AntiMoronic

..so not a tone or sound or beep from within the actual case. It comes out of the speakers when they're turned on.

It forces a hard reset, everything locks up.

This only happens with a few games:

crysis
world in conflict
oblivion

Yet my computer works fine up until the crash and I can play, with no lag, on high settings:

far cry 2
fallout 3

..any ideas?

Some specs:

9600gt 512mb
sb live 5.1
quad core
600w psu

Now, I can't actually produce this crash on the desktop with some pretty heavy stress tests. For example, I ran 3 versions of memtest86 and assigned each a different core, made them all use my ram, THEN at the same time, I ran furmark, both on heat test and fps test. Eventually, I had 75% cpu usage, constant 85 temp on gpu, 180 vram usage, 3 cpu cores all 100%, total commit charge of about 2000mb

...yet crysis doesn't even use half of that and it crashes. That tells me it isn't a psu issue or an overheating issue. Maybe soundcard issue, I don't know...is there any other diagnostics I can do which may reveal what this is?

Btw, updated all drivers and uninstalled properly first.

I'm getting a new soundcard in a couple of days and I'm just hoping to god this fixes it. The whole point in me buying this comp was to play crysis, and I can't even do that.

ANY help is greatly appreciated.

RockmasteR

hello and welcome to TSF
the Sound Blaster Live you have, is it old?
try to disable it and use the motherboard built-in sound card
sometimes Soundblaster drivers could conflict with Nvidia drivers creating a mess

AntiMoronic

Hi! Yeh, it is old, weird thing is, I got this sound card to fix the issue I had as it was still happening with on board sound - which is VIA High Definition Audio btw.

They are both installed on my comp, like in hardware driver settings - could that be conflicting? Should I completely uninstall VIA HDA?

Thanks for the response and warm welcome! I really really hope I can determine what the issue is.

RockmasteR

you have to disable the SB live card
go to the Device Manager, right click on the SB driver and select disable

AntiMoronic

Hi Rockmaster, some developments here.

I disabled the pci soundcard and uninstalled the drivers, so was just using VIA HDA. STILL crashed BUT this time no high pitch sound coming out of the speakers.

So I plugged in my speakers to the pci card, and it was indeed coming out of the 'front' port (green) of the pci card.

I removed the pci card completely as maybe it was causing issues with the mb, but still crashed, only no sound any more when it does.

Any ideas what this might indicate? Maybe a mb issue?

Thanks for your help.

AntiMoronic

Hmmm...I just found out my inno3d was overclocked from the stock speeds, so I set it to the stock speeds using rivatuner and turned up the fan to 100% AND opened my case and had a fan at it.

Crysis didn't crash for about an hour, and I actually thought I'd fixed it. So, guess it must overheating. Just bought a new sound card and a zelman gpu cooler, so will let you know.

Thanks for you help so far. Would still appreciate your input, as it has crashed at 64c when this time I had it at 69c for an extended time and it didn't crash for ages.. Not even sure anymore.

RockmasteR

yes, please keep me posted
some motherboards just doesn't handle any Overclocking even if the video card handles it
also I just noticed your PSU
it's 600W does it have any brand at all?
a 9600 GT must be run under a 650 W high quality Power Supply like the Corsair
especially if you are overclocking it
so I strongly recommend that you get this power supply:
Corsair 650W:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...sair%20650%20W

AntiMoronic

Hi Rockmaster, appreciate your help with this. Sadly, yeh, the psu is a no-name one, BUT I did buy this and it still had the same issue:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/..._ya_oh_product

Thoughts? is ocz a good make...also, I live in the uk so it's a pain ordering from newegg.com. However, I found this:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/850W-...ProductSupport

Thoughts on that. Says it has 4 x 25a, 12v rails. I know that is more than enough rails, but what about the amp, is that enough for a 9600gt?

Thanks again.

Mcninjaguy

This PSU is perfectly fine for a 9600 GT.

Corsair 650w
£71.02

RockmasteR

don't trust a PSU with multiple rails
they never adds up
Corsair has a single +12V with 62A

you can get it from here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsair-Powe...7002679&sr=1-1

about the OCZ didn't find any technical info about the Amps
what is the Amps under the +12V?

