Good day, HardwareAnalysis community =)


Here's your puzzle for the day:

Not that long ago (about a month), I have purchased brand new BFG Geforce 6800 GT OC AGP video card and as soon as I've installed it, everything worked fine for a day or two, but games were running a little slow. With my G15 keyboard I noticed that for example, BF2 utilized my RAM 100%. At that time I had one stick of 256MB DDR266 and one of 256Mb DDR333 (totaling 512MB but running at 266MHz!).
*Note - Those 512MB were supplied 2.7V instead of 2.5(default).
So I decided to upgrade my RAM and threw in another stick of 512MB DDR333 totaling to 1GB but still DDR266 (because the slowest speed rules the whole operation). Games ran a little faster but that's when I started experiencing lockups and freezes. After playing a game for about 5-10 minutes, it crashed and rebooted the system. So I though maybe DDR266 is the cause. Took it out and was left with 756MB of DDR333. The problem still remained. Then I’ve read somewhere to try leaving only ONE stick (due to different latency times). So I was left with 512MB DDR333. Games didn't freeze anymore but still one stick of 512MB was not enough to load all the textures. So the next thing I did was I bought 1GB of DDR400 (its downward compatible) and replaced my 512MB stick. Wohoo! Games ran smooth and didn't freeze. At that time my specs were:
CPU 2.8GHz running at 3GHz with 1.7V and 1GB DDR400 at 2.7V
The system was stable for about two weeks. I was the happiest person in the world...
Until 3 days ago.
I loaded up BF2 again, and it said that my video settings have been change - optimizing for new settings... I though like ok... fine, as long as you will let me play... But once the game loaded, the textures weren't rendered correctly, shading wasn't calculated right, I smelled something fishy... And viola... comp restarted again. When I booted back to Windows again, I've noticed that for some reason (!) my video driver (NForce) have been changed from 81.98 back to 67.15 or something... !!! wow... how could that happen?
But ok, so I went back to safe mode and installed 81.98 back again. Next time I rebooted, I was not able to log in to Windows. It freezes at the loading screen.
I went back to safe mode with a though of maybe to restore to an earlier restore point, but safe mode froze before I could open the Windows restore console.
On my other computer I began doing a research, and here (hardwareanalysis) I found that some people had similar problems but with different hardware specs. So I've read some of the advices like if my PSU supplies enough current (well yes, since the system was stable for 2 weeks), if I have overheating problem (not really, since again, it was working fine for these two weeks and before the new video card, it worked for ages.. lol). At the beginning (2.5 weeks prior) when my system didn’t work, I even tried underclocking my video card (from 370:1000 to 300:900) no results, as well as resetted my CPU back to 2.8GHz. - same thing. But then I found that the problem was in RAM somehow. But now I tried replacing the RAM stick to every one of the three slots, same thing. Resetted the voltages back to defaults (CPU: 1.5V, DDR: 2.5V) – no luck. I doubt that it is a video card’s problem because as I said before, I was able to play any game at max resolution with no problem. I tried putting my old Geforce 440MX back in, same thing. And RAM…hmm... well I took my 1x1GB stick to the office and I'm testing it now, and everything works glitchlessly... So RAM is not to blame either... I've updated my ASUS mobo BIOS like 3 times already, I even installed their newest (2004) beta BIOS driver... Though that's when it worked for two weeks.

So please guys, maybe somebody have ANY suggestions I can try out? Because its driving me insane, not to be able to use my system with a high-end GPU. :S


Here are my specs:
CPU: P4 2.8GHz (used to work at overclocked freq of 3.2GHz)
My CPU idle temp is about 40C, case is 30C and GPU about 50C.

PSU wattage is 500W.

Motherboard: ASUS P4S533

RAM: 1x1024MB DDR400 Corsair

Video: BFG Geforce 6800 GT OC 256MB AGP (Fastwrite disabled, AGP Aperture size- tried them all, now at 128MB)

Sound: SB Live 5.1 (but never gave a prob in my life, I know some say that might be the problem)

Maxtor 200GB HDD

OS: WinXP SP1



Will provide any other information regarding the problematic system upon request.




