3D gaming crashes my sons PC

[CougarsLair]

Not sure I should post this here in in Tech Support so apologies if its in the wrong section.

Anyway heres the situation.

Spec:
Athlon XP2600+
MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR
512Mb RAM
400W PSU

The above are all new components

Geforce 3 Ti4200 (Creative) - currently with 53.03 drivers
Hitachi 120Gb HD

Win XP Pro SP1

Heres the problem:

Whenever my son plays any 3D games (eg Star Wars Knights of the Republic) his system locks up after a random period of time.
Also the same happens if we try benchmarking with 3DMark2001SE - it usually locks up at the high polygon count test (although if selected on its own these tests sometimes work!).

We have run the burn-in tests of Sysoft Sandra Pro and it ran the tests for over 2 hrs without a lockup. The system appears stable except for the 3D gaming problem.

Its driving us nuts

- we have tried an old Geforrce 2 MX card with the same problem. Tried different driver versions with no change. (Incidentally we now have the Geforce 3 running in my old Abit KT7a/Duron system and its happy as anything).

Could it be the motherboard?? Ive got the latest drivers from the MSI site for the board but its still not happy playing 3D games.


Can anybody help????

 

[Matthias99]

It sounds like it's gotta be the MB, RAM, or CPU (since the video card seems fine, and the system still does it with another card in there).

Try running memtest86 to check your memory (do the "full" tests if the standard ones don't turn anything up), and try running Prime95's torture test for a while to see if that uncovers anything. If you have multiple sticks of memory, you might want to try them one at a time to see if the problem goes away.

 

[CougarsLair]

The RAM is one stick - I havent run memtest yet so I'll have to try that and Id forgotten about Prime95 so if I can find it Ill try that as well.

This is my sons xmas upgrade and weve been fighting with his sytem since xmas day - very frustrated I can tell you.

 

[Viper96720]

What speed is the ram rated for and what kind is it? Brand or type of chips on the module. I think it's probably a memory problem. Since most 3-d game crashes usually are if the
video card is fine. Try slowing down the speed the memory is running at with the memory dividers. Set memory to use spd. The cpu fsb should be 166. Then try using the fsb/dram
ratio it should be 1:1 if the memory is rated right. Otherwise try the 4:5 ratio then when cpu fsb is 166mhz the memory will be 133mhz.

 

[Camofrog]

is this only Star-wars Knights of the old republic that you are having problems with ?? I have a G4FX5600 and i had a couple of lock-ups in that game to. i found if you go into advanced graphics settings and disable uh...... i m not at my comp and now i cant remember whats its called.......its a graphics setting second from the bottom something about a filter ?,.........anyway i will look when i get home and tell you for sure.
after i disabled that it dids fine, before i had al kinds of graphic color errors and crashes.... weird ... maybe it has to do with the 53.03 drivers

 

[Evdawg]

Try new ram.... i had that problem (not with that game). Bought new cpu and mobo and had the same ram, but Asus is picky about ram.. so i had problems. And i hear ram can go bad, just cause. Try a new stick of ram first... eliminate one problem at a time

 

[DAPUNISHER]

First, up the ram voltage in the bios a notch and if the bios allows it manually set the memory to 100% and conservative timings. You can try it in slot 2 also. Make certain you don't have a heating problem either by monitoring temps while p95TT or other heavy load is running. You can load the optimized default bios values and then make the suggested bios tweaks if needed too.

 

[Jeff7181]

Sounds like a heat issue if tests run ok by themselves, but crash after other tests have been running for a while.

 

[randumb]

Are you only having problems with one game (KOTOR) or a select few? This could be a driver issue rather than a hardware issue. The new 53.03 drivers have some problems with games, for example my Ti4200 would lock up in Enemy Territory. The problem was fixed by reverting back to old 4x.xx drivers.

 

[BFG10K]

Do you have the latest BIOS and chipset drivers for your system?

 

[CougarsLair]

Update:

Still having same probelms:-

Updated to latest bios and board drivers.
Have tried different versions of Detonators.
Tried a Geforce4 Ti4200 - still locked up.
Have tried some PC2100 RAM that has worked without problem in another system (still locked up)
Its any 3D game that locks up.
3DMark2001Se may run through the tests once if Im lucky at other times it locks up - usually on the high polygon tests.
System temps are all fine.
Let memtest run for 6hrs withour errors showing.
SiSoft Sandra burn in tests completed without problem.
Bios settings put at default.

I know the gfx cards are okay as they work perfectly well in other systems.

Doh, this is making me insane in frustration.... Could it be the motherboard itself?

BTW - the system did lockup once when NOT playing a game or running a 3D prog but it hasnt happened since.

HELP........

 

[MDE]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181
Sounds like a heat issue if tests run ok by themselves, but crash after other tests have been running for a while.

Exactly my thoughts. How is the case ventilation and the CPU temperature?

 

[MichaelZ]

to answer your question, it could be the motherboard itself.

my motherboard has recently developed a weird problem of not being able to handle more than 512MB of ram. if i were to put in my second stick of 512MB of ram, it would crash after a while. i have put that 512MB into my spare rig and it works fine. so i've determined that it's not a ram problem but a motherboard problem.

i also experienced some of the symptoms u mentioned such as running 3Dmark and often it isn't able to complete all the tests.

to monkeydriver, perhaps you should read his reply. all systems temps are fine.

 

[MDE]

Originally posted by: i82lazyboy

to monkeydriver, perhaps you should read his reply. all systems temps are fine.

Perhaps what fine is to one person is scorching hot to another. All I was saying is that those symptoms directly correlate with a heat problem. I'm just curious as to what the actual temperatures are. Also, please spell my name correctly .

 

[ejvantage]

In Bios if there is an option to disable "Fastwrites" for you video card, try that.

In Bios try messing with agp speed, if it's set to 4X lower it to 2X.

In Bios try setting AGP memory to different settings ( 1/2 , 1/4 , 3/4 the ammount of Ram you have).

Hope you get this fixed,
EJ

 

[easystreet]

Try turning off the onboard sound and see what happens.

 

[yhelothar]

I think it's your motherboard. The AGP Controller on your northbridge may be getting too hot. This once happened to me when my northbridge cooler fell off.

 

[robcy]

Originally posted by: CougarsLair
Update:

Still having same probelms:-

Updated to latest bios and board drivers.
Have tried different versions of Detonators.
Tried a Geforce4 Ti4200 - still locked up.
Have tried some PC2100 RAM that has worked without problem in another system (still locked up)
Its any 3D game that locks up.
3DMark2001Se may run through the tests once if Im lucky at other times it locks up - usually on the high polygon tests.
System temps are all fine.
Let memtest run for 6hrs withour errors showing.
SiSoft Sandra burn in tests completed without problem.
Bios settings put at default.

I know the gfx cards are okay as they work perfectly well in other systems.

Doh, this is making me insane in frustration.... Could it be the motherboard itself?

BTW - the system did lockup once when NOT playing a game or running a 3D prog but it hasnt happened since.

HELP........

Open your case point a house fan at it, and try again. If it works fine, I got a feeling that its the mem on the Vid Card. It might run fine on a slower system, but your new faster machine is pushing a lot more information towards it. I had a similar problem with my 9700PRO when I upgraded from a 1600+ to a 2600+, everything else was the same yet it would not pass a 3dmark01 vertex shader test. I finally narrowed it down to the mem on the vid card. A new case fan blowing on it solved the problem. The odd part was that the case temp only went up 1c with the new CPU, but with the 1600+ they where warm to the touch, and with the 2600+ they could be used to remove finger prints. Hope this helps.