What does INSTABILITY look like? Need help.

[teddymines]

When I play UT, sometimes it exits quickly and cleanly with no error messages. It's like I'm playing, then I'm looking at my desktop! Other times I get a general protection fault with some trace message that ends with "game loop" or something to that effect. Is this considered instability? Everything else works fine, and there seems to be no other issues with the system.

My CPU is not overclocked, and is reading around 50C while playing UT. Ambient temp is around 26C.

Epox 8k7a
T-bird 1.4, 266fsb
Thermalright SK-6 with 27cfm sunon
512mb crucial ddr
radeon ddr 64 vivo
windows 98se
directx 8.0
enermax 350 smartpower psu (in antec sk-635)

My first thoughts were to upgrade my video driver, and directx to 8.0a. I just upgraded the miniport drivers to 4.80 and that didn't fix anything. Should I upgrade the BIOS to version 1a12? Any other tips?

<vent>A new computer, great hardware, clean installs...crashes! This is one reason I like consoles for gaming. I should be able to just install and run a game. </vent>

 

[Packet]

The quiting to the desktop sounds like a driver issue. Seams like something happened simmilar driver related when I had a Voodoo3.

The GPF sounds like plain crashing. Do you have the latest version of UT? is your video card overclocked?

50C is pretty high, in general I would want to keep it in the 40s under load. Do you have thermal compound on your processor, applied correctly?

 

[corkyg]

Try completely uninstalling UT. Then see how everything else runs. If it is normal, reinstall UT. If the instability remains, then the problem is somewhere else and further sleuthing is needed.

Sometimes you can fix things in 98SE by starting in SafeMode.

Another thing to check . . . run MSCONFIG, and go to the StartUp tab and UNCHECK everything except the essential items that belong to Windows.

This "instability" could be cause be many things, such as your anti-virus program or others running in background.

 

[FullRoast]

Oops, sorry. I missed the part that your CPU is not overclocked. What I said propbably doesn't apply. But I said...


I have a similar system to yours - Epox 8K7A, 1.4 GHz Tbird overclocked. I recently put in an Athlon XP and was trying to see how fast it would run and stay stable. I check with Prime 95. One of the things I saw was that when the CPU was running a little too fast, when I was playing Unreal, I would drop out of the game, right back to the desktop. There were no crashes or indications of error, I just would cleanly drop out of the game. If I slowed the processor down until I got no errors with Prime95, I would never get kicked out of the game.

I think that you may be seeing some instability. It is hard to say for sure. I would 1) check out your system with Prime 95 and 2) see if you get dropped to the desktop while the processor is running at normal speed.

 

[teddymines]

<< 50C is pretty high, in general I would want to keep it in the 40s under load. Do you have thermal compound on your processor, applied correctly? >>


I applied ASII exactly as directed on their manual. I didn't dare take the heatsink off once applied, I just placed it on flat, gave it a slight downward push to seat it, and applied the clip and fan. Very straightforward.

I would think that running at 50C is in compliance, and that high temps would do more than just exit the game. I am considering another fan in the front of the case to introduce more outside air, possibly ducting some of this air directly onto the hsf.

 

[tomstevens26]

<< I would think that running at 50C is in compliance, and that high temps would do more than just exit the game. I am considering another fan in the front of the case to introduce more outside air, possibly ducting some of this air directly onto the hsf. >>



50C might be a little hotter than "average" but I don't think it is anything that would cause problems. I've got a 1.2 Tbird that seems to hit about 49C when I'm really working it and I've never had a problem. I do agree that the game just dropping back to the desktop would be a directx driver issue.

 

[Mitzi]

I would say this sounds like a software/driver fault as opposed to a hardware problem.

Like the others said, check you have all the latest drivers for your hardware installed and ensure UT is patched to the latest version.

I guess you could also try to disable any Anti Virus programs and anything else you have running in the background when playing UT, just to see if conflict exists there.