Memory not fully detected

Sounds very like the HL2 problem I and a couple of others had, do you get looping sound with the lockups? I'm starting to think all these glitches are related to one cause, only under different manifestationas

Yes, I had the that before, with their stupid windows update program! Have used AFUDOS ever since.

Just thinking on my feet here, but is there an autosave function in Rise of Empires aswell? No idea why this would make a difference, but so far, it's the only thing that has appeared to have a direct effect on one of the problems -namely the one in Oblivion.

I suppose we could also try bumping the mem voltage upto 2.30 from the 2.20 default, don't think it would hurt.

Mem issues are usually isolated by memtest or Prime95 and they're completely stable for me, as I'm sure they'd be for you, but you never know which such demanding games that put extra pressure on the system, think I'm grasping at straws here though.

Mem remap is under the Advanced/Chipset menu, top of the list.
 
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Yea, I thought of the autosave feature as well :p
I think there is one, but only between missions, and not during the game. Options doesn't have an option to let you turn it off though. Doesn't even mention autosave.

Can't use AFUDOS here cause I figured "who uses floppies anymore! you don't need them" and never bothered to get a floppy drive =/ I could get one now, but I hate the idea of buying something lilke that, jsut to fix a bug that shouldn't even be there.

Voltage, I don't want to mess with since I think that would void my warranty? But if defintley fixes the problems, then I might give it a shot in the future.

Yea, memtest was fine for me (only let it run 17 minutes, time to complete 100%), but haven't run Prime 95. Should I? or will it not matter.

Thanks for the note on where it is, i'l keep it in mind and give it a shot if this problem happens again. Thing with it is, I can boot into safe mdoe no problem, but not regular windows. That just makes it more confusing :s

I think that all these problems lie with BIOS (since update began fixing problems (namely the RAM one) and we just need to get along with them until more updates are released. I'l probably have to end up buying a floppy drive just for that since I can't afford to do a complete format everytime I need a BIOS update :p

Thanks for all your help :)

Incidentally, whats your system spec?

edit - no, no looping sound. Just a plain ole system hang. Everything just freezes up and num lock etc. won't work either.
 
Oh well, as I said, just getting a bit desperate!

You're quite correct about floppies, I suppose when you find one method that works, you're willing to make a small sacrifice to save time and trouble, they are a pain nevertheless. Guess you vould try booting from a CD and running it from the C: prompt, a little risky though...

I always run Prime95 (1 instance per core in a combo of the Blend and Large FFT tests) overnight - for one night - to check for any underlying problems before installing my software. It is extremely good at isolating memory weaknesses. A faulty stick or lack of voltage will sometimes not reveal itself in memtest86+, but Prime always seems to smoke it out.

Some people then move onto Folding at Home, which is supposed to be even more stressful, never bothered with that though, life's too short. ;)

Until later then. :)

*prays for next BIOS update...and thinks about kidnapping the Asus guy....*

PS: System spec is exactly the same as yourself, except I have 2 further raptors instead of the segate, 6400c3 memory and my x-fi card.
 
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Hey balth_dire,
just thought you should know, another beta bios is out!
Maybe it'l fix our problems! assuming I can get it to flash without having to reinstall windows since I don't have a floppy drive.

http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us

here's a link

was released yesterday by the looks of it



edit - Just tried rise of legends again, problem of system hang still there.

With the old beta BIOS, problem occured very frequently with rise of legends, every 5-10 minutes. It's happened once with Call of Duty 2, and once or twice with Age of Empires.

Not often at all under those two games though, maybe this BIOS will remove it all together? One thing though, when it happened with AoE, on reboot it showed me "CMOS checksum bad" error. I pressed F2 to tell it to load defaults and continue and that worked fine.

I'l try out oblivion soon and turn that auto-save feature back on to see if this BIOS helped that at least.

How's your system holding up?
 
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Hello there Sudden,

Just to let you know I've read your reply and will edit in some findings of my own a little later this evening, thanks very much for keeping me posted! :)

Edit - haven't tried rise of legends, call of duty 2 or age of empires as yet, but over the last few days, I've taken to leaving the system running a loop of 3dmark 06 with one instance of the prime 95 blend test in the background, I find this often replicates the issue you are having, ie. system hard locks and needs rebooting.

In the last week it has done it about 5-6 times. On one occasion I left it running overnight, only to return the next morning to discover that very same "checksum bad" message staring me in the face :rolleyes: . What the hell's with that??

