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weird stuttering sound/freeze up only in games

G

gamesrfun2

Member
Hello everyone and thanks for taking the time to help out a poor soul who just wants to game in peace.

First the situation:

Since I upgraded to a Chaintech ZNF-250 MB with a Athlon A64 2800+ cpu I have been having crazy problems with games where after about an hour or so of playing sometimes 2 hours the game sound will stutter and the screen freezes and never recovers, just crashes hardcore. Let me back up a little and give you a bit more helpful history, before the upgrade I was running windows xp professional and when I upgraded to the new cpu/mb combo I upgraded the op system to windows home because I did not have the original copy of windows xp professional. Anyway after the upgrade when I would play games, the games would stutter, but then after about 20 seconds the game would recover and would be no more then an annoying nuscance! I finally received another copy of win xp professional and did a reformat and reinstall of all drivers. Currently the games sound will suddenly stutter and the screen freezes, comp locks up and I have to do a restart.

I have all the latest drivers aside from the mb nforce driver which I just upgraded and have not had the time to test to see if this might have fixed this problem.

Games I have this problem in: Doom3, Gun Metal, Need for speed underground

My sytstem:

AMD Athlon A64 S754 2800+ stock fan/ Chaintech ZNF-250 / Wintek 6800 128vram stock fan / 1Gig 333mhz ram (dont know brand) / 7200 rpm Maxtor 20 gig hdd / Vantech 430 watt ps / 2 2500 rpm stealth fans / Sound blaster live sound card/

Monitor/ Dell LCD connected through DVI connection.

Thanks for any ideas!
 
Sounds like heat maybe. Pull the side panel off, point a fan at it and see how long you can play b4 crashing.
 
Originally posted by: Fern
Sounds like heat maybe. Pull the side panel off, point a fan at it and see how long you can play b4 crashing.
Click to expand...


Ferns got my vote for the proper solution, If you have a small case and or a hot room that CPU will get hot with only 2 case fans.
try taking the side off the case and see if that helps.
Also is there a HS on the south bridge?
Carefully feel around in the case touch all of the chips and think about placing little heat sinks on the hot ones.
I guarantee you will be surprised how hot some components get in a modern MB.

My board looks like a trailer park for all of the sinks stuck to every chip.
😉
 
1Gig 333mhz ram (dont know brand)
Click to expand...

Your RAM is running slower than your processor. That could cause stability issues, FYI. I'd return it for DDR400 before it gets too late, if it isn't already. Go into the System Health menu and make sure that all of your voltages and temps are acceptable.
 
Okay I tried the fan thing and it still crashes! This time with StarWars Battlefront. It happens after about 45 minutes in the game exactly and happened 4 times in a row.

Not sure if the voltage settings are correct? They are all default. I will get a screen capture tonight.

The memory is not fast enough? Why does it say in my mb's manual that I can take that kind of ram???
Yeah it is too late this ram is from a year ago from my old motherboard and cpu combo. I dont like the prospect of spending an additional $200 so that I can have slightly faster 400mhz ram when I have already shelled out $500 for the motherboard/cpu combo and a video card!

Thanks for all the suggestions keep em coming!
 
You can *ususally* use PC2700 for a 200(x)FSB system, but it is not recommended because in certain situations it can cause some major problems, the worst being data corruption, followed by different types of instability.
 
You don't understand what I meant by make sure that all your voltages and temps are correct. Just because they're set to default doesn't mean that they actually ARE. Your vcore could be set to 1.6, but be 1.4 for all you know. And your 12v line could be running at 11.2. Check it, and don't just assume that they're fine.
 
Update:

I talked to AMD Tech support and they had me check my voltage settings and they said they were okay and that I shouldnt have to change any of them. They thought it might be an issue with Norton Antivirus and Service Pack 2.

Also they told me to reinstall my drivers using microsoft signed drivers (impossible with my video card and motherboard drivers), but I uninstalled and reinstalled the latest drivers anyway.

I also took off the VSync in the game options which was previously on in all games except for need for speed underground. Anyway I was able to play for an hour straight in starwars battlefront, with no crashing. I will have to try a more extensive test.
 
Originally posted by: eydolic
1Gig 333mhz ram (dont know brand)
Click to expand...

Your RAM is running slower than your processor. That could cause stability issues, FYI. I'd return it for DDR400 before it gets too late, if it isn't already. Go into the System Health menu and make sure that all of your voltages and temps are acceptable.
Click to expand...


I dont think thats a problem. Since A64 has memory controller on-die it doesnt really matter what the memory speed is. Synchronus operation is not needed for stability. thats the whole reason behind 1:1. 1:2 , 5:6 etc memory settings.
 
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