More Freezing Up :(

[DJ Tucker]

Ok yet again my system is freezing up and this time there is no reason for it grrrr... i had this problem before but fixed it with my new mobo but 2 months later and the system is doing it again. any suggestions?

:EDIT: i almost forgot at the end of the month i will be getting a new gpu the GTX560 but, with my current setup will i see any improvment in game as my current card only use maximum of 77% gpu usage whatever the game requires to run. never seen it use more than that!

[Velo:Sity]

Maybe run a test on your hard drives. Then memory.

Upgrading your video card will probably improve performance, but I would start with a newer processor+motherboard+memory. That should be a better investment if you can afford. Throw in an SSD and you got a stew going.

[vbironchef]

I would that and add windows 7.

[DJ Tucker]

well this is the system i want to build in order from first buy to last but will take me a while

GPU: 560 or 570 depending on price
PSU: corsair gs 800
Mobo: Asus 1155 sabertooth
CPU: i5 2500k
Cooler: zalman 9900max
Memory: Corsair Vengence ddr3 1600mhz

[Major_A]

Try running the longest test in SuperPi Mod. If it fails then your RAM isn't stable. If that's the case up the timings like i suggested in the Far Cry 2 post. I've had overclocks that would work perfect for days on end and something would CTD or Blue Screen. Ran SuperPi Mod and it failed almost instantly. Fixed the RAM settings and the system was happy as a clam.

[DJ Tucker]

the problem only happens when playing games i even put my whole system back to factory spec and still it crashed. so it not an overclock problem. i ran prime95 and super pi mod still no problems found. so my guess is the nvidia graphics drivers are to blame so what driver do you think is the best nvidia driver for my 9800gt's?

[Velo:Sity]

Actually, I did have one freeze after I installed latest nVidia drivers. If you also have the latest drivers, try rolling back to the previous version, not sure which one it was- it was rock solid for me.

[DJ Tucker]

i have tried all drivers back up to the first 270 driver and still crashing so still gota go back even further

[Major_A]

Read this, might help. Sorry I didn't read it.
http://techreport.com/articles.x/21516/11

[vbironchef]

Ok, I read that! Mind blown! Got a headache now, and I thought it was because of a overheated card that got a little fried.

[Major_A]

I just read it and here's what I took away from it. If you have bad stuttering issues try one card. I've long thought that 1 card is better than 2 and this confirms it, at least with stability issues.

That said, pull one card and see if you still get the stuttering issue with only one 9800GT installed. Like you said this is about to be a moot point anyway since you have a GTX 560 Ti on the way.

[DJ Tucker]

no the games are still making my system crash and i have a gtx 560 on the way now so will try that when i get it and see if my system stops crashing

[Major_A]

While you're waiting on the new card try a complete nVidia driver install.

1) Uninstall the nVidia graphics driver and software (aka PhysX) using the Add/Remove Programs.
2) Download Driver Sweeper and run it for nVidia video card drivers. Reboot.
3) Install the latest nVidia drivers and reboot.

May help, may not. Only one way to find out though.

[DJ Tucker]

just done that and still the same thing happens. although it only happens in far cry 2, battlefield bad company 2 and high end games like that?

[Apoptosis]

could it be because the new video card has a bad memory chip on it that is only being seen when the frame buffer is full?

High end games need more memory usually, so maybe this could be it? I've seen something like that before on a card, but it was years ago.

You can use GPU-Z to see how much memory is being used by old and new title in order to see if it's a bad chip. You can then use something like Furmark at small screen sizes in non-full screen mode to slowly increase the frame buffer by increasing the resolution to see if that is causing the issue.

[Major_A]

Never thought of that. Isn't there a small benchmark/test that can check the stability of VRAM?

*EDIT*
Found it, I think...
http://majorgeeks.com/Video_Memory_Stre ... d5896.html

[DJ Tucker]

ran the test on my current 9800gt's and it passsed the full test 3 times and found no errors so what on earth is the problem? well i decided to test all my games and these are the games i have:
Turok: No Crash
Bad Company 2: Crashed
Call of Duty BO: Crashed
Call of Duty MW2: No Crash
Call of Duty MW1: No Crash
Painkiller all Series: No crash
Fear 1: No Crash
Fear 2: No Crash
Fear 3: Crash
Far Cry 2: Crashed
Killing Floor: No Crash
Burnout Paradise: No Crash
Resident evil 4: No Crash
Resident Evil 5: Crashed
Bioshock 1: No Crash
Bioshock 2: No Crash
BattleField 2: No Crash
Legendary: No Crash
Clive Barkers Jericho: Crashed

Notice all the highlighted ones are the ones that crashed. all of these are the games that use 50%+ of my GPU usage. all of the others use 49% or less on average. all games maxed out Graphics Settings in game

[Major_A]

Are your GPUs overclocked? Do you have a multimeter you can use to verify the voltages? I'm still leery about the PSU you have.

[DJ Tucker]

this psu has 44amps at 80% so thats what maybe 38amps ectual so still enough to power it but i tried a corsair hx850 in this rig as i was build my mate a pc last month and it still crashed even with that

[Major_A]

Well amps are only part of it. The build quality, load calibration and efficiency are more important. That said I'm stumped. The only thing I would try at this point is one card at a time. See if you can narrow down the crashing to a particular card.

Couple other things you might try:
1) Make sure you're running the latest BIOS (v1.4 on MSI's site).
http://www.msi.com/product/mb/P6N-SLI-V ... /?div=BIOS
In version 1.3 (which is included in 1.4) it says it updates NVMM version. Not really sure what that means but NV stands for nVidia.
2) Make sure you're running the latest chipset drivers.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce-vis ... river.html