Computer Freezes during games ... but not at other times ...

[Kolyana]

Hi guys ... first post for me, so I may not be super aware of protocol ... I apologize for that. let me know if I miss anything and I'll make sure I add it.

SYSTEM:
Windows XP Professional
SP2
1 gig 2700DDR (< 12 months old)
550W PSU (15 mths old)
GE FOrce 6800GT Video Card (256MB, onboard fan)
5 case fans
Zalman fan on the cpu + Artic Fox
MSI A7N8X ARU MOBO
AMD 2100+ CPU

PROBLEM
Okay, my computer has been fine and rock solid for 6 months now (following a reinstall and new parts) ... everything has been great. I tend to play games in the evening and program all day, so it sees a lot of use ... especially when I download at night ... it can be on all the time for many days at a time.

Last Sunday while playing a game (Civ IV) I heard it 'click' - just once - and within 5 seconds it froze ... insatntly and absolutely. I did a soft reboot, checked the admin logs and found ntohing untoward.

I opened up the same game and again it clicked and then froze within about half an hour ... this game has not caused my system to crash in 2 weeks of solid play, so this was unusual.

Again I rebooted, found no error logs anywhere that gave any clues.

I have performed diskeeper checks and no problems were found, I've also run a memory test and found no issues. All my fans are turning just fine, including the one on the graphics card.

So I just fired up Call of Duty II ... which I played yesterday for a few hours: Yesterday it froze after playing for a while, today it froze within half an hour.

I'm running all of these games on 1280x1024, x4 AA.

Things I've noticed ... I can leave the machine on all night and it doesn't lock up.
I can program on it all day long, have multiple windows open and etc ... again with no issues.
The minute I start a game? Locks up.

And ... perhaps most curiously ... seconds before it freezes *something* within the tower goes *CLICK* ... a short, simple CLICK and a freeze is sure to follow.

I am all out of ideas ... everything within my machine is new *EXCEPT* for the CPU. The memory is pretty good stuff, nothing cheap, and was approved for MSI usage (by MSI themselves).

I'm leaning towards the graphics card or CPU, but with fans running on both I really don't know if something is flaky, on it's way out, flawed, broken or otherwise ... or how to test for it.

I have thrown my machine through SiSoft Sandra, 3dMark and a few other benchmarking/testing utilities, and nothing is reporting a problem.

Any ideas?

 

[Zakharov]

It sounds like something is overheating. Have you checked the cpu's heatsink to make sure it is free of dust? In my experience it only takes a few months for it to clog up with dust.

 

[Kolyana]

I got all the dust out the system last night - there was a small amount of it. I don't know if this is conclusive, but two subsequent gaming sessions didn't freeze. :tup:

I also noticed that my 6800 GT wasn't running an optional fan speed (?) ... I downloaded and installed RivaTuner and it has three options for fan speed under 2d operations, light 3d and heavy 3d ... all interacting with the 6800 GT's native drivers ... and it looked liked all three settings were set at 51%, so I'm not sure if this was related or not (I'm currently running RivaTuner and faster fan speed when gaming right now).

 

[deusdies]

What model of HDD you have? It seems to me that HDD is showing some signs of failure, check on IDE Guardian with S.M.A.R.T. I have Western Digital 160GB S-ATA and have no problems with it.

But first of all download new nVidia drivers, for they say "improved performance in Call of Duty 2"; reinstall WinXP, and upgrade it to SP2 if neccessary; finally, format HDD. If it doesn't help, buy new HDD. If it doesn't help buy new computer

 

[Kolyana]

I think my hardrive is exactly the same as yours!

What's S.M.A.R.T?

 

[deusdies]

What's S.M.A.R.T?

S.M.A.R.T. is kind of special ability on some hard drives (nowadays each one has it) that can predict Hard Disk failure date. That, of course, includes some extra add-ons,such as Bad Cluster (Sector) Reporting. You should turn on S.M.A.R.T. capability in BIOS, and download IDE Guardian.

 

[Speedo]

I think my hardrive is exactly the same as yours!

What's S.M.A.R.T?

Self-Monitoring Analysis Reporting Technology

 

[Kolyana]

S.M.A.R.T. is kind of special ability on some hard drives (nowadays each one has it) that can predict Hard Disk failure date. That, of course, includes some extra add-ons,such as Bad Cluster (Sector) Reporting. You should turn on S.M.A.R.T. capability in BIOS, and download IDE Guardian.

That has to be one of the most useful things i've ever heard about ... I'm going to get that puppy enabled and installed right now!

 

[Kolyana]

This can't be good ...

 

[Kolyana]

Not sure how much belief to put into the S.M.A.R.T monitor ... now it's reporting the slave as safe and the primary as failing, but the dates keep changes from like tomorrow, to next month, to not at all.

My machine is locking up again tonight, but this time I have RivaTuner monitoring what's going on ... can anyone make anything of this???

Core temperature is being reported at 67 Degrees C (during gaming), but hits 68-69 a little before the crash. Is this a normal operating temperature? Riva has not marked this as anything untoward, but it *HAS* marked my Voltage Regulator temperature with a warning sign ... and there's a spike part way through the reading.

I don't know what this is or where it's coming from.

 

[DaEezT]

I had an almost identical problem with my PC and it turned out to be the motherboard (was an ASUS board with nForce2 chipset)

btw, there is no "MSI A7N8X", but the product name is the same one as the ASUS board I had trouble with

 

[Thunderfall]

That sounds very familiar.