I'm now almost certain the Oblivion problem is an inherant one that relates specifically to this game being used in conjunction with Nvidias newer drivers, spoke to yet another user with a very similar setup to ours who claimed to have experienced it on an AMD based system, even when using just one 7800gtx card :confused: . So I've now pretty much abandoned that one - don't really mind leaving autosave off anyhow - the freezing however, I'm really not happy with and like you, I'm fast running running out of theories...not to mention patience.


I did have a thought today that it might be memory related - perhaps not quite enough voltage under very heavy loads - have had similar issues with other Corsair modules, and upping from the defualt was the solution......sadly, not in this case, tried bumping up from 2.2v to 2.3v, have just come in to type this message...you guessed it...another hard lock up :rolleyes: , this time during the canyon flight test.

So frustrating since it ran for 14 hours straight last night.

I wonder if it might be something as simple as temperature - slow build up of heat when all four GPUs are in use and only on occasion it buckles - Thing is, if this were the case, you'd have thought there would be warning signs, a few artifacts here and there, stuttering etc, yet I've seen nothing of the sort.

It definitely appears to be seperate from the Oblivion bug, what case are you using? Mine's an Akasa Eclipse with the vented side panel, surely adequate enough cooling?? If you haven't tried already...try taking the side off your case and aiming a potent 120mm fan directly at the GPUs, then give rise of legends/age of empires another go and see if it lasts, I'll do the same with 3dmark.

I'm really starting believe that Nvidia are having more compatibility issues with their recent chipsets than we're being led to believe. I gather that DFI have just pulled the plug on their new nf590 board due to "limited overclocking potential".

Then there's the two of us, plus at least 3 other users on other forums all with the same or very similar problems? Far too many coincidences for me.
 
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Hi again,

Thanks for the update :)

No idea, same as you about the checksum thing. Make's no sense to me at all!.

Oblivion's autosave issue isn't one I really care about same as you, it's not a big deal at all. It's the freezing that really gets me. After spending such a lot of money on everything, and spending hours checking that these things are "compatible" they don't work properly. Patience has basically run out :(

I did think it's something to do with memory, because i've found that that long windows load up thing happens mostly only after a crash, and usually it's pretty fast loading. lately though, my ADSL's started taking an annoyingly long time to get ativated once windows has loaded. Used to be that as soon as windwos is loaded, I can connect. Now I find myself having to wait a minute or so. Can't figure out what's wrong though, it is running dual channel etc. I tried switching memory remap on and off, no help.

I didn't know about voltage affecting it much etc, so thanks for trying it out. I wouldv'e been scared to mess around with taht stuff anyway.

Temperature issues occured to me, since computer has restarted a couple of times after freezing, but CPU etc. is running at around 38 degrees, and the gfx card, 3 of the GPU's are running around 70, which i've read are fairly normal and the last one is running at about 60 (probably because it is the last one and it's heat is escaping fully). All these temp's seem ok, especially since the car'ds slowdown threshold is 122 and I have that utility runnning in *** background that monitor's temperatues constantly. No report from that though, and the computer doesn't seem hotter or anything while these errors occur. I don;t know if you've experienced this, but the reboot has happened to me once, only once, in windows. It does lead me to believe that it's not temperature since window's woudn't put any load at all.

Case, i'm using the same as you, along with the sidepanel fan. I've been told by Yewen that this is one of the best air-cooling cases, so raelly shouldn't be an issue.

the couple of BSOD's I had, same error alwys, IRQUL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL_TO, i've got the STOP code's written somewhere. Googled them, but the only responses I got were to do with some phonecom or something.

Way I see it, we have basically no option other than bearing these issues and keep waiting for more and more nvidia and asus updates and hope they work. It's very very frustrating, but there is nothing to do :( The fact that we're in such a minority doesn't help either. I thought the BIOS beta update might change thing's, but haven't notcied any difference yet. I'l update in a few days if I see that AoE III and CoD2 run without any issues what so ever.
I thought Rise of Legends problems might possibly be because it's a pirated copy, so I "aquired" another one, but same issue. I don't mind spending money and buying one, but I don't want to do that just to find out that the error is nothing to do with the game at all >_<

keep me posted if you find something new.
Thanks for all your help! great comfort to know that I didn't mess up my first build and i'm the only one with these problems.

Maybe we should kidnap Nvidia and Asus people like you suggested earlier :p

edit - *sigh* was just playing cod2, happened again :mad: so much for the new bios update.
 
