Debugging video lockups

[jesup]

Any good advice for debugging video lockups? I recently built a new PC with a BFG 7600GT OC, and in 3d games I get occasional freezes (they usually resolve themselves in a few minutes in Rome Total War). When playing videos (like from youtube) it occasionally will lock up (doesn't recover). It never locks up in normal (2d, no video) use.

Memtest86 ran for 6+ hours with no errors.

Athlon 64 3500+, Gigabyte nforce4 SLI MB, 1GB matched kingston ram, Audigy 2 ZS, BFG 7600GT OC, Antec Sonata (380W TruePower PS).

 

[badge]

Be sure the video card's fan is running. What kind of temperatures are you getting on the GPU? What driver version are you using?

 

[jesup]

91.31 drivers. GPU fan runs (when over 50C). GPU is typically around 50-54C normally (including when decoding video streams). Not sure of the temp in-game when the freezes occur, but after exiting the game typically it's not high (forget the actual number) - Rome Total War doesn't exactly stress most 3D hardware. And I can get freezes almost immediately, or 15 minutes or an hour into a game. Typically in-game freezes resolve themselves within 1-5 minutes, and often audio plays for a while (or gets stuck in repeat). Video-decode freezes typically never recover, and usually audio stops dead).

I see in other posts that 91.31 has caused other people lockups while watching video off the web.

 

[badge]

91.31 drivers. GPU fan runs (when over 50C). GPU is typically around 50-54C normally (including when decoding video streams). Not sure of the temp in-game when the freezes occur, but after exiting the game typically it's not high (forget the actual number) - Rome Total War doesn't exactly stress most 3D hardware. And I can get freezes almost immediately, or 15 minutes or an hour into a game. Typically in-game freezes resolve themselves within 1-5 minutes, and often audio plays for a while (or gets stuck in repeat). Video-decode freezes typically never recover, and usually audio stops dead).

I see in other posts that 91.31 has caused other people lockups while watching video off the web.

You might try using one dimm in slot one and run your system that way and see if the lock up occurs. You might consider using an older driver version than 91.31. RAM is often the cause of system lock ups.

 

[badge]

You didn't mention if you are overclocked. Or if you are new to overclocking if you are?

 

[jesup]

No OC; in fact I tried to underclock it with NVTray/NVTweak (for some reason it wouldn't underclock - 'Test' would bump the frequencies up). The BFG 7600GT OC comes from the factory OC'd, of course.

 

[badge]

If I am diagnosing my computers and get random stalls or lock ups, I'm looking at drivers and RAM. Next would be hard drive running hot or making noise or video card running hot. I had a video card, 6800Xt, slowly dieing giving me fits. Made the whole system unstable at random intervals of it's own choosing.

Perhaps a reinstall of Windows may help.

 

[jesup]

RAM isn't likely (6+ hours of memtest86).

I may try downgrading to 84.xx - not much else I can think of.

 

[badge]

Before you start tearing it down and replacing expensive components, the 84.31 drivers are free. I solved a major problem going from 91.31 to an earlier driver. Let me know if it works.

 

[jesup]

Perhaps you mean 84.21? Or 84.43?

 

[badge]

I used 84.21.

 

[zenith191]

if it just locks up for a bit but doesnt crash and you are running vista then look at your power settings - I had that problem and it because it was trying to go into some power saving mode