What could cause games to 'freeze' completely?

[collettnj]

Hi folks -

A bit of a wide ranging and vague question I know, but I have problems with some games where they freeze completely - screen movement just stops as though a pause button has been pressed, sound continues at constant pitch (eg engine noise etc), and the only way to escape is through the reset button.

Games where this has happened in the past include:

Supreme Commander (vanilla game, the expansion pack 'Forged Alliance' is fine )

FS2004

FSX

Lock On - Modern Air Combat


My PC Specs:

C2D E6600 2.4GHz
EVGA 8800GTS 640 KO ACS3
4GB OCZ RAM
600w Thermaltake modular PSU
ASUS P5N32-E SLI Motherboard
Cooling: 3x120mm Sharkoon SE2000 fans, 1x80mm Sharkoon SE2000 fan
2xWD Raptor 74GB, 1xWD Caviar 750GB. No RAID.


NOTHING is overclocked whatsoever (apart from the graphics card which is factory overclocked, so I haven't touched anything). Might be worth noting that it's a self-build, so there's been no manufacturer testing etc...

Video/Chipset/Sound drivers are fully updated. I have reinstalled windows countless times on this PC as well for various reasons, so the problems persist on clean installations. I don't think heat is a problem - my cooling is decent, and CPUID shows pretty average temperatures. I have a zalman CPU fan/heatsink too.

A few notes about hardware ()

* These problems have happened with these particular games since I built the PC a year ago. I have got new HDDs since then, so I wouldn't blame them.

* As an experiment, I temporarily put a 7800GTX from my other PC in the place of the 8800 to see if the crashes would persist. THEY DID. I'd therefore take the blame off the 8800?

* After swapping out the video card, I did the same with the RAM. When I first built the PC, I used OCZ 2GB PC2-7200 nVIDIA SLI Ready (2x1GB). I took that out, and put in 4x1GB sticks from my other PC, which was a mixture of PC2-4200 and PC2-5300. The crashes then STOPPED in Lock On and FS2004 as far as I could see.

*Thinking that the memory was therefore at fault, I went ahead and bought the RAM i linked to in the PC specs at the start of this post. The crashes then resumed! Might it be that my PC doesn't like OCZ ram or something?


I've tried turning down hardware acceleration (right click on desktop, properties, settings, advanced, troubleshoot), and turning off my sound acceleration in dxdiag. Neither seemed to help!



I'm more than happy to post a dxdiag if anyone would find it helpful..

Many thanks!

[chqshaitan]

Hi Mate,

I have exactly the same motherboard as you, with the addition of a soundblaster pro, and i have from time to time had the same crash, removing the Creative soundblaster card seems to have done the trick though.

I may have ocz ram though, i will have to check and let you know..

[Mithrandir]

Possibly some mobo settings in the BIOS or a faulty motherboard?

[collettnj]

Possibly some mobo settings in the BIOS or a faulty motherboard?

Perhaps...I have no way of knowing whether or not the mobo is faulty though yet. What settings might be wrong?

[Koolpc]

Try one stick of ram at a time in different slots. Could also be a ram incompatability issue!

[Ferral]

That particular board throttles the cpu down once it hits around 68 celcius. It will take it down to arounf 55 celcius.

I have found with mine that when this happens I get a hard crash with sound looping and everything. Or a strange crash where sound keeps going but game has frozen. Both require me to hit the reset button. Try getting some thermalpaste and re apply to CPU and GPU

I have a socket 939 Asus board, and granted it is a great stable board but when it throttles down the CPU and I get a crash its damned annoying. Even worse there is no way of turning it off on my board and there is no mention of it in the manual. On my particular board it starts throttling down at 50 celcius

[collettnj]

I have found with mine that when this happens I get a hard crash with sound looping and everything. Or a strange crash where sound keeps going but game has frozen. Both require me to hit the reset button.