My desktop tends to freeze when I play Civ4 on high graphics setting and with AA enabled. If I play a medium and w/o AA, I can play longer w/o problem. You may want to give that a try. I suspect it's the graphics card (regular GeForce 6800). It could also be a power thing. My PSU has only 450W.

Due to the problem, I mainly run Civ4 on my laptop nowadays, which surprisingly can play the game at high setting w/o problem.

 

[Thunderfall]

I had an almost identical problem with my PC and it turned out to be the motherboard (was an ASUS board with nForce2 chipset)

btw, there is no "MSI A7N8X", but the product name is the same one as the ASUS board I had trouble with

hmm... My motherboard is ABIT NF7. It has an nForce Chip too. I wonder if it's related...

 

[Kolyana]

I had an almost identical problem with my PC and it turned out to be the motherboard (was an ASUS board with nForce2 chipset)

btw, there is no "MSI A7N8X", but the product name is the same one as the ASUS board I had trouble with

HA! You just read my mind, I was sitting here thinking ... wait a minute, it's an ASUS not an MSI!

To be honest, I've had my doubts about this motherboard for 18months or so now and have exchanged bitter emails with their tech support because of it, but it was the best around at the time.

If you don't mind me asking, what is a good motherboard and CPU combo to get nowadays? I'm so out of touch ... I don't want to be buying any PCI2 graphic cards or anything ... what I have here (AGP) will have to do, but I'm not using any PCI slots, so I'm not adverse to upgrading, as long as I can continue to use the rest of my hardware (ditching mobo and CPU).

 

[Kolyana]

That sounds very familiar.

My desktop tends to freeze when I play Civ4 on high graphics setting and with AA enabled. If I play a medium and w/o AA, I can play longer w/o problem. You may want to give that a try. I suspect it's the graphics card (regular GeForce 6800). It could also be a power thing. My PSU has only 450W.

Due to the problem, I mainly run Civ4 on my laptop nowadays, which surprisingly can play the game at high setting w/o problem.

I'm beginning to lean towards AA as well ... the graphics card can handle it, but the CPU probably can't and maybe it's barfing out under heavy load.

 

[DaEezT]

If you don't mind me asking, what is a good motherboard and CPU combo to get nowadays? I'm so out of touch ... I don't want to be buying any PCI2 graphic cards or anything ... what I have here (AGP) will have to do, but I'm not using any PCI slots, so I'm not adverse to upgrading, as long as I can continue to use the rest of my hardware (ditching mobo and CPU).

I bought the Abit NF7 to replace that crappy ASUS board and didn't have any probelms ever since. I also had an Abit board in my old PC and it never failed me so my personal recommendation is Abit.
For chipset I recommend VIA, although my current Abit board has a nForce2 chipset and runs without issues, so it's more a personal opinion than a factual statement. But I do advise you to stay away from SiS chipsets. I only had one so far but it was the worst piece of trash I ever had

If you want a specific recommendation I'd say grap one of these Abit boards : NF7, KW7, AN7.
They all support dual channel DDR400, AGP and your CPU, so just pick the cheapest one if you don't care about on-board firewire/SATA and the other stuff.

edit: err, forgot that you want to replace your CPU as well. IF you can get your hands on a cheap Athlon XP 3200+ (last of the line) which will give you a good 400MHz boost (+ more cache and higher FSB) compared to your old 2100+ buy it.

As for a new combo, I dunno. It always depends on how long you want to be using your new CPU/Board.
You could buy a good mobo (that support dual core athlon64) + the cheapest Athlon64 and bide your time till the Athlon64 X2 fall in price (which will happen in Q3 2006) and then upgrade (or upgrade when you feel like it).
Alternatively you can go for a better Athlong64 with a medicore board but that'll limit your upgrading options.
And yes, I know I'm probably not helping by saying "it all depends"

Since the cheapest Athlon64 is 300MHz slower than the fastest AthlonXP, while having the same cache size, you'll be better off with my initial option (socket A board & AthlonXP 3200+), unless you want to upgrade to WindowsXP Pro 64bit edition, but even then you probably won't outperform the AthlonXP.

And yes, I do not even consider Intel

 

[Speedo]

Core temperature is being reported at 67 Degrees C (during gaming), but hits 68-69 a little before the crash. Is this a normal operating temperature? Riva has not marked this as anything untoward, but it *HAS* marked my Voltage Regulator temperature with a warning sign ... and there's a spike part way through the reading.

Even though the Athlon XP 2100 is rated for 90C (in theory, it won't *melt* below that) but you're going to have stability problems long before then. IMO 68-70C is far higher than it should be. My old one never went out of the low 50s even under the heaviest load.

My guess would be that the problem, though, is that voltage regulator. At 123C, my guess would be that it is faulty or has been damaged by overheating. There are few better ways to have crashes and crazy PC behavior than to have unstable voltages.

If you don't mind me asking, what is a good motherboard and CPU combo to get nowadays?

If you don't want to upgrade your graphics card, your best bet would be to get a board from the last generation (nForce3 chipset, most likely) and flash it to the latest BIOS available. It should then support all of the Athlon64 CPUs, and believe there are even BIOSs available to allow those boards to support AthlonX2. Essentially all of the current generation boards are out of the question, since they use PCIe and have no AGP slots.