HokieRif Posted January 17, 2006 Posted January 17, 2006 First let me say I've enjoyed reading this board and learned a significant amount over the last few weeks. Angry_Games - the guides you put together are great! Now down to businesss... Over Christmas I built a new rig (see sig. below) and initially had some extreme problems when I had 2 cards running in SLI. After a week of troubleshooting random system lockups (sometimes) and game lockups (most of the time) I determined that I had a bum card, RMA'd it, and put the new one in and everything appeared to be normal. My 3dMark scores went way up, and my Aquamark score went up close to 30k points. I figured everything was fine.... Until I started playing Far Cry. Game time can last anywhere from 30 seconds to 30 minutes before a lockup (complete with looping sounds!), and there's no indication (with regards to performance) that a lockup is about to happen when I'm playing the game. I thought the issue was isolated to just that game, but UT2004 is acting up in the same manner. However, these are the only 2 that I have found so far that have issues (Doom 3 and Quake IV run just fine).... I feel I have done a decent amount of testing to rule-out a faulty CPU or memory - Prime and memtest have been run at lenght (12 hours+) without any errors, as well as SuperPi and OCCT. Temperatures are within range during load (CPU and chipset hover around 45c during load as of a few days ago), and I've ensured that the graphics cards have plenty of head room for air flow and I have a case fan pointed directly between both (temps are at 50c idle and can get up to 70c during load) - stock heatsink and fan on both. I have even gone as far as removing the Athlon chip and heatsink to verify there was no chip damage after I had read one horry story from a poster on another site about a hairline fracture on the top of the chip... No damage to the chip, and I took the time to replace the thermal grease with some AS5 (using Angry's chipset fan guide)... So, any ideas what's causing the lockups? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
rebelangel Posted January 17, 2006 Posted January 17, 2006 there has been problems before with your type of memory there is a thread about it somewhere on this forum. but if it's passing memtest and prime I don't think it's the problem. there are also reported problems with the combination x-fi sound cards and nforce4 chipsets Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
HokieRif Posted January 17, 2006 Posted January 17, 2006 When doing my earlier troubleshooting prior to the RMA on the video card the Valve/Steam troubleshooting tips suggested moving the sound card around in different slots (the bottom) to see if there was any impact. I did that and didn't notice any difference... However, I do have an old SB Live! that I can slap in and give it a shot, event though I doubt it's the issue, but it's at least 1 variable I can take out of the equation. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
HokieRif Posted January 17, 2006 Posted January 17, 2006 I'm guessing these are the threads you are refering to: http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread...&highlight=x-fi http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/bo...cending&page=30 I've gone through both and they mostly metion BSOD, which I am not getting. I doubt that is my problem, but I'll give the SB Live! a try any way to rule it out. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
HokieRif Posted January 18, 2006 Posted January 18, 2006 Well now I feel much better... I'm not sure if the issue is with Far Cry or with the X-Fi and the drivers, but for whatever reason it's the Hardware mixing/EAX 2.0 setting that was freezing things up... I disabled that and I've been running at the highest everything since Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
finagle69 Posted January 18, 2006 Posted January 18, 2006 good to see you fixed it. that sucks though. EAX 2.0 is kinda cool. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
HokieRif Posted January 18, 2006 Posted January 18, 2006 eh... right now I'm busy drooling over the graphics (running the AMD64 version of far cry ), so by the time I'm ready to look in to the sound again there should be some updated drivers available. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
HokieRif Posted January 18, 2006 Posted January 18, 2006 nope... spoke too soon... starting to wonder if it's a heat problem... If I'm reading Speedfan right my chipset is idling at 49c and that doesn't sound good. The video cards are also running warm (they're reading ~61c after I restart and get back in to Windows, which is about 30 seconds later) - I'm wonder if anyone out there knows how to get accurate reading during load on the video temps... I've got the clearance and the credit card ready to order a couple vga coolers, but I want to make sure it's going to be the right investment to fix this problem... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
HokieRif Posted January 18, 2006 Posted January 18, 2006 Now I'm furious... I'm still fighting the random lockups, and now I've UNDERclocked the video card (about 50mhz below the chip, and 100 down from the memory) and things SEEM to have stabalized... Now I think my next decision to make is whether to pick up a couple zalman vga coolers, or return the cards and get something better.... Thoughts anyone? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Temujin Posted January 18, 2006 Posted January 18, 2006 What are your ram voltages at? There are some threads that have insisted that Corsair XMS had to be run at 2.5 Cas Latency to be stable. Other people have succeeded at changing the ram voltage from 2.6 (default) to 2.7 61c isn't really hot btw. My 6800 GT would get pretty close to that and never act up. If you haven't already, take your case side off to allow some cooler air in so you can rule out heat. None of those temps are very high unless your a hardcore perfectionist. That is a clean install/reformat of Windows too, correct? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
HokieRif Posted January 18, 2006 Posted January 18, 2006 Just for kicks I lowered the timings on the RAM to 3-3-3-8 (the default detected by the mobo) and I'm still having the problems. Still haven't thuroughly tested the video cards in their underclocked state, but as of last night things seemed smooth. and the ~60c is what I see seconds after I exit the game, and I have a 90mm fan @ 2000 rpm blowing right at the cards from the side. I don't know how much impact that is having on the cooling, but the temps wont be entirely accurate since I'm not looking at the temps and testing the load simultaneously. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anakin_hollan Posted January 18, 2006 Posted January 18, 2006 Game time can last anywhere from 30 seconds to 30 minutes before a lockup (complete with looping sounds!), and there's no indication (with regards to performance) that a lockup is about to happen when I'm playing the game. I thought the issue was isolated to just that game, but UT2004 is acting up in the same manner. However, these are the only 2 that I have found so far that have issues (Doom 3 and Quake IV run just fine).... That's weird, I have the exact same problem running HL2 and BF2... I got my kit just yesterday, and it runs like a DREAM! Using synthetic benchmarks that is... No indication, just *poof*... And this occurs even at stock speed, with BIOS in "optimized default" -settings. All power-cables have been properly connected. BIOS data: 11/02/2005-NF-CK804-6A61FD4EC-00 NVMM: 4.053.1008/29/05 I switched the memory from orange to yellow slots, but then it wouldn't even display "Verifying DMI Pool Data". It displayed the IRQ-list, and rebooted again... I updated the BIOS to the release of december 12th, but exactly the same thing occurs. I also noticed that my audio-device shared the same IRQ as my VGA-card and NIC. Since it was mentioned above, I switched the audio-card to a lower PCI-slot, giving it a different IRQ. No luck. As a last resort I changed the memory for my old kit (Dual channel kit - CMX512-4000PT), same problem. Funny thing is, I can also cause the problem using Sisoft Sandra (2005 SR3)? Running "CPU Arithmetic Benchmark", "CPU Multi-Media Benchmark", "Memory Bandwidth Benchmark" or "Cache & Memory Benchmark" doesn't crash the system, but "Mainboard information" or "CPU & BIOS information" does!? I really hope there's a solution to the situation, as I've been waiting nearly a month to get the stuff here (2 parts were in back-order...) and I'd hate to RMA something? A friend of mine runs the same motherboard/CPU/cooler, but with Crucial Ballistix 2x1GB and an X-fi sound-card. He doesn't experience the same problem. CPUZ report Everest Summary + Benches Screenie from system-monitors. Fan lay-out in SmartGuardian: 1) CPU 2) PSU 3) NF4 chip TIA!! Anakin P.S. Added some data. Don't know if they apply, but allways nice to have? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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