x800 xt pe

[fLum0x]

first of all, here is rig specs:

athlon 64 3400+
1gb corsair pc3200
gigabyte k8ns-pro
36.7gb WD raptor
2 120gb WD sata in raid 0
lite-on combo drive
lite-on dvd burner
audigy 2 platinum
ATI radeon x800 xt

ok i have had reoccurring problems for the last couple of weeks that have been bad. I now bluescreen like every 3rd day in the middle of a game (lets say WC3) and there is no text. just a plain blue screen. something that happens more frequently is that my computer graphics lag behind DRASTICALLY in games like wc3 of quake3. We are talking like 10 fps. SO, when i close out and look at performance its always at 70% or more usage of the processor. I have closed EVERY process i can and its still this way. Heating is not a problem and i have the most updated drivers. i have reformatted twice and tried different drivers/solutions and nothing has seemed to work until now. i installed my geforce3 ti200 today and changed out the ATI drivers and all seems to be well now. Obviously this points directly at the video card for the problem, but is it possible for anything else to be wrong? Also, does this sound like a bad video card or just something i am doing wrong along the way?

 

[amdskip]

What power supply are you using? Just out of curiousity, why do you have a raptor and then 2 other drives in raid 0?

 

[fLum0x]

i have a 550W antec PSU, and i have those two drives in raid0 for performance. i didnt want to buy another raptor to put in raid0 or 1 but i wanted performance out of the 2 120gb drives...therefore raid0

 

[boshuter]

When you say it's using 70% of the cpu, what is using it? I mean what process is using all the cpu? If you have closed the game and something is still using 70%, then there is a problem. I don't see how the video card can be causing the high cpu usage, but if it goes away with a different card then it seems to point to it. You are talking about swapping video cards and they are by two different manufacturers, have you used drivercleaner every time you swapped cards?

And like amdskip asks...... why the raid 0? It's doing nothing for performance and is potentially a cause of a lot of problems and lost data if you have a drive failure.

 

[imported_michaelpatrick33]

What is your psu

 

[ockky]

bump for the dumbest damn question i've read in a while. . . read the friggin thread michaelpatrick33

 

[fLum0x]

the point is...when you sort by CPU under the processes tab it says 99 for sys idle. therefore its like at a complete idle state and which i am doing nothing and running no processes except for the necesseties. which is correct that is what i am doing. But at the bottom of the window it says "cpu usage" and is somewhere between 70-95%. Also, if i go to performance it is that high. I can prove its that high before of the drastic lag problems the computer has opening/closing programs. SOOO how is it that if i am running minimal processes with no processes taking more than 5% (excluding sys idle) that my CPU is being used massively. when i reboot the problem goes away. Also, this problem sometimes occurs back to back and then will go a day or two without happening.

as far as the drive cleaner. no i havent tried it, instead i formatted to make sure the stuff was gone. I tried that twice with the gf3 and the x800 xt.

 

[fLum0x]

also i forgot to add. the raid0 -SHOULD- have nothing to do with this simply because this problem hasnt happened now for like 5 days since i went back to the gf3. also, all of the programs i am running when i get an error is on the raptor, which holds the APPs and the OS. So plz stop creaming over the raid...that isnt the problem.

 

[Tarrant64]

I agree. The HD's and Raid 0 have nothing to do with this.

As mentioned before, try that driver cleaner utility. I have a ATI 9600 xt, and for the first couple weeks I had it I had similar problems. However, not with the CPU usage being at like 70%, but I did have a lot of reaccuring blue screens. Went through many different drivers, etc. BTW, are you using Omega drivers at all? I think one of their drivers is bad...)
Anyways, Changed vid cards and problem went away. Gave it a couple days to calm down, put the card back in. Worked fine.

Funny how things work sometimes.