Games problems with my new system

[parad0x]

So far I've been very pleased with Scan's level of service - the two occasions I've spoken to people on the phone have been pleasant and the staff members on this board have been very helpful.

Unfortunately I am having problems with my new build, so I'm hoping that I can be helped out a little more.

The main parts are:
Asus Striker Extreme
Core2 Quad Extreme QX6800
eVGA GeForce 8800 Ultra Superclocked
Zalman ZM600HP
-- all bought from Scan.

I'm using OCZ Reaper PC2-9200 memory with it.

The system is up and running and has a clean install of Windows XP. I am running everything at stock, un-overclocked speeds, and the memory timings are set according to the specifications. Most BIOS settings have been left at defaults. Generally, the system is quite stable at desktop-related tasks, but the problems all start when I try to play some games.

About 15-20mins into a game, the game hard-freezes with the sound looping in the background. Depending on the game, I might have to reset the PC, or I might be able to ALT-TAB out and kill the game. I have been searching frantically on Google and various forums and there are a lot of people with similar symptoms and various troubleshooting hints, many of which I've tried. Some games take longer to fail than others. Half-Life 2, CS Source etc. can on occasions play for a decent amount of time, but Far Cry only seems to take about 15mins to freeze.

Heat was the first thing that came to mind; I have tried using RivaTuner to set the GeForce's fan speed to 100% in order to cool it better - no good. I have tried about 5 different driver versions, some beta, some official and none seem to help - some earlier driver versions would accompany the hard-locking with a BSOD after about 15 seconds.

I have fiddled with memory timings, clocks and voltages all to no avail, and have tried BIOS updates for the motherboard. I've been using all the latest system drivers fom ASUS's and nVidia's websites, and I've tried both XP x64 edition and 32bit XP Pro with same results for both. I am totally stumped.

Having done a bit of reading there seem to be many discussions around the internet about both Striker Extreme stability problems and GeForce 8xxx stability problems, so it's difficult to decide which part is problematic, maybe even just a plain incompatibility between the two. What would Scan's suggested course of action be?

If I was to return them, would I be able to try a different brand/model of motherboard?

Thanks for your help!

[Blitzen]

COmmon problem with the 8800's atm. (I'm almost certain now this is the cause).
There are some that have been lucky and some not so lucky. Im convinced this is driver support for the cards because when it happens to me (only in BF2), if i turn a few things down and a few different things up the problem stops.

[Mossy]

Have you tried different components and done the normal testing procedures? Try a different graphics cards, done MEM test and done a barebones test just using vital components? We use the striker extreme and 8800 cards with little problems on current drivers?

Regards

[parad0x]

Cheers.

I don't have another machine or board that I could test the 8800 in, and the only other graphics card that I could try is a Voodoo 3 3000 in one of the normal PCI slots.

Tonight I'll do a memory test and try the Voodoo in it just to see if I can get a game to stay running for longer. Thanks for your help.

[Mossy]

Just try in what ever way you can to deterine if anything is faulty. eg if you try with different card and you get no errors you know that the 8800 is the problem.

[Zak33]

dont use that Voodoo...it really will not help as the drivers for that are older than the hills.

Does the PC lock up in other stuff? Ie if you left it on maybe playing music for several hours, while surfing etc..... maybe do some video encoding or music encoding....andthing that doest use the graphics card for 3d.

[parad0x]

Ok, I won't.

The PC seems pretty stable in all other areas, I can surf and chat to people using GoogleTalk and Skype for quite a long time without any problems. I can even resume work as normal if I manage to ALT-TAB out of the crashing game and kill the process. If I restart the game, it will immediately start to stutter and crash (eg. as soon as the Half-Life 2 menu's 3D backdrop appears). Should I try one of those torturetest programs like Sandra or something?

I've just gotten another game (Battlefield 2142) to try so I'll have a go with it tonight too, after work.

Your help is much appreciated - I really want to get all these games working stable!

[Lee H]

Is all this at stock speed i.e the CPU is not overclocked is it ?

If it's running overclocked, I would suggest knocking everything back to stock speeds to see if this is the route of the problem.

Have you ran memtest to see if the memory is fine?

[parad0x]

Hi, yeah as I wrote in my original post everything has been running at stock speed and not overclocked. I have even tried resetting the CMOS to total defaults, but nothing seems to help.

Exact same problem is happening with Battlefield 2142. I am really starting to think it's the graphics card now. Reinstalling drivers and using Driver Cleaner hasn't helped at all.

I'm just about to burn a CD containing MemTest and a few other diagnostic tools so I'll post back after trying some of them.

Cheers!

