I90-HD freezes in games!

[munk]

Hi.

I have the i90-hd and use it for my HTPC. However, I would like to be able to play games.

But when I play Civilization - Beyond the sword (Latest add-on with latest patch) it will after 10-15 mins freeze (but I will still be able to hear the music and I can still access the shared folder on the pc). I will however not be able to move the mouse nor get anything out of the keyboard and the screen will be black.

I've read on other forums that this seems to happen to this motherboard. Is there any fix, eg new drivers or anything?

I've used both latest catalyst drivers and older ones and it doesnt seem to make a difference.

On other forums they said that doing a memtest wouldn't show anything.

The motherboard has not crashed doing ANYTHING else, be it play 720p video or anything like that.

Could anyone think of a fix? Sean-abit ?

[munk]

Btw, I use the onboard gfx.

[ABIT Sean]

Can you tell me your full specs.

[munk]

F-I90HD (Ati RS600-SB600) (Video card set at 256MB)
Intel Core 2 Duo E4300
2048 MB Kingston 2x1024 ValueRam/2GB 667MHz
Antec New Solution NSK3400
500GB WD Caviar SE16 7200rpm SATA2
Windows XP pro SP2.
Catalyst 7.8 drivers.


Along with HDMI Toshiba TV.


And CS:S (counter strike) won't even start - errors at start from steam. Something is obviously wrong.

[Tetras]

And CS:S (counter strike) won't even start - errors at start from steam

What do they say?

Is there anything in the event viewer for near when the system crashes? (contol panel > administrative tools)

[munk]

steam just says that loud error noise and goes back to steam window (no message). Tried reinstalling etc.

I haven't found anything in system manager to help me identify the problem. Does no one else have this problem?

[mogzie]

steam just says that loud error noise and goes back to steam window (no message). Tried reinstalling etc.

I haven't found anything in system manager to help me identify the problem. Does no one else have this problem?

I have steam running on my F-I90HD on WinXP Pro, and the rest of my system is pretty much the same as yours.
Do you have the latest bios revision?

I purchased by board just after it came out so I had the original bios revision, but I flashed it due to some crashes I was getting, and now everything seems to be ok.

[munk]

My bios is 1.3, the 1.4 doesn't seem to offer much new. Do you use 1.4? Did 1.3 give instability in games?

Thank you.

[mogzie]

My bios is 1.3, the 1.4 doesn't seem to offer much new. Do you use 1.4? Did 1.3 give instability in games?

Thank you.

I had the 1.0 bios originally, and flashed straight to the 1.3 (I believe, i will have to check for you tonight as i am at work at the moment!).
If mine is the 1.3 (which im 90% sure it is), it appears to be pretty stable with games. Ive been playing half-life 2 fine on it, as well as Civilization 4, even supreme commander at lower quality settings. The only time i experienced any instability issues was when I was running the system with vista, but i believe that is down to a vista issue and not the hardware.
Did you change your onboard gfx to use 256mb, mine seems to run those games i mentioned without problems on the defaults.