Choppy w/ Crashes

[aborted_messiah]

My system gets choppy after playing games for a while. It runs fine for about 30-45 minutes and then performance starts to gradually deteriorate and occasionally freezes up. After rebooting, it's runs great again for about another 30-45 minutes and the same thing happens. etc. What causes this? And how is it remedied?

athlon xp2200+
gigabyte ga-7vax kt400
512mb corsair ddr pc2700
gainward geforce4 TI 4800
Windows 98

Thanks

 

[endyen]

Download and install mbm5, then keep an eye on temps and voltages with it.

 

[acron1]

You may also have memory leaks from programs that run in the backround.
Try playing after closing everything else and see if that helps.

Beam me up Scotty.

 

[fariss]

Is your video card sharing an IRQ?

 

[aborted_messiah]

Being my first build, I'm still relatively new at things like this. I have tried closing out backround running programs. This doesn't solve the problem I'm experiencing. What is mbm5 and where do I download it from? How do I go about checking to see if my video card is sharing an IRQ? Should it be? If it is sharing an IRQ, but shouldn't be, what's the next step? Please excuse my ignorance. Thanks.

 

[endyen]

Mbm5 is motherboard monitor 5. You can find it free, just google for it. It is very useful for keeping an eye on cpu and system temps and voltages. You will have to fiddle with it a little to get all the sensors working, but it is worth it. Some motherboards allow you to give an irq to the video in the bios. You will have to search through the manual or bios.

 

[DCB_AU]

Download a ram optimizing tool - RamIdle, etc.

I had this problem with Win98 and fixed it with this tool.

Set it to defrag you ram when it gets low.

Also CTRL-ALT-DEL and close all programs except explorer. You can leave systray if you want, but I closed it - more closed the better.

<font color=red>DCB</font color=red><font color=white>_</font color=white><font color=blue>AU</font color=blue>

 

[acron1]

Sharing IRQ's should not be a problem.
My video card shares it's IRQ with the sound card, the ethernet, and the USB with no problems.

Beam me up Scotty.

 

[fariss]

I had somewhat the same problem (although on an Intel system) & my soundcard sharing an IRQ was the problem.