[[Grevane]]

I've read that ASUS are having terrible problems with the Striker Extreme. It just doesn't work properly. Something to do with problems with the chipset. I believe EVGA have also had problems wit the same style and chipset of board but have been a little more proactive about resolving it than ASUS. ASUS have "seemingly" buried their heads in the sand about.

I would suggest going and having a read on the ASUS forums. LOADS of people complaining about the Striker Extreme.

Nice GX card btw

Oh and another edit... You might not be able to get on the ASUS forums... They are having problems with them as well... They go up and down more times than a... well, you know.. .something that goes up and down alot...

There are even a few people trying to start a boycot of all ASUS products in respect to the problems with the Stiker Extreme until ASUS actually acknowledge the issues that so many users like i guess yourself are having...

[parad0x]

Well, I ran MemTest86+ and it passed with no errors. I was able to run an MPrime test for a couple of hours without any problems - so I guess the base system is stable.

@Grevane: I just looked at Asus' forums and now I feel sick. I'm shocked that such a nice looking motherboard with such an excellent feature set could turn out to be a lemon for that many people.

Oh - there's another thing I'm having trouble with, related to the motherboard and memory. No matter what I do, the motherboard refuses to run my PC2-9200 1150MHz rated memory at its full speed. The very max I can go is about 970MHz. Any more and I can't POST at all. I've been through every setting in the BIOS, copied other peoples' templates from the memory manufacturer's site, tweaked voltages and lots and lots of settings. This motherboard just won't let my memory run near its rated speed at all!

What I'm worried about is that if I RMA my graphics card alone, it might be tested to be working fine, and if I RMA my motherboard, it might be tested to be working fine. Given what people seem to be writing, I think that the motherboard might still be partly to blame; something to do with its chipset that doesn't show up when using the computer for simple desktop needs. My gut feeling tells me that it might be this combination of hardware.

I am spending ~£2000 on finance with Scan and I really, really hope that they can make me happy here. Would I be able to return both motherboard and graphics card so that they could be tested together?

[grayg1]

So the BSODs have completely stopped happening after you changed the drivers?

I kind of had a similar problem recently and it would pass memtest for hours on end until Clunk told me to run test 5 of memtest and the RAM gave errors in the very first test.

[[Grevane]]

Well, I ran MemTest86+ and it passed with no errors. I was able to run an MPrime test for a couple of hours without any problems - so I guess the base system is stable.

@Grevane: I just looked at Asus' forums and now I feel sick. I'm shocked that such a nice looking motherboard with such an excellent feature set could turn out to be a lemon for that many people.

Oh - there's another thing I'm having trouble with, related to the motherboard and memory. No matter what I do, the motherboard refuses to run my PC2-9200 1150MHz rated memory at its full speed. The very max I can go is about 970MHz. Any more and I can't POST at all. I've been through every setting in the BIOS, copied other peoples' templates from the memory manufacturer's site, tweaked voltages and lots and lots of settings. This motherboard just won't let my memory run near its rated speed at all!

What I'm worried about is that if I RMA my graphics card alone, it might be tested to be working fine, and if I RMA my motherboard, it might be tested to be working fine. Given what people seem to be writing, I think that the motherboard might still be partly to blame; something to do with its chipset that doesn't show up when using the computer for simple desktop needs. My gut feeling tells me that it might be this combination of hardware.

I am spending ~£2000 on finance with Scan and I really, really hope that they can make me happy here. Would I be able to return both motherboard and graphics card so that they could be tested together?

I know how you feel mate. I honestly do and I really hope you get it sorted.

When i first read the posts by the guys trying to start this boycot, I "assumed" it was nothing more than a stupid forum troll... but I read a little more around and was similarly shocked by what I read. They have ZERO ASUS employees on that forum. The "Forum Admin" last logged into that forum over a year ago. The website goes down probably once an hour which makes it impossible to post half the time. They imho, appear to be acting like a company who have grown so big, that they have lost sight of "Customer Care" and probably aren't even interested about the issues we are having. They just want more of our cash and once they have gotten our cash, thats the last they want to hear about us. Terrible sickening behaviour towards customers.

I am currently in a "similar-ish" situation. I bought an ASUS product (P5B Premium Vista Edition) thinking that I would get a good service from them (Big company, good motherboard reputation) in the unfortunate event something went wrong.

Well, it did after only 2 months, either the ASUS Updater screwed up my BIOS when I flashed it in Windows OR the board just coincidentally gave way after flashing it (possible since it had shutdown/restart issues and occassionally the USB wouldn't be detected, or the ASAP drive disappeared in the BIOS - it had some intermittent odd problems) and so now, my lovely new PC that I was SO SO enjoying using (I've been playing Oblivion on 1600x1200 with ALL the additional huge "Texture" packs and LOD packs so and EVERYTHING on full settings in the graphics options apart from the grass view distance, and so it looked absolutely stunning), is just sat quietly, doing nothing, in the corner of the room, probably feeling rather dejected about this whole situation like me.