That fits my situation perfectly! My CPU temp is generally below 50 though..is there any way to prevent the motherboard from throttling it back?



In response to Koolpc - I might give that a try, though the two sticks are identical, so do you mean compatability problem with other hardware or between the two ram modules?


Also, to throw more questions out (), what programs would people recommend to test my system for stability etc? What tests would be worth carrying out as diagnosis? I've got memtest 86 so i'll give that a try tonight...

[Ferral]

I just use one of the older 3dmark programs and set it on a loop overnight when I go to bed. If it is still running in the morning I know my system is fine.

On my board there is no way of turning the feature off. Just have a google about and see what you find about your board. If you can't stop it from throttling down I would suggest getting some arctic silver thermal paste for the main processor and also put some on the GPU on your graphics card.

I put some of the arctic silver on cpu and gpu the other day and my problem has stopped immediately. Processor is sitting at 35 celcius idle and it just goes over 40 celcius now under load and my gpu sits at 47 celcius and barely fluctuates at all when under load.

[collettnj]

I'll look at getting some of that then! How would i put it on my GPU core?

[Ferral]

I would start with just the cpu and see how it goes from there for a few days. Reason why I decided to put it on my gpu is because I have a midi tower case and its a bit cramped and airflow isn't the best.

Is you vid card single slot or do you a dual slot beastie?!

Make sure you follow the instructions with the paste also. You don't need bucket loads of the stuff on the cpu. The small tube you get should be able to do around 15 CPU's to give you an idea on how thin to spread it. If the CPU has a large flat base like the AMD's the way I normally do it is put a noughts and crosses grid on the cpu with the paste. Then seat the fan and move it around a little bit to get an even coat over the top of the cpu before locking heatsink / fan down. Or if you want just smooth it over with a finger, make sure you don't get any on other bits of the chip. Especially look out for the tiny components that are on older chips (not that you have an older chip), you have to make sure if is touching them at all none of them are briged by it or things could go pop.

I don't mean to scare you at all with that last bit, just want to point out the importance of using just a little bit of the stuff so it doesn't go everywhere. Its dead easy to do

[collettnj]

Is you vid card single slot or do you a dual slot beastie?!

I'm on quad SLI mate



ahem..

Only a single i'm afraid! I'll happily give the CPU a go. I got a tip from someone else that manually setting the RAM voltages in the BIOS might help...maybe I should give that a go?

[Arminas]

What OS are you using? You might be barking up completely the wrong tree, especially since I assume you're using Windows? It'll probably just be a software bug. You're hardware should be okay if it's all new.

[Ferral]

Yeah, no harm in trying it.

Main thing is definately the cpu with the paste, will help out no end (it does take around 200 hours of running apparently for the paste to work optimally but it worked for me straight away, hope it gets even better! ). I don't think doing it to your vga cards is going to have that much of an effect. You will have a bigger case than me so airflow will be a lot better.

Reason why I asked if it was single slot is that single slot cards it is easier to get the heatsink off!!!

[collettnj]

How exactly do I set the RAM MHz? The voltage appears to be set already to 2.1v, which is what's advertised here.

If I go to Extreme Tweaker>FSB & Memory Config, it gives me options to 'Link or Unlink' the 'FSB-Memory Clock Mode'.

Unlinked allows me to 'Enter FSB memory and speed manually'. Linked means that when I change the FSB speed, the memory speed changes proportionally. I'm just worried about changing one but not the other. I know very little about the more complicated stuff...overclocking is a big mist for me...

Cheers

[Ferral]

Can't help you with an overclock as I never do it with my stuff! Get your system stable before doing anything like that.

Just set the ram to auto detect

[collettnj]

I'm not aiming to overclock - just set the frequency to what it should be. As per someone's advice I unlinked the FSB memory clock thingy, and set the RAM frequency to 1000MHz. It was at 800, which is not what OCZ say is the proper value. I'll give the game a go now and see how it goes