Freezes only in Games

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ericgrau

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Aug 17, 2012
16
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10,510
My computer is freezing only in games. It can browse the web fine for days on end. Whereas online 3D games, especially regions of MMOs with a lot of objects and mods of RTS with a lot of objects, can freeze it. I can tell the freeze is coming because the game slows down greatly for a minute or more first. Unlike typical game slow downs my mouse continues to move at full speed. If I alt tab out of the game I can do other things on my computer without any slowdowns or hiccups. Voltages don't vary and temps are fine even during the slowdown. Temps may even be a bit lower than the maximum logged temp. I still had 1 GB of RAM free on the last slowdown. It doesn't blue screen it just freezes: display stays, cursor frozen, numlock frozen, sound on repeat.

Prime95 stress test came out fine. Memtest86 came out fine. No crash log recorded.

Mobo: Gigabyte 78LMT-S2P
Video: ATI Radeon HD 5830
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1045T
RAM: 4 GB brand name. I'll check the brand later when I open my case.
PSU: High wattage and my components don't use much. I'll check the specifics later.

Any ideas what this could be? Please no guesses. I googled a lot of threads like this where they tell the poster to buy several pieces of expensive hardware, wipe his system and it still didn't get better until he replaced his system completely. Or if he found a solution, it was something trivial to fix that didn't require all that. So please please no random guesses you're diluting the real answers. "Probably" is fine and I won't hold it against you if you're wrong, but no shots in the dark.
 
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ericgrau

Honorable
Aug 17, 2012
16
0
10,510
I don't overclock. System specs in first post. All hardware was obtained in the last few months. Went online for most recent video driver.

The problem doesn't disrupt my normal computer usage, and even games can work fine for a while. When I reboot after a freeze it likewise works fine. So I'm going to order a set of SATA cables, wait for them to arrive, then open my case and swap out a bunch at once and see what happens. So far I plan on swapping the SATA cables with the new ones and video card with an old one, removing 1 stick of RAM and removing any old power splitting cables (all direct connection to recent PSU). I'll post again at that time.

I've already disabled some power/heat saving features in the BIOS and since that time my voltage has stayed constant within 0.02V. I disabled "cool 'n quiet" and C1E was already disabled.
 
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ericgrau

Honorable
Aug 17, 2012
16
0
10,510
Update: I tried removing the video card and switched to onboard video. Again it worked fine for a few days of browsing the web. And even playing an online 3D game for hours. But then I tried the Mafia Wars mod on Starcraft II and it quickly froze as it has before fairly consistently on that map. It lagged a lot first, then froze.

One thing that changed recently was my hard drive. It was freezing when I had an SSD before that hard drive and the freezing was severely corrupting the SSD. On one freeze chkdsk found hundreds of errors. I got tired of re-installing windows so I switched hard drives. The new magnetic based hard drive hasn't been corrupted. First it froze, then again a month later, then again after a month, then more and more frequently. Now pretty much every time I go in the right map or the right area in certain games it slows down for a few minutes then freezes.

Not too long before the problems started I also got a new motherboard, CPU, RAM and PSU to correct a different problem. Maybe 2-3 months before.

Again no blue screen, no crash dump.
 
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ericgrau

Honorable
Aug 17, 2012
16
0
10,510
Enermax Tomahawk 500 watts

CPU temp peaks in the 40s C. GPU in the 40s or 50s when I had it installed. During games temps for both were moderate not even at the peak. Temps are often in the 30s or 40s. Right now with my case open in the 20s. Still started lagging a lot and then froze.

The mouse cursor doesn't lag like it used to when I had a slow CPU. So I'm thinking it's the onboard internet on the mobo or maybe a loading problem in the sata. I've also removed one of the RAM sticks to test it, and I'll try the other RAM stick later. Any ideas on anything else I should be checking?

Update: Tried loading the game from a different hard drive. Same slowdown and obvious lag spikes, like there's a delay while something's loading. Didn't wait for it to crash though. Likewise when I tried it offline in single player mode with the internet cable disconnected to be sure. I figure that leaves mobo, CPU, RAM and PSU? I measured my voltages with a multimeter and got 12.5 V for "12V" and 5.1V for "5V". Haven't yet tried a multimeter during a game but my software voltage monitoring didn't pick up any variance so I doubt my multimeter would either.

Update #2: It's becoming apparent from the offline tests that the lag spikes are loading spikes, since they are especially bad at the times in the game when I know something is loading: the beginning of a new segment in the game, for example. And because they are periodic pauses rather than slowdowns; even when it's not at a major loading time the game might stop completely for X seconds then resume at normal speed. So does that mean it must be either hard drive or RAM, or hard drive sata/power cables, or is there another possibility? I did try putting the game on 2 different drives, but my OS and virtual memory remained on the same drive.
 
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ericgrau

Honorable
Aug 17, 2012
16
0
10,510
Video settings have been on low for a while. Shadows & shading are on low (blob shadows, etc.) and Starcraft II doesn't allow anything lower. Currently I removed the video card. The onboard video is also Radeon, but that would be quite a coincidence for them both to have that problem now when for the first couple months of its life I wasn't getting any problems.
 
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ericgrau

Honorable
Aug 17, 2012
16
0
10,510
Alright my computer is running flawlessly outside of games for days and days. Even in the computation light areas of games it can go for hours. Whatever it is ONLY happens under heavy load. And then it happens within a few minutes, every single time. Does that help at all? Or could every component possibly fail under heavy load?

Loading 20 webpages, downloading, streaming multiple videos, etc., do *not* trigger it even if I get abusive enough to slowdown my system for a bit. So my first guess would be video card since the big difference is that games have 3D. But I already removed the ATI video card and am running on the mobo's onboad ATI video instead. Unless it's the ATI driver? Or maybe I never abuse my system in web pages for enough minutes.
 
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