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Sudden said:
Hi again,


I don;t know if you've experienced this, but the reboot has happened to me once, only once, in windows. It does lead me to believe that it's not temperature since window's woudn't put any load at all. .
Click to expand...

Interesting, I believe this did happen to me once, but it was when I was messing around with memory timings, so I assumed it was related to that rather than this other issue.

Anyway, I'll try taking off the side panel and moving it forwards so that the fan aligns with the GPUs, I'm sure it won't make any difference since as you say, the cards supposedly can stretch to 122C without throttling and I've read many reviews where they have hit 90+, but at least then we'll have completely ruled out temperature.

Many thanks friend.

PS; Just read your edit.... :mad: :mad:

PPS: did you uninstall Alcohol? I got rid of daemon tools, as I had a "windows crash/reset on two other systems - completely different specs - and found that when one recovered it referred to the file d347bus.sys (a daemon tools file), haven't had any other non-game crash on any system since.....yet.....could Alchohol have caused your "windows crash"?
 
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Yea, that'l be a good idea. If nothing else at least we can completely rule out one aspect.

No, haven't uninstalled Alcohol. I have no idea if I was fooling around with alcohol when this happened last time, quite possible that something was mounted (nothing is at the moment), but don't remember. I'l try uninstalling it if it happens in Windows again. As you said, coul be it.

One question though, what anti-virus are you running? My CoD2 was taking a hellishly long time to load, the memory was being read rather slowly and took a long time for the amount of memory the exe used to go up. After reading somewhere or the other though, it had something to do with McAfee (that's what i'm running) I tried disabling the on-access scan, and that fixed the CoD load problem at least. I'l try keeping it off and trying Rise of Legends etc. Shouldn't be the av, but you never know! If you'r running it too, could possibly be it. I'l give Rise of Legends a try right now and get back to you within a few minutes.
 
:D

I'm not running any anti-virus software!! haven't even got round to installing any yet, guess I'm suspicious it might throw yet another spanner in the works.

-edit-there are a few other progs running though - realtek sound mixer, messenger.....Steam :mad: . Doubt any of those is causing much though.
 
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Update:
very wierd.

Rise of Nation's didnt hang this time, maybe because I was frequntly going back to windows? no idea why. BUT, temperatures went upto 80 on one GPU, 75-76 on the other two, and 65 on the last. Also, lots of artifacts, which goes back to heating =/

On the other hand, COD2, Hitman blood money and AoE3 have not experienced any artifacts whatsoever. Maybe it's just this game?

What temps do you get?

Also, don't know if it's ebcause it didn't get a chance to hang or i was alt tabbing or what, but I got this wierd error.

[Type: warn_unclassified] Breakpoint in struct BHG: Result__thiscall BHG::D3DVertStream::init(const unsigned long, const int, const int, const enum BHG::bhbool, const class BHG::String &)


Hitting retry crashed the game (only game however) Disabling mcafee seems to have stopped it from hanging though. very strange. I'l just give it another go, ignore the artifacts and see if it hangs (i think artifacts came earlier a lil bit, but this is the first time it inreased significantly) and edit this post.
 
My temps are pretty hot, I don't have the prog that monitors all GPUs like you, but when I run the RTHDRIBL rendering test (http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/rthdribl/), According to the Nvidia control panel, I'm reaching 87 deg max, very high, but again, not higher than I've noted in reviews, though I don't think they test very thoroughly these days...

Any artifacts are nearly always temp related, or perhaps signs of an underpowered PSU, think we can rule the latter out though!

Are you running "EVGA Superclocks" or just standard models?

-edit, I think we can forget it, 3dmark just folded up again, even with the fan aimed at the GPUs... :rolleyes: :mad:
 
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I was using the program taht Craig suggested in the 5th post of this thread. Everest is the name. here's the link again
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System...e-Edition.shtml
Ok, just ran Rise of Legends again, and finished the mission. (no idea if it ran for long enough, because i've got into the habbit of saving every few minutes in it now) but it did run longer than some earlier times. Minimal artifcats, and no hang!
I'l try again soon, but let it run for longer. Looking like the anti virus right now though. if when I try it again, no hang, then i'l un-install mcafee and get something else I guess.

87 is high, but if nvidia specifies 122 as a "Slowdown" threshold, not even a dangerous level, should be fine.