For 3 days now I've been trying to get help/advice from ASUS. I keep submitting "TECHINICAL" requests and they've replied so far, with 2 useless "UNTECHNICAL" reply's. They are also quoting 4-6 weeks to "repair" this motherboard and are claiming that anything downloaded off their website is used at my own risk this removing ANY responsibility towards me, their customer. I am frankly appauled at their behaviour. And will very likely NEVER by another ASUS product again.

I'm thoroughly disappointed, I wanted to lodge a complaint with ASUS, I've phone their UK offices, I've posted requests on their site to lodge a complaint but NO-ONE in ASUS is even interested.

Thoroughly appauled. I'm hoping, since I used to work for the company I bought the motherboard off, that I can exchange this "Vista Edition" for the Deluxe model which hopefully should atleast provide me with a "tried and tested" reliable motherboard and hopefully, that will be the last contact I ever need to have with ASUS.

Goodluck with your PC mate. I'll keep an eye on this thread and if there's anything I can do to help, I will of course try...

[[Grevane]]

Ooh, one thing I forgot to say. I'll post this in another post so its easier to notice since I got a bit carried away about moaning about ASUS in the last one.

My previous PC was an Alienware Area 51 (yeah expensive and yeah I could've built the same PC for half the money but I was earning really well at the time and I've built literally hundreds of PC's and Servers over the years through work and I couldn't be bothered at the time to build another one).

I bought it just as the first of the GF6800Ultra's came out and ended up having to wait about a month and a half because there were just not enough Ultra's to cover the demand.

Anyway, what I was going to mention was a problem I initially had with this Alienware PC and the GF6800Ultra. In fairness to Alienware, they were excellent in responding to my problem. Probably the best overall support I have ever had from a PC Manufacturer and it totally justified the cost of the PC imho.

Basically, the problem I was having was that in pretty much any game, but mostly the ones with "heavy" or "intense" graphics (I was playing Everquest 2 at the time and that was graphically, a very heavy game), was that the machine would hard lock and go into a sound loop. Sounding at all familiar?

I'm kinda kicking myself for not remembering this earlier.

Anyway, occassionally, I would get a "corrupted desktop" as well... not sure if you've had this kinda thing happen... but anyway, I spoke to Alienware, sent them screenshots of what was happening and a description of the problems in game and what games I was playing and they said they would send me a new GX card and to send the old one back with the courier who delivers it. Next day, a new card arrives, I swap it over, give the old one to the courier, and the machine has been running sweet ever since. Alienware 10/10... couldn't speak more highly of them.

So, although there are numerous issues with the Stiker Extreme, by the decription of your problem and having had by the sounds of it, exactly the same problem with the 6800Ultra, my gut feeling is its the card at fault. I'm not sure how you can prove it except for getting the card RMA'd and then only time will tell.

[parad0x]

@Grevane: Some interesting/worrying stuff there - thanks for your story.

@grayg1: Yeah - with official latest drivers from nVidias site I would get bluesceens after a few moments of stuttering/freezing, and one of the nVidia files would be mentioned in the bluescreen itself. Now I am using one of the unreleased later drivers, which seems to have stopped the bluescreens but the freezing happens all the same.

Last night I got a non-game related freeze! I was watching a lot of videos on YouTube one after the other and the PC hard-locked halfway through one of them. This time I didn't get any stuttering and the mouse pointer was non-responsive too.

I am really wanting to swap my motherboard as well as the graphics card. It would make my day if Scan were to be good enough to allow me to return both in exchange for another graphics card which is the same model, (i.e. just another 8800 Superclocked) and a different motherboard such as the eVGA 680i.

Apart from me not having confidence in the motherboard's stability, it's not allowing me to use my memory to its full potential as advertised.

[[Grevane]]

you're more than welcome mate.

maybe get the GX card swapped over 1st, test that for a week or so... chances of getting a "duff" card again are low... and then address the potential motherboard issue... if you continue getting further problems.

As i mentioned, I did get some problems with my 6800ultra outside of games... here's an example...


Plus, there were the hardlocks (caps lock light was frozen - my normal check for a "hardlock", no mouse movement etc..) in games and sound looping etc...

Amd sorry, what was the RAM problem again?

[EDIT: Oh and initially, as unbelievable as this sounds, this "broken GX card" managed to corrupt the Windows XP license. i.e. the part of the OS that stops you logging into pirated copies of XP. You can't imagine the number of wierd issues that happened due to "just" this faulty card. Never seen anything like it in all my years of working and playing in IT]