Got a MSI 7850 twin frz III OC about a week or two ago (bought from OCUK) and for some reason at completely random times, the PC will lock up with the audio going wonky (not even ctrl+alt+delete works).

When I say it happens at random, it really is random, can be fine for hours and then freeze, restart system, 5 minutes later, it happens again, restart and 5-15 minutes later, it happens again or it won't happen for another few hours or even a day.

So far the games, which it has happened in, are the following:

- far cry 3
- COD black ops II

I will play some other games to see if it happens again (have been playing red faction Armageddon and crysis 2 for a good amount and it hasn't happened with them, yet.......). Although never had this issue with my 4850 512MB in far cry 3..........

It hasn't happened at all yet with just browsing or watching videos (1080P blu ray MKV's etc.)

At first, I thought it might be the stock OC so dropped it from 900Mhz to 860MHz with MSI afterburner, still happened, so I did a complete windows 7 (64 bit ultimate version) reinstall yesterday thinking it might be drivers/software but is still happening so now I am left wondering if it might be my PSU or possibly just a faulty GPU? As I didn't have this problem at all with my 4850 512MB GPU.

PSU - antec EW 500W, is around 5 years old, pic below of the amps etc.


CPU - i5 750 stock
RAM - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-290-CS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517 @ stock speeds
MB - http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3164#ov

Play games at 1080P.

Have got the latest stable ATI drivers/CCC installed and all the windows updates too.

Temperatures are all good, CPU cores don't go above 50, GPU doesn't go above 60 and hard drives don't go above 26 at load.

So, which is it:

PSU
GPU faulty
Just the games fault

Or something else?


Thanks in advance for any help/advice

I believe others with your mobo have had the same problem and an update to the latest BIOS sorted that issue out.

Definitely not the games.

As Greg says try a BIOS update for your board and make sure you've got the latest chipset drivers.

Also try bumping the voltage up on your card (if the above doesn't solve it). You've got loads and loads of headroom with GPU temps of only ~60c

I have got the latest BIOS update. I did a reflash of the latest one (F9) and it reset the SATA control mode to IDE (have a SSD so it needs to be AHCI), which is mainly why I did a fresh install of windows 7


How do I bump the voltage of the GPU up? (no experience of overclocking etc. except the sliders on MSI afterburner )

EDIT:

and yup I have the latest chipset drivers.

EDIT:

Just seen that afterburner has voltage controls What exactly do I do? How much should I up it by? Are you guys sure that my PSU will be up to the task? (baring in mind it is rather old now)

Just add 25mv to the core.
Your PSU aint bad, I'm not a fan of multi rail designs but that GPU wont overload the second rail...iirc the 7850 <120w.

Hmm, I went to unlock the voltage control in MSI afterburner but it still won't let me do anything



EDIT:

And graphics overdrive is disabled in CCC.

EDIT:

Having a google about the above issue and it appears that MSI afterburner doesn't support the core voltage control for MSI twin frzr models

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18442447

http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=161484.50

Is there anything else I can do then?

If I where to drop the overclock for core and memory clock, would that stop the random locking up? And if so, what values should I set it to? (I don't mind a 5 FPS or so drop if it stops this annoying issue)

My TF3 and TF4 models both have full voltage control via MSI AB.

Are you sure you've checked the box "unlock voltage control" in the settings tab?

Yup 100% sure, "unlock voltage control" and "unlock voltage monitoring" boxes are ticked. Did the restart of afterburner too.

YOu did add the little overclocking info to the afterburner.ini file right ? lol

NVM

Found a guide:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=338906

EDIT:

Nope, nothing changes

You need to look at pc memory also ,chances are its that that needs a voltage bump,card might be fine

That kind of lockup sounds more like CPU/RAM related to me. Graphics issues usually only cause me to crash to desktop. I would run memtest and make sure CPU is 110% stable.

Here is my RAM info.



EDIT:

Ok, I will run memtest later and see if any errors are brought up.

Hmm, I may have found my problem.........

Noticed when I was playing far cry 3 that my RAM usage was very high even when I closed far cry 3 it still remains extremely high, so if I where to launch far cry 3 again and after so many minutes I am betting that the PC will lock up due to lack of RAM, right? (going to try that out now).

Unfortunately whatever is using up all the memory is not showing in task manager... any ideas?

can you list all your components? its not lack of memory usage but a lot of it is used/stressed so if its not stable it can cause lockups in games,if it was gpu memory its usually followed by a random coloured screen with lines down it

with 8gb of memory anywhere from 1.5v-1.65v dram and maybe 1.06-1.08v cpu vtt or vccio

if its x58 board then 1.32v+ imc or qpi/vtt voltage

a lot of program data can be in memory under cached,just means its in storage in memory

GPU - MSI 7850 twin frz III OC 2GB
PSU - antec EW 500W, is around 5 years old, pic below of the amps etc.


CPU - i5 750 stock
RAM - Corsair XMS 3 8GB (2x4GB) @ 1333MHz
MB - GA-P55-UD3
OS - windows 7 64 bit ultimate

1x WD green 500GB drive used for storage
1x 2TB WD green drive used for storage
1x samsung F3 used for storage, downloads and game installations (split into 3 partitions for each task)
1x crucial M4 128GB drive with 000F firmware used for OS and programs

forgive me i am blind at times

if its p55 board then you need to look at the qpi/vtt voltage,you can try with between 1.25-1.32v or enable x.m.p memory profile,that ram supports x.m.p

No worries


Just took a couple of photos of BIOS stuff including the qpi voltage



Once I enable the XMP profile, do I need to do anything else, just enable and save settings, reboot? Will my CPU clock speed or anything else be affected?

no it wont affect cpu

x.m.p is just a memory profile it sets up the timings/speed and ram voltages for you,if its still unstable you can try manual voltages but try xmp first

Ok thanks. I will give the XMP profile setting a shot tomorrow and report back.

Need to get some sleep now, again thanks for the help