E6600 @ 3.4Ghz/3.6Ghz Prime Stable but crashes in Game

Andrew G

Andrew G

Andrew G

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Joined
28 May 2007
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Location
Lakeside, Essex
HI Guys and Girls,

I have the following spec. for the last two years expect the Graphics card which replaced my 8800GTX which failed after 13 months.

C2D E6600 B2
MSI P6N (680i SLI)
Crucial Ballistix (800Mhz)
Cossair HX 620W
Zotac 260 Maxxcore "216"

Been debating if I should splash some cash on a H50 with E8400/8600 and to that end I thought I would read up on over clocking to see what I could out of my current rig and if I damaged it then I would put the above plan into action.

I have managed to get 3.6Ghz Prime stable @ 60/61 oC under load (4 hours). However in game, namely CoD MW2 the game crashes with frozen screen and a 2 second sound segment repeating over and over. I can Ctrl+Alt+Del and end process on the IWmp.exe to get back to the desktop (not end task). I do get some "lag" in game before this happens, this could be graphics lag rather than connection lag? PSU is powerful enough? Drivers are up to date but it still happens. Any ideas please guys and girls.

I followed this guide http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/747/747606p1.html which I found doing a search on this forum. CPU Core: 1.45V, CPU FSB: 1.5V, nForce SPP: 1.50V.
 
Does this problem occur with the system reset to stock?

i.e is it overclocked related for sure or could it be faulty hardware?

If it's fine at stock but crashes your game when overclocked then you may need a bit more Northbridge voltage or maybe more vCore?

I know that if your Intel® Core™2 Duo E6600 is overclocked to 3.6GHz you must be running 400MHz-FSB . . .so how is your memory setup? [1:1] sync or?

Never used an nvidia 680i SLI chipset before so I'm not sure how much help I can be! :p
 
Andrewg, ive had issues with mw2 freezing as well, ive tried it with my i7 at 4ghz, and at stock, ive tried different sound/graphics drivers, updated direct x ,(im on win 7) ive tested my gtx 280 graphics card with 3d mark 06 and furmark on multiple runs, any enlightrnment you get ill look forward to seeing mate.
 
Big.Wayne said:
Does this problem occur with the system reset to stock?

i.e is it overclocked related for sure or could it be faulty hardware?

If it's fine at stock but crashes your game when overclocked then you may need a bit more Northbridge voltage or maybe more vCore?

I know that if your Intel® Core™2 Duo E6600 is overclocked to 3.6GHz you must be running 400MHz-FSB . . .so how is your memory setup? [1:1] sync or?

Never used an nvidia 680i SLI chipset before so I'm not sure how much help I can be! :p
Click to expand...

When I put it back to stock it does go away (includes auto volts in bios from manual settings), however my voltages are fairly high as per the guide I hadn't started reducing them to find the unstable point then going back one reduction to get reduced heat, Vcore 1.45 with droop CpuID reports 1.425. Although I don't believe heat is a problem case is an Antec 900 with all fans on medium, top blow hole on high, I have a ninja Scythe heat sink with fan on front and then a case fan almost right behind it. I dusted the case out with air compressor and have lapped the cpu and heat sink bottom about 18 months ago and applied Arctic Silver as per website over the cores then applied heat sink with 1/4 turn twists to reduce air bubbles again as per website. Memory is unlinked and actually runs at about 794Mhz when at 3.4Ghz

On the flip side of this failing to run CoD MW2 stable (can play 3, 4 maps then it will fail to load new map and hang) I can play my other fav. game Company of Hero's for hours with no problems what so ever. I do remember CoDMW having sound card driver issues when it 1st came out which took a few months for new drivers to be released to solve these issues. The other problem I now have is it may be causing Hard drive corruption since I have had to press the case restart button a few times because I was unable to recover the fault back into windows, once the system restarted I some times get the pop-up your system has recovered from a serious error and I now have an extended period of time where nothing is happening then you hear the hard drive kick in also a long time with just the desktop back ground and no icons for 5/6 seconds then it will load. I will have to get WD life tools and test the drive I guess to rule out it being the cause and probably for the effect of the system being unstable.
 
well it's got worse crashing every few maps now its insane ran hard drive test, memory test no graphics artefacts and nothing reports as wrong. This is with everything back at stock. PSU on the way out?
 
