I have tried everything, please give me some advice?

[paraffin]

Hello Guys

I have had my PC built for a while now about 2 months and have been quietly trying to resolve my issues with it.

I seem to have got rid of most of the problems but one still persists.

Running Battlefield 2142 the game can run for 20 mins and then crash straight to desktop. Maybe BF2142 is a crash prone game but I cant beleive its the cause.

I have installed all the latest drivers on all of my components, I have not missed one out trust me.

I have stress tested the system with Prime95 running two instances and though my E6300 is overclock to just over 2.8Ghz the CPU never gets 57 degrees.

Can anyone reccommend a way forward.

The only observation I have made that I am unsure about is that my P5N-E Sli mobo the north or south bridge (the one with teh heat sink) when I touch the heat sink it is hot to the touch.

How can I stress test my GPU? I tried the Nvidia Ntune stress test but it seems a weak test to me. However it passed this easily.

I am even defraging my HDD as I type this to see if that improves anything.

Please help me, I am going crazy!

 

[Mondoman]

Since the Freezer 7 Pro does not blow air onto the north bridge hs, or onto the PWM components surrounding the MB, perhaps they are overheating. You could test this by using the OEM Intel CPU cooler.

 

[cutthroat]

Crashing to desktop is generally a a problem with the game. When your hardware screws up your PC will crash, lock-up, reboot, etc.

I don't play BF2142, but you are probably correct in assuming it is the game's problem. Make sure you patch the game with the newest available patch, crash to desktop is often fixed in patches.

EDIT: BTW, the P5N32-E SLI, and for that matter all 680i motherboards have a very hot northbridge. I can barely even touch mine, it burns. I've been thinking of using another cooling solution for it, not much space in there though.

 

[Mondoman]

I missed the crash *to desktop* part -- good catch!

 

[sweetpants]

Crashing to desktop is generally a a problem with the game. When your hardware screws up your PC will crash, lock-up, reboot, etc.

I don't play BF2142, but you are probably correct in assuming it is the game's problem. Make sure you patch the game with the newest available patch, crash to desktop is often fixed in patches.

EDIT: BTW, the P5N32-E SLI, and for that matter all 680i motherboards have a very hot northbridge. I can barely even touch mine, it burns. I've been thinking of using another cooling solution for it, not much space in there though.

I agree with this as well!

Most common things that I've found in my experience when a game crashed to desktop is:
1) drivers
I noticed you are running the latest and greatest, if any of these are beta, perhaps rolling them back?

2) game
Just about as much as drivers, the game isn't coded for the proper or latest driver

3) memory
I've run into some instances where the memory will cause a crash to the desktop but sometimes associated with a BSoD.

 

[paraffin]

As this is a the only game I have installed at the moment do you think a good test would be to play another game and see if the crash occurs again.

It must be GPU or Game related because it only happens when running games. Otherwise the system is stable

 

[sweetpants]

if it's happening in other games, I would possibly roll back a video driver, or check for other updates...

another thing run memtest 86 to see if you get anything there.

 

[paraffin]

I have run Memtest for 6 cycles of all the tests and it passes without error.

As for video drivers I have a Leadtek Winfast PX7900GTX

I was firstly using the latest Nvidia Drivers and the crashes started occuring. I thought as its a manufacturer OC'ed version of the 7900GTX I would use the drivers that came with the card, they may have been optimised better, the crahes still occured. Finally I have download the latest drivers for my card issued by Leadtek and installed them and still the same issue.

I will have to try another graphics heavy game to stress test the system again to eliminate BF2142.

I have a spare GPU (6600GT) that I can try in the system with BF2142.

I have just thought that my memory timings may be a bit tight I will try those now.

Any other tests you can think of?

I will keep you updated.

 

[sweetpants]

Nothing much more I can think of. I would say if another 6600 does it, it's the game or driver. Either way should be remedied by a patch from the game.

 

[paraffin]

Well I just took all my overclocks off and then played BF2142 and it ran for an hour flawlessly.

I will have to do some more testing before I say its the answer but its looking better than the 10 mins game play I was getting before.

I will let you know the outcome

 

[cutthroat]

If you have a setting in your BIOS about optimizing Nvidia drivers, disable it. Really should disable all optimizations when overclocking.