Need some advice desperatly!!!

[jammy2232]

Ok am getting really worried now.

I have just built a new rig a few days ago with the following components, all from Overclockers,:

Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-EP43-S3L
Processor - Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 LGA775
Graphics - XFX ATI Radeon HD 4850 "XXX Edition" 512MB
RAM - corsair 2x2Gb 800MHZ
PSU - OCZ PSU 700SXS STEALTHXSTREAM 700W
OS - MICROSOFT WINDOWS VISTA HOME PREMIUM 64BIT
HDD - SEAGATE BARRACUDA hard disk
Case -Coolmaster 335 case

This is the first computer I have built. Assembled with no problems, even applying thermal grease to CPU ect, and installed windows and drivers all working well.

I installed and played the original crysis game and on the first day played it for at least 3 hours with no problems.

I then was messing with the overdrive feature on the CCC and tried to clock the GPU to 700Mhz from 650 and the memory to 1200Mhz or something like that. Then when I ran crysis it crashed instantly. Having realise this was a mistake and after some problem getting crysis to work again, requiring a reinstall and deleting my config files, I disabled the overdrive feature.

After playing for some time more the computer completely locked up the screen displaying vertical lines of 2 shades of the same colour, and this has happened several times the colour varies. I am unable to control + alt + del or escape the game. I must manually hold the power button. I must also point out that the sound is a repeated sequence of whatever the last few milliseconds of sound were.

To resolve this I have reinstalled the drivers, ensuring my AVG was disabled. I checked for an obstructions to the any of the fans and there is non. I even changed the connector to the power supply. The problem still persists.

I ran the game in windowed mode with the CCC running so I could see the load and temp of the Gfx card and this occurred when the load was at 99% and the temp was 63 celcius. The fan speed was gradually increasing as the temp increased so I assume that the cooling on the graphics are ok.

I must point out that I can play supreme commander on high everything as the same resolution for longer periods of time with no problems.

i have posted on other forums regarding this and have found suggestions such as PSU short circuit and fan failure ect. I have ruled out fan failure.

I will try a complete reinstall of windows next week when I have some time but I am beginning to think there may be a hardware failure not necessarily in the Graphics.

Any help on the matter at all would be greatly appreciated.

 

[jammy2232]

I would imagine that Crysis stresses it more than SC I will test that tomorrow. Could it be because the XFX radeon is a out of the box OCed card. and that it is simply overloading.

I will look into the memtest ect. As I said am new to these sort of problems as am used to off the shelf systems. Again i will have a look at this tomorrow and will get back to you.

Although the problems only started occurring after i mess with overdrive I can I can play through some of the earlier levels with no problems. I also noted that it happened at the same or similar points when playing. It's either a very annoying coincidence or there may be something else causing this. Either way very annoying. If the card is faulty, I take it there will be no problems returning it for testing, repair or replacement.

Anyway, Thanks for your fast reply. I will try and do those tests tomorrow and maybe I will get some results that will help me figure this out. Am sure I have some other games that might be intensive enough to load the card.

 

[jammy2232]

Prime 95 -

I have been running prime 95 with no problems for about an hour. I will continue to run it for a little bit more. According to task manager the CPU usage has been 100% so I think that may have ruled out CPU overheating. It is also using 66% of the RAM and there has been no crashes.

I am still to run memtest86+. TBH am not really sure how to use this one. I downloaded the binary, is that the version I want to be using?

Also downloading 3Dmark 06 to stress the graphics card find out if that's the root if the problem. I am going to send a ticket to XFX support on this as well as am starting to think more and more that the card is faulty. I noticed that on some occasions there is corruption to the intro vids to crysis.

Am going to run some other games to see if any of the problems persist. Although I don't have much that will stress the card as much as crysis. The games are:

UT3
Titan quest
Battlefield 2
medieval total war 2.

 

[jammy2232]

Thanks, am just going to try that now. I stopped the Prime 45 at 768K test with all test passed up to that point. That is about an hour and a half of cpu 100% load with no problems.

 

[jammy2232]

I am sure it's the GFX card. After testing using Furmark it fails consistently at about 62 - 65 celcius with a similar sort of error.

I have sent a ticket to XFX to see what they have to say. Will let you know how that goes.

Thanks for your support.