Prime95 is a good test of stability but it's a whole different ball game when a high-end graphics card is thrown into the equation, more heat pumped into the case, higher power demand on the PSU, it stresses everything a lot more than just running Prime95 when the GPU is sitting idle.
 
MW2 is the most demanding game I have ever ran on my rig, beating even Crysis.

The system hits 65c easily and Its fully water cooled.

I have not had any crashes though although I have played it for the most part of 2 hours straight and it was toasty!

The main problem I found was my northbridge temps were into the 60's which will cause instability over long periods of time.
 
There seems to be quite a few people having this problem with MW2..

Does it only happen with MW2, or are other games affected?
 
It got that bad I decided to do a full reinstall, running silky smooth so far (18:00 touch wood)

It is, it was Prime Stable, memtest 88 with zero errors, passed WD diag DOS tool without errors, so i thought it best to write zero's to the HD with WD tool and start again.

As OP it only happened with MW2, could play CoH for hours without any problems (play mostly custom made maps with dutch mate take 1-2hours to win). Temps are high 20's low 30's idle and the graphic card is 45 0c

And as of typing this I have just crashed 1st time @ 20:50 from a clean install.

NB:

I get some what looks like connection lag but I am thinking more PSU/Grpahics now.
 
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I have downed the rez on my 24" screen from 1920 x 1080 to 1024 x 768 and its not locked up yet, more testing to come though, would this be over heating/broken graphics card or psu not supplying enough juice?
 
I'd say if the system is totally rock solid while running at stocks speeds but crashed when you use the copy & paste overclock there is an 89% probability the problem lay with incorrect BIOS settings . . .

I'd reset the system back to stock and start overclocking it slowly but surely giving plenty of time in between speed bumps for gaming and stability checks, sooner or later you will hit the trouble-spot and will be in a better position to understand how to fix it!
 
Yeh id have to agree with wayne too, its annoying to have to do, but will help in the long run, plus u learn more too, but it is tedious to do. But we have all been there before.
 
thanks for the input guys but its happening at total stock system now (since post #4), but 100% only with CoDMW2 can play Company of Hero's all day long no problems.

100% from cold boot up, system will run ok for 2/3 maps then It will start with lumpy graphics akin to connection lag but no one else has it, next screen will freeze on current frame and a 2 second segment of sound will repeat over and over for a good 15/20 seconds (both game and vent), the game sound will continue to repeat but vent will carry on as normal and I can talk to my fellow fraggers. I Ctrl+Alt+Del and in apps tab I have CoDMW2 not responding however I cannot end task here as nothing happens, only choice to to end the process in the process tab, screen can then go black for 10 seconds the game will end. Computer will opperate as normal, although i always do a restart just in case. This is at 1920x1080 AA off, but things like ragroll on, bulllet marks on, and texture, detail on high.

I have just downed this to everything low or off and 1024 x 768 and not crashed yet, but not enough time played to say its a fix, Will play some more tomorrow and see what the score is
 
been gaming on lower res. for a few hours now and nothing has happened however i would much prefer to be gaming at full res on the 24" screen. I think its either the graphics card or the PSU failing but I don't have spares to test so before I buy new anyone have any thoughts or programs I could run to narrow down my diag. ?
 
Just in case someone is following this thread, it seems the RAM was the problem, I took a stick of 2gig ram (Kingston Hyper) from my Win7 media box and I have not crashed since although the old RAM (Crucial Ballistix) passes memtest88 with zero errors and is currently in my media box and had no faults with it, although no 3D game rendering is done.

The ram when the system was over clocked was running unlinked as per the guide mentioned above and at 3.4 and 3.6 actually below 800Mhz, I had read the overclocking guide thread before and i guess i have either faulty RAM that memtest88 cannot detect or more likely I have found a black hole in the 680SLI "clockability" (it's not a word but it might catch on) it's still strange how that RAM steadfastly refuses to run with CoDMW2 but it fine with all other tasks and now powers my media box happily. Its up there with 8 hotdogs in a jar but only 6 hotdog rolls in a pack.
 
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I have a 650i SLI board (asus P5Ne-SLI) so its similar to yours, and I think the problem is the northbridge. It gets really hot, and the extra heat made by the Gfx card and MW2 or other games stressing the system to its fullest causes it to get even hotter.

I think its also gets more stressed the more ram slots you use.
 
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