?

 

[Marsumane]

I have a 9800p and i get this sometimes also in COD. Also in UT2K4, and sometimes even with the windows taskbar at the bottom on the desktop, as well as IE. (the icons work and anything im in, just the taskbar or ie is unresponsive for a sec) It is within my acceptance level, so i really havent looked into it. In games its like once every 20hrs so it really doesnt do that much to my overall ability to play. Now that i think of it, it may be something to do with SP2. I dont see why this would be it, but this started happening to me right after that was released and i installed it. Maybe for fun ill try redoing my windows install w/o sp2 in the next few days. Maybe u have the same issue also.

Points for your reference:
-Catalyst 4.7's (try these, theyre stable atleast w/ cod. Be sure to run drivercleaner also.)
-Fastwrites still enabled
-Updated to latest patch on all games
-Updated NF7-s mobo drivers

 

[Billibob]

Hi there, I to have a Chaintech VNF3-250 with a 3400 AMD 64 bit, Connect 3D 9800 XT and 1 Gig of RAM. I have been playing COD for a few months now and I never use to have a freeze or crash untill I updated my Graphics drivers. I have found that the newer the driver the worse the crash or freeze. I'm currently using ATI Driver: 6.14.10.6458 Date:10/06/2004, this still freezes every few minutes but I have to use this driver so all my new games work. If you use a older driver from 2003 then this my stop the crashing/freezing. I tried one from 2003 and it worked ok when I run it, so give that a go. I'm waiting for the next driver update or game update to see if that fixes the problem. Hope I've been some help and let me know if you find another solution. CHOW 4 NOW

 

[Maddzy]

I have a nVidia GeForce FX5200 and am having the exact same problem as you with CoD Multiplayer, so it may not be your ATi Drivers. However the problem may be with both our respective graphics drivers or cards.

If I find out a solution I'll post it here, and maybe you could do the same?

-Cheers.

 

[Viper96720]

It's punkbuster and dep if your using sp2 version of xp. Search for disabling dep or try using the system properties advanced performance settings. Click the dep button and select turn on for all except those I select then add call of duty and punkbuster. So it doesn't run when those programs are running.

You'll also need the 8.07 version driver the beta ones that fixed the memory bug from the x800 cards.

 

[Viper96720]

http://www.techspot.com/driver.../file/information/3047 8.07's

 

[Billibob]

I've tried every driver u can imagine, the only one that will run without crashing completly is ones made in 2003. My machine just freezes for a second or two every couple of minutes.

I've also tried 8.07 driver and disabling dep but still full crashes and a reboot is needed.
Any other suggestions?

 

[Night201]

I've only had this happen when 1 of my 4 hard drives decide to spin up during a game.

COD IS AWESOME by the way for those of you who haven't played. Be sure to get the Expansion pack.

 

[HolyBob]

Yeah, I have also tried practically every driver ever made, I'm about ready to give up, anyone have any ideas?

 

[imported_Salvatore]

This happened to me, except that the game would freeze indefinetly and I had to reboot. I uninstalled the game and deleted every possible trace of it, and then reinstalled it. The problem went away.

 

[d2arcturus]

Originally posted by: Cawchy87
ATI has a problem with Open GL games. My 9600xt used to crash all the time. I know the 9600 series had a major issue with that game, but this is the first i have heard of the 9800series. I would say drivers.

before i got my 6800 gt i had a 9600 pro, call of duty worked great...

 

[sfmedic]

I don't know if this will help. I too had an instable system which would freeze during game play. I don't have the same video card, but I found that going through the bios settings and tweaking them virtually eliminated all instances of freeze ups. Its worth a look, I found this guide to be helpfull
BIOS I went through the BIOS with a fine tooth comb and afterward everything ran so much smoother.

 

[ronach]

I also have the [ 5 sec freeze thing on occassion in COD & CODUO ], vid card now is a 6800 GT, but I had the problem with my R9800np as well. I have disabled DEP as previously suggested by viper96720 and will monitor the freezing thing.

sfmedic,
Can you attribute any particular bios setting to your fix of the problem, I hate to ah heck up my bios since everything else is running fine except for the rare freezing thing.

 

[sfmedic]

This is my system

Celeron 1400
Mach Speed M694-TAS mobo
768mb PC133
40gb HDD
Audigy Digital 5.1 sound card
ATI 9200se video card.

The main things that I found is that I had the bios for the most part set at default. Which ran conflicts between my memory and the processor. I have set the processor to run at a fsb 112 (edit: now the processor runs at 1568mhz) I had to set the memory bus to 133(edit: it was set at default of 100mhz but I had 133mhz memory). It suggested if your using an audigy sound card to set enable memory hole. And of course fast writes are off. Basically I read through almost any BIOS guides I could find and after doing so set it up. After that the system has really stabilized.


Edit: I know that the problems that caused my system to become unstable may not apply. These were little things that at default levels did not work for my system because I mixed and matched.

 

[ronach]

Well I disabled DEP for CODUO but wasn't sure what to do about Punkbuster, ran CODUO for a few days, same 5 sec delay while the game is JUST starting, guess I'm lucky it doesn't happen in-game. My problem is not serious but annoying, no bios changes were made.

 

[HolyBob]

Ok, I just realized that I'm and idiot. The reason it wasn't making any sense was that it IS a connection problem, I just realized that after It comes back from freezing, my ping is through the roof. Then it goes back to normal. This probably doesn't belong in this forum now...but anyone have an idea what would cause these ping spikes?

 

[ronach]

My guess would be your game server, that could also be my problem and I use Gamespy servers. I'm not bashing their servers, they just happen to be the ones that I use.