Hey Guys,

I have a problem with my computer. It locks up for no apparent reason when either a) starting a new game (COD2, FEAR, Americas Army) or clicking through menus c) loading new maps to start. For the most part I can't remember it doing it once I've been in game. Never have any kind of problems at all once I start playing. I have a Intel Core 2 duo 6300 and a evga 7950 GT KO 512 MB video card if that helps any.

Thanks for any help or suggestions guys.

Junkie

Wow nice computer. Anyway, defrag your hard drive and run a virus/spyware scan. Also if you have a real-time virus/spyware detector, disable real-time scanning for your games. I had to do this with Cod2.

When you say it "locks up" do you mean that it stalls for a few seconds when loading a game or map, or that a game or program totally hangs and you have to get the program or game to quit (how do you have to do it?) and then all is fine, or that the computer will not respond at all in which case does it come back if you hit your reset button, or do you have to do a cntl-alt-del reboot, or do you have to power down and back up?

I have a reset button which basically just restarts the computer. When I say it locks up the whole system is unresponsive. That's all I can do besides a total power down. I'm wondering if either a) the video card is bad or b ) maybe my power supply isnt powerful enough (450 watts). My temperature monitors for the CPU are around 36 Celcius and for the video card it was around 50 Celcius. I think these are within acceptable limits but I could be wrong. It's weird though because once I get in game I don't have problems. It is only when trying to start etc.

Junkie

Those new video card demand alot of power, Is this a brand new computer? or this just happen all of a sudden? Does it lock up when you just browsing the net?

Built the computer less than a month ago. Everything was fine and then all of a sudden it started locking up at the start of games. I've done a little research and found that a) lots of people are having problems with the 7900 series doing this or something similar and b ) while it's not optimal for me to run it with the psu I have it should be sufficient ( I don't think it's the root of the problem anyway). It looks like these cards are having LOTS of defects. Go search for 7950 or 7900 freezing and you'll see there are page after page of people with this or a similar graphics problem.

P to answer your question no I only have problems when in game. And it's with any game not just COD.

Junkie

Send it back!!

I found this which may help: http://www.evga.com/community/messageboard...?TOPIC_ID=16463

...the first post is really good, but a lot of the follow-up ones are good too. Notice that a few posts down, a guy gives a link to how to make sure your power supply is good enough for this setup. Lots of good info.

Hey I have an idea... buy a Mac!

Maybe a Big-Mac, lol.

To me, buying a Mac has too much potential of buying a Beta VCR instead of a VHS back in the day. lol. They are ok now, but who knows in a couple of years.

Re-install all ur programs.....

Hi Geno,

One thing you could try is to UNDERclock the videocard by around 10%. The small performance hit might be worth the stability. You will need to download the Coolbits program and then just use the sliders to move down both memory and GPU clock frequencies by the same percentage.

I've done this in the past with unstable computers and it made a world of difference. In some cases it took only a 5% reduction to make a system absolutely stable.

Catch me on vent if you need help with Coolbits.

Old Man Mike

Mike I have seen where that can help fix the problem but there's something about that that gripes me. I actually paid more to get the card with the higher speeds. So if the only way to get it to work correctly is to essentially make it a less expensive card the manufacture should either a) fix the problem as they advertised the card ran at that speed with stability or b ) issue refunds so that you can buy one from a manufacture who can make one stable....... but should I not be able to get the manufacture to live up to their end of the bargain I will try this.

Junkie

Here's the thing. All components have a range of tolerance. Things can stack up either in your favor or aginst you. Your system memory might run a little hot on the leading edge of the clock while the GPU might favor the trailing edge. System designers try to design their parts to ride in the center but there is always variation. A company supplied overclocked card is really just the standard card screened as having more margin than the average. So you are getting a better card than a standard card. If the system becomes stable with a little underclocking, then I bet it will still be faster than a standard card.

By the way, you can try one more thing. If you have two sticks of system memory, you can swap the two and possibly improve the stability. Again, this is trying to improve the stackup of variations so that they are not all working against the fastest performance. Also, you might consider underclocking the CPU instead of the Video (even though I think it is more likely that video underclocking will do better). If CPU underclockings works, then there will probably be almost no impact to the gaming performance.

Old Man Mike

good thing i bought ati lol umm there is a 700w psu at tiger direct for 94$

Something to consider........is your video sharing interrupts with anything else? If so, re-assign IRQ's so the video is the only component on that interrupt. Sometimes Windows likes to share interrupts with video and your LAN. When it does that it competes for resources and causes problems.

Only takes a second to check........start, all programs, accessories, system tools, system information, use dropdown menu from hardware resources, then click IRQs. Video is usually IRQ 16 ( but it can be assigned another IRQ) and it should be the only component on that IRQ.

If not, we can re-assign them.

i checked my irq's the way you said sabot and along with my video card on 16 i have two usb universal host controllers on 16 as well. is this bad?

No sir, not bad, as long as you are not having any issues. Are all your usb ports in use? If so and you are not having problems, then you are fine. The problems occur when there are multiple components demanding more resources than are available at a particular time. You are probably OK!

Hell looks like half my computer is on irq 16 along with my video card.

here they are. Let me know which one's are ok to switch.

IRQ 16 Intel® P965/G965 PCI Express Root Port – 29A1 OK
IRQ 16 NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GT OK
IRQ 16 Intel® ICH8 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 2834 OK
IRQ 16 Intel® ICH8 Family PCI Express Root Port 1 - 283F OK
IRQ 16 Intel® ICH8 Family PCI Express Root Port 5 - 2847 OK
IRQ 16 Marvell Yukon 88E8053 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller OK


Junkie

I figured as much, lol.
Are you familiar with your BIOS? I hope you are, and since you built the machine I'm confident you have been in there a few times.

Do you remember a setting in your bios that says "plug and play OS -yes no"? Most likely your setting for this would be "yes" as Windows is a plug and play OS. However, when you say "yes" this allows Windows to assign interrupts and it get lazy sometimes.
Go into your bios and say "No".
This forces the Bios to set the IRQ's and it should re-assign your interrupts to lessen the burden on IRQ 16. The culprit here, as I see it, is the Marvell Yukon Ethernet controller. Once you re-set your bios to "NO" restart and then go check the IRQ's again. Hopefully, we will see a re-assignment of the ethernet controller to another IRQ (God forbid it gets assigned to sound) and let me know.

(Incidentally, you can probably surf the net all day, but as soon as you start a game BAM! you have probs. The reason is the ethernet controller and video are sharing that interrupt with no problem, but as the video starts using more resources as does the internet connection because games are demanding, your resources become depleted on that IRQ and something has to give.)

Actually my BIOS has nothing like this. The only reference to IRQ has to do with PCI1 2 and 3 which it only allows me to change it to 1-15.... I need to update the BIOS anyway so after I do that perhaps I'll get different options.

Junkie

Ok, I had another thought about this. I was trying to think when this happened first and what were the conditions at the time. The first time this happened was right after our match with TI and I downloaded and installed seismovision to watch my demo. I tried to watch the demo and it crashed. I went to bed and gave up. From then on is when I've had the problems. I have uninstalled that program and maybe that is the culprit. I will update later.

Junkie