Yea, underpowered PSU is defintley ruled out, lol. 900W should be MORE than enough.
As you said, artifacts are usually temp. related (were when I had an artifact problem with my Geforce4 , found out many months later the fan was no longer spinning, lol) but I don't think it's the case in this instance. Could possibly be down to a bad copy, since haven't had it in other games. I'm just reluctant to buy it in case the problems persist and I end up wasting money.

Yea, i'm running EVGA superoverclocked ones. Would mean higher temp/s, but don't see it affecting the computer as such.
I'm fairly sure it's not temperature related. This was *** first tiem artifacts became bad, otehrwise, i catch a glimpse here and there, but nothing major.
 
Yes, obviously some manufacturers take liberties with their pre-overclocking and it does inevitably have a slight effect on the temps, you may have read of the numerous problems with the 7900 series (both gt and gtx models) and companies trying to clock them too fast, high fail rate....loads of RMAs etc.

The 7950 is much more reliable though and should be able to handle the OC - I ran "detect optimal clock speed" using Coolbits 2.0 on each card individually immediately after a 3dmark loop and both appeaed to have headroom of at least another 15-20mhz on the core and about 40mhz on the memory.

EVGA are usually extremely rigorous with their testing procedures...unlike XFX, who went rubbish recently :p .

Edit - When I moved the side panel just now, my peak temperatures went down 10 degrees, still froze though, but I just noticed I still had the memory set to 2.3v. so now I'm going to UNDER volt it to 2.1v and see what happens. Might also try and slow down both GPU cores slightly via coolbits, just in case the temp isn't telling us the whole story. You could try this too and see if the artifacts go away.

Hope Rise of Legends holds up!

What is you mem set to by the way?
 
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Yea, someone recommended EVGA, and I had heard mixed reports about XFX, so went with them.
10 degrees less and still freezing would indicate it's nothing to do with temperature though.
How do I check what my mem is set to? CPU-Z or something in BIOS?

Un-installing Mcafee fixed the CoD2 load issue, but the windows load issue is still there. The insane load time in the beginning happens only, as far as i can see, when I hit reset during a hang. Regular reboots go through windows quickly. Regardless though, once into windows, takes a long time to start some processes. my ADSL for one. Even My computer doesn't load up instantly.

Any ideas about this?
 
Hello again!

Done a little more testing and have almost certainly put a couple of our theories to rest.

Can't remember every stage, but for each of the changes listed below, I applied the same benches as before (1x prime 95 blend test and 3dmark 06 on a loop (CPU tests deselected) - all were completed with the side back on the case:

1) Lowered mem voltage to 2.1v - left 7950 core/mem clock on default - system hung at firefly forest test after a couple of hours.

2) Left mem voltage on 2.1, lowered 7950 core/mem clocks to 500/1200 - same as standard 7950s - system hung, again at forest test after an hour or so.

3) Raised mem voltage back to 2.2 (default), but losened timings from 3-4-3-9 to 4-4-4-12, left 7950 on 500/1200 - system hung on Deep Freeze test after a few hours.

4) Set 7950s back to their default overclock and mem timings back to 3-4-3-9, but reduced mem speed from 800 to 667 (2.2v). Ran for 9 hours, until I manually aborted the test - think that was just luck in all honesty.

5) Updated to BIOS 501, set mem back to 800mhz (2.2v), left timings on 3-4-3-9 and 7950s at default overclock - system ran for 20 1/2 hours until I manually aborted :confused: :rolleyes:. Luck again???? Probably :D .

Throughout these tests I made sure there was no variation in room temperature and the GPUs often topped 80 deg - didn't notice a single artifact during any of them.

*have a few more theories which I'll edit in shortly* :) .

EDIT - ok, aside from drivers/load balancing problems or just plain incompatability. There are only two things left that I could possibly put this freezing down to.

1) When QUAD SLI is active, it causes intermittent "sags" in power to the rest of the system, specifically, the CPU....perhaps memory, but less likely. Most of these fall within tolerance and pass unnoticed, though when a particulally large one occurs, the result is a lockup. This has nothing to do with the stability/wattage of the PSU used, but how effectively and accurately the motherboard is distributing this power throughout the system when working under heavy loads.

2) Pretty much the same as above except it's the video cards that fall "victim" to these "sags" as oppsed to the CPU, the result though, is still a lockup.

Essentially, if it's the former, then we still have some options open to us that may yet provide a remedy- increase VCore, Northbridge/Southbridge voltages etc, this can all be done in the BIOS.

