Random Crashes During Modern 3D Games

[rkarsk]

I've been having a persistant problem with which i've posted about before. I've copied some of the thread and added my specs + updates. Updates are in bold at the bottom. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.



Specs:

MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum NF3Ultra S939
Galaxy 6600GT AGP
2xOCZ 512mb Performance CL2.5 DDR400 (Dual Channel)
Enermax Noisetaker 420w
Creative Soundblaster Audigy LS
Maxtor 20gb IDE 7200rpm HD
Seagate 80gb SATA 7200rpm HD w/NCQ
Pioneer DVR-109
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Winnie


This computer crashes very often in practically all 3dgames, and I have no clue why. I emailed Galaxy (my video card maker) and they told me to hook the graphics card up to its own cord, without anything else connected to it -they also told me to install older drivers. Both of these "fixes" did not fix my problem.

Under advice from several others, I decided to ditch my generic 400W PSU that came with my case and invest in a good quality powersupply, which I did. It didn't help one bit.

Then, I got some more ram, not necessarily to solve the problem as to increase performance, but that still didn't help.

I reformatted, no help.

I turned off fast writes. Crashes possibly occur less frequently - may be a fluke.

This isn't a heating issue because my GFX card idles at about 42 and goes up to a max of 60 under load. I have 5 fans in my system.

I applied AS5 to my processor, the nforce chip, and the my GFX card ram/core/hsi bridge.

I've tried different driver versions for my gfx card - Including the newest, the 76.45's, and the 77.30's (current).

After reformat I installed all of the latest drivers apart from my graphics card.

I can play anywhere from 5 minutes to 2hours and it will crash in random times between then, without any symptoms before hand (perfect FPS and everything, and then BAM). What happens when it crashes is the sound when it crashed just starts looping very quickly, and the only remedy is to restart the computer. Other times the computer will just freeze for a second and restart (happens less often).

Increasing the Ram Voltage did nothing.

The new nvidia nforce drivers (or was it the video drivers, can't remember) seem to remedy the problem susbtantially, and the computer only crashes in 3d apps about every 1-3 hours now.

Now, I've read some more into this problem, and it seems Nforce 3 Boards had alot of trouble with the Revision E Athlon 64's. I think mine is either F, or D, i'm unsure. That's why I've included a screenie of CPUZ:

http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/7505/cpuz0qs.jpg

I am considering buying a Venice core of the same speed. Would this remedy the problem?

Thanks

 

[BadThad]

Wow....tough situation, I feel for you, I've done similar on customer systems and it sucks. Personally, I'd dump the mobo or CPU as that's about all that you haven't eliminated.

You might just have the rare bad CPU. The last customer system I went thru this on actually had a bad Intel CPU. I RMA'd it and the replacement took care of the random crashing.

 

[ArsenHazzard]

Considering that it's only during 3D games, it may very well be the GFX card. If you have a friend who has a similar system, try swapping cards and testing there (either testing your card in his system, vice-versa, or both).

Rev.E CPUs are Venice/SanDiego, you have a Winchester, so it's not that.

Random things that I can think of:
Update the bios
Underclock components
Use a minimalist setup (hdd, gfx, cpu, 1 stick of ram)

Hope you get the problem resolved.

 

[Tu13erhead]

Try this:

Display Properties > Settings tab > Advanced > Troubleshooting > Disable Write Combining

Then reboot. See if that helps.

 

[rkarsk]

Sorry for not replying to suggestions.

Write combing was off, forgot to mention that.

I'm thinking of RMA'ing my mobo, but i realllly don't want to wait 4 weeks. I'll keep it in mind as a last result.

Anyways, out of curiosity - would bent processor pins do this, or possibly if there was a small pump out of thermal paste and it got in contact with some pins?

(Didn't happen, just wondering)

 

[rkarsk]

Bump

 

[HAM617]

I'd still look at heat. Make sure there isn't any dust build up anywhere in the CPU or GPU heatsink. Remove the side of the case and place a fan outside blowing in. Alot of people are having issues with heat these days with the 3d games. And 60C caused problems with me playing Joint Ops, causing freezes until the card cooled. If you have time you also may want to clean off the GPU and CPU and apply some artic silver 5.