Thanks alot for ANY help guys. =)

I did couple of changes to my system configuration and my system hasn’t froze the whole weekend. For those interested, read below:

- first I replaced my CPU with the same speed CPU (thought maybe my old CPU was overclocked too much and started giving problems). This time though, we are talking about NO overclocking at all.
- then I added my other stick of 512MB DDR333 (totaling to 1.5GB)
- the next step I took was connect my mobo with ANOTHER +12V connector (the one used for IDE devices) although it already had a 4pin square connector plugged in. So now it has the reg 12pin power connector and 2 (!) 4pins... It should be more than enough... lol... but it knows better.
- and finally I've noticed that the separate power connector for the video card has a loose connection (in other words, there is no snapon sound when the 4pin is inserted in the video card, thus resulting in a very loose connection). So I managed to make it stay there and not to come off.
- one last little thing I did was I removed the PCI NIC that was right underneath the video card to the very bottom of the case, maybe resulting in a better airflow (however, videocard temp never said it was overheating before!).

With this kind of configuration my PC was able to work for the whole weekends taking the most serious CPU/Video load. Ran BF2 at 1600*1200 with highest quality, 4x antialiased, 8x antistrophic at 37fps. Heavy CPU loads only increased CPU temp slightly maxing at 50C (before it could easily run at 70C lol)

That's it folks... If it will freeze again, I will post a new msg here.
Thanx for the help...

Would like to add some FYI content.

I pin-pointed the exact reason why my mobo wasn't stable. First of all, all of those changes I was talking about might've extended the stable period for some time, but I do not imagine how that was possible, now that I know what the problem was. And so here it is:
I needed to print something off a couple of days ago, but the printer did not seem to be recognized (USB printer). So I went to the device manager and re-enable each USB bridge/hub my mobo had recognized.
My printer worked and I was happy for that night. The next morning I woke up, the comp was frozen. Now I knew exactly that the cause for that was my PCI USB hub where the printer was connected (note that if printer is connected directly into the mobo's USB port - it gives no problem.). So I took it out and now everything is smooth like never before.

My stupid mobo has only 2 USB ports (onboard) and as I've seen, by adding a hub, it goes nuts.
Somewhere at the back of my mind, I also suspect that it might be the PSU that's not supplying enough power (although it is rated at 500W and all I added was as simple printer), but I don't really want to experiment with another hub.. lol...

So here's something to consider for people with similar freeze/lockup problems.

=)

Adios.

_MD_ said:

Haha... exactly 2 years ago I had a crappy 2.8proc and a max of 1.5GB corsair value added RAM... jeezs... Oh, and btw, this was my very first post... good ol' memories.

So you like going back and looking at your first posts too?!?

Anymore thats what you have to do on HWA because it seems dead all too often.

Mark Curtis said:

exactly

Got any ideas to spice things up?

we need more people!!! need to assign more admins (for each sections for example) HWA needs to be promoted! We need top quality reviewers so that people would come to hwa to read hottest reviews on hottest hardware and while here, of course visit the forum. Need some quality guides written by hwa members, some of the craziest overclocks on the net (for example), and of course, the structure of the messages has to change slightly to allow embedding images in the posts, (smilies are not important, but attachments are) as well as fully loaded html editor, message preview, oh there's lots that can be done to attract more people. More people = popularity of the site. Popularity not only brings even more people, but brings some good $$$ too... And more people means more opinions - thus greater chances of solving someone's problem.

*Applauds*

How about some contests too?

You name it!

contents (with real prizes), polls... but most importantly is the promotion of the site. It needs to be everywhere! And again, high quality reviews/previews/articles/picture-annotated-thoughts/experiments is a key to gain popularity and to gain valuable viewers masses. As a role model let's take major sites like anandtech, tomshardware, extremesystems, etc... I foresee one day HWA will be as popular and on top of every charts, every search query would have HWA as a first entry (closest match)... But for that, we need some hard work. Involvement of members. Maybe even to build a hierarchy of users. People need to be motivated (encouraged) to improve and help HWA community and to do so, they need to be awarded. Reward doesn't have to financial or any sort of materialistic at all. All that people need is... just think about it, would you be motived to go on HWA no matter what if you would be responsible for overclocking section for example?! Not only the responsibility, but power is what motives... Bragging rights, no doubt is of course to satisfy your ego. Take me for example, I'm not claiming for anything, instead, I'm am willing to help HWA by writing reviews, share my OC/hardware experience (as I have the resources to make reviews on the new hardware) as well as general computer knowledge - but for that to be interesting, messages have to have HTML support and image attachment options. As a matter of fact, what if we create a poll of how each can contribute to make HWA a better place? Please share your thoughts.

MD, I agreed with your comments. HWA needs more forum members, which is what makes this site different from all others!

Perhaps you should start a new thread about this, since hiding under the title of your first thread is kind of, uh, hidden.

Dr. Peaceful said:

Good thinking... On it...