However, if it's the latter, there's very little we can try.

The reason why I arrived at the above conclusion was because I noticed
that on the occasions the system froze, Prime 95 was running its tests in groups of 8, whereas on the occasions it ran without locking up (for 14 1/2, 9 and 20 1/2 hours), it was running them in groups of 2. Ie, the CPU was under greater stress in the former instances.

Of course, future BIOS/driver updates may also address whatever it might be. At present though, I just get the sense that both Asus and Nvidia could well have rushed things so much that we have yet another unresolvable problem in the retail channel

By the way, I have the same problem as you with the network/adsl, the desktop will appear to fully load, but then there is a seemingly eternal delay before the LAN icons appear in the task tray, so again, this must be inherent.
 
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hey!,

thanks for a very detialed update! :D

But basically, bottom line is, apart from a bit of trial and error with BIOS, if it is indeed the first option that's causing the problem (if not both), we just sit on our hands and wait for future updates and hope they fix the problem :(

I just hope it's something that can be fixed through updates and it's not, as you said, an unresolvable problem since they evidentally rushed things.
If they're charging so much, the least they should do is make sure thier components run!

The lan icon's appearing, looks like it's a problem with this setup as well. I thought it might be just my window's so was thinking of doing a repair install or even a fresh install, which would have been a pain. Plus cause me further stress since it probably wouldn't solve it, lol.

Another thing, Asus has 0401 BIOS on thier site now, non-beta version. But acc. to them, it was released on the same day, or a week after the original 0204 BIOS. Anyway, i'm on that now (thought MAYBE it might help, since its non-beta), ram is still being reported correctly, but all the other problems are there. UT 2004 locked up for the first time yesterday as well. Such a pain that we can't play games properly, without worrying about a reboot or a lockup any second :(
 
Hey friend!

Just a thought which MAY at least reduce some of the crashes for you, check how your memory is set in the BIOS, if it is on auto, then it's probably at 1.9v, I believe your memory has a reccommended voltage of 2.1, so you should manually set this.

Just go into the BIOS and goto Advanced/JumperFree Configuration, Set AI Overclocking from auto to manual, this will reveal list of other options, move down to memory voltage and set to 2.1. Then press Esc once and move along to Exit and select "exit and save", the ok.

If you know all this and have done it, sorry for wasting your time...and mine :D .


Tried 2 more tests yesterday, one with the CPU VCore set to 1.35, then 1.375, both times I crashed on the deep freeze test :mad:

Yes, I noticed that BIOS aswell, thought about giving it a go, since it's an official release, it's good if we can keep things as similar as possible, easier to isolate problems. :)

I meant to ask, what CPU cooler do you have?

Oh, and I found the following on....a certain other forum

http://www.villagephotos.com/viewpubimage.asp?id_=18125509&selected=

http://www.villagephotos.com/viewpubimage.asp?id_=18125510&selected=

They are the settings a few Quad SLI users have found to be optimal.
 
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Hey again,
thanks for your help :D Nope, haven't tried that. Wasn't planning to mess with overclocking so everything's stock, hehe. But hey, if it fixes my problems, i'l try it!
Changed my gfx settings and the ram voltage to what was in those pics and to what you suggested.

I'l let you know soon if it made any difference, lol. Might not even notice it, but if it does, great! Who knows, i'l just give Rise of Legends a try and it may actually work! lol

I'm using the Zalman 9500 cooler. Found the stock just waaay too noisy.
 
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:D

Same cooler as myself!

Amongst the options under "manage 3d settings", the one that most interests me is "threaded optimization", apparently this is a function specifically designed to enhance performance on dual core CPUs, provided the software supports it, but I've been reading of many problems associated with it, crashes, BSODs etc, I assume some of these must occur because either the software or function has been imperfectly programmed.

Might go some way to explaining why I only get the lockups on some occasions and not others, especially with Prime running in the background - constant load balancing etc etc.

Anyhow, numerous users found that disabling it resolved various faults, so I'm trying that next. :)
 
you said about not using floppies anymore well wen i flash my bios on my gfx card or on a comp without auto update i just use a rewritable cd or dvd i backup my old bios for graphics using nibitor and make a bootable cd/dvd wiv nero using floppy emulation and it allows me to flash gfx bios and mobo bios .etc wiv out probs. ( i know its a little off topic but i tht id mention my way of things wiv out silly floppy drives)
 
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