I only hope that the warranty covers it if it needs replacing. Otherwise I could be in a spot of bother. Feel pretty angry at myself because I have feeling that it was messing with the overdrive feature that buggered it somehow as all was working well before that. I will try reinstall windows once I get the chance to back up my files but since reinstalling the drivers had no effect I doubt reinstalling windows will make that much difference.

Thanks again. Very helpful bunch you are. I will defo stick around on this forum. try and return the favour.

 

[jammy2232]

I am so happy to see am not the only one with the problem. I had nearly given up home and was going to try and return the card. I was so angry with myself and thought that by trying the Overdrive feature had somehow mess up the card.

I was able to run crysis absolutly fine until I did that but then again the earlier levels seem ok. It was only when I got to onslaught that the problem began and I started trying to find out why.

I am definatly wanting to swap emails ect to try and get this sorted and I have a feeling that there will be a very simple solution. Thinking about it there are a few possible solutions.

Compatability - howver I ran Prime 95 and it reported no errors. This indicates that the CPU is not the problem. Am not really sure how to use memtest86+ so I will leave that up to you. We have different power supplies and considering that out problem is exactly the same I think that rules that out. Memory and motherboard are a real possibility. Am not sure the memory was on the compatability list that was on Gigabytes site for the board so it may become unstabel in some way under load. I will try and find this again to check.

Edit - Although for my boad is says refer to the compatability list this is all I could find on the site, it's not even the same http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/FileList/MemorySupport/motherboard_memory_ga-p35-ds3r.pdf

GFX - There may be a design flaw that results in the failure under 100% load. This might explain why Furmark and Crysis fail but other games that maybe don't use the card to full potential don't. It could be that crysis uses a feature of the card that other games don't that has failed/faulty/overheats very quickly although I find this unlikly as the card has been tested with crysis that it could have been missed.

Cooling - not likely. Based on the temps being good on the card and the processor. However there may be components on the board that are overheating. I notitce when I open the case after the crash, looking for blocked fans ect, that there was a heat sink in the board that was very hot. I will investigate that later today to find out what it is and if it could cause the crash.

Drivers/windows - Since it worked for a while for me and before i tried to overclock it, just for the record I never had any intenstion to use it overclocked I just wondered if there would be performance increase for crysis and I was only going to test for 5 mins, refer to my previous post for how that went. There may be a windows update that somehow caused it to crash or a setting in the driver somewhere thats not reset by simply reinstalling.

edit - Just had a thought that it may be the video memory or the bios on the card that might need an update. Am trying to keep all my options open.

I have come to the conclusion that at this present time there are only a few things I can do to try and solve it:

I will test furmark benchmark, and then stress and then bench. However my comp was crash when I ran stress straight away afters 5 mins or less.

I have written to XFX support i will let you know what happens when they reply.

I will reinstall windows when I get my external HDD which is wed to see if that solves it.

Unfortunatly being a student means I can't but any new components at all. Am pretty screwed if I can't return the card for a replacement/money back. I highly doubt that any of my friends have RAM I can borrow to test with but I will ask.

I notice in one of the posts you where using an older driver from ati 9.3, I was using 9.4 from the start I will try to test it with 9.3.

I notice that you are using win XP pro 32 bit, I am using vista home premium 64 bit. Which indicates that it may be driver releated. Let me know how you get on when you get your 64 bit OS.

I hope that this may help you. As soon as I know anything I will let you know. Am glad to have someone with the same problem because I was finding it really difficult to explain this to others. Sorry about the long post am tired am rambling a bit. Just let me know when you want to swap emails ect.

Edit - I will contact overclockers to ask if there have been any issues with the card and inform them am having an issue. Alought I don't want to do anything to comprimise the warrenty in terms of testing.

cheers man,

good luck

James aka jammy

 

[jammy2232]

No i haven't tried a different driver yet. I will try that tonight.

As far as clocking the memory I never ran the card on load with those specs, the game crashed during the ea logo the first time then i disabled the overdrive.

If the memory was fried why would the game crysis play at all. Surly the lines would appear almost instantaneously.

Also with others with the same problem regardless whether they used overdrive suggests it is something else. Thanks for the suggestions though. I will try an earlier driver version tonight.

Edit -

no worries plec. Am new to this forum, and forums in general. There is no rush with the email i will try and figure out the trust thing in a bit.

am off to study. be back on later to see if there have been any developments.

cheers