AntiMoronic

OCZ I had was 18a I believe. Thanks for the suggestions, loud and clear, I'll stay away from the multi-rails.

I took the plunge, I bought the 650w Mcninjaguy suggested above. Only reason I didn't get the one from amazon was because of some of the reviews. Some people saying they experienced weird squeeling and one person had the psu die out on him after 2 months.

So I bought a new sound card (£40), gpu cooler (£30) and a new psu (£80) giving me a running total of a very depressing £150 crazy weekend spending spree.

I really do hope this is the end of my computer woes with these *select* games. All I can upgrade now is the ram, cpu, motherboard and gpu, which will no doubt prompt upgrades of the psu.

Once I have everything up by the end of next week will let you know! Will try one component at a time so if it does fix it, I know exactly what did.

Wonderful, just wasted £125 on a very good 750w corsair psu, 62a on single 12v rail and it STILL locks up my comp on these games.

I'm getting my new gpu cooler and soundcard soon so will be able to rule that out. But really, I just can't afford to spend this amount of money on a stupid stupid problem like this.

Does anyone have ANY suggestions on how I can debug this?

Thanks.

Tumbleweed36

Please list your temps and voltages from the BIOS. Do not use any other program for this but the bios. Post them back here.

AntiMoronic

Hi, here are the temps and volts and some other relevant things:

Vcore 1.216v
Vdimm 1.888v
Vcc5v 5.094

cpu temp 35c

fan speed 2678rpm
smart fan control off

dram frequency auto
dram timing auto
acpi suspend type s1
allocate IRQ to pci vga - yes

..and some notes:

cpu temps are VERY good, I have a zalman fan and arctic silver thermal paste. Max they go is 50c and that's under VERY HIGH load or a long time.

gpu tends to reach about 80 during hig load, but only crashes within the games mentioned above, never on desktop. In fact, I CAN'T make it crash on the desktop, no matter how much I stress my comp.

psu is 750w corsair with 62a on the single rail. More than enough for the gpu, cpu fans, and 1 sata.

I have 2x 1gb matching ram (kingston).

If there is anything in cpu-z or everest which may reveal something please let me know and I'll detail it here.

I just don't know how to debug this any more.

Thanks.

AntiMoronic

More news. Just tested each stick of ram on their own in different slots.

Crysis crashed after about 30 seconds with only 1 stick of 1gb ram.

On 2gb, it took about 5-10 min.

Does that indicate anything?

Tumbleweed36

In the BIOS, list the +12 rail voltages.

PSU is a great one, so don't worry about that if the voltages are O.K. in the bios.

Tumbleweed36

BTW, when you worked with the ram and it crashed with one stick, did you swap that one out and try the other stick alone? If not, do that and see what the results are. (note: I see you said you did that) Did you check your manual to see which slot to try one stick alone in, that does make a difference some times if you don't use the motherboard manufacturer's recommendation and use the right slot.

I know it is unusual, but some times even a matched pair doesn't play nice together so you might have one stick not playing nice.

AntiMoronic

Hi Tumbleweed. Yeh I used both sticks separately and in different slots. It did crash a LOT faster.

Can't find any info on the 12v in the bios. I checked *every* screen and setting.

Does it indicate anything in that the pci slot outputs a constant tone when it crashes?

AntiMoronic

This is NOT a double-post (mods). If you feel it is, please tell me before deleting or banning me or whatever. Just thought this warranted a thread on it's own.

I am so out of depth, I really don't want to screw anything up.

Where do I get the bios files from? Are they the motherboard drivers? Do I just boot with those? Am I looking for the chipset drivers?

I know there are tons of tutorials on this, but you know what, I rather not screw my entire system up on the off-chance I get it right, because I probably won't.

Apparently, the chipset is ECS P4M900(-M2) LGA775.

http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Dow...nuID=6&LanID=8

I can see the exact BIOS I have right now, same release date, everything. Do I still need to update?

I'm having some serious crashing issues during some games and I'm hoping maybe this will help.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

dai

check the voltage range of the kingston ram on their web site and see if you have scope to lift it

dai

you can only update it if it has a newer bios listed and you need to follow their instructions for flashing a new bios

if it does not list a fix for your problem you usually don't update

this is related directly to your other thread so i will merge it

please read the forum rules