New PC - Stuttering

[bush elephant]

I recently built myself a new pc and since day 1 of the complete installation i have experienced some odd stuttering, pc freezing and the occasional sudden restart.

The biggest problem is this stuttering. It comes at random times (every 30 mins to 2 hours - sometimes multiple times within these periods) and is a sudden 1 second of stutter followed by half a second of no stutter and then another 1.5 seconds of stutter. By stuttering i mean audio and performance. Eg. if i am playing any game, say, assassins creed, i will be moving around and all of a sudden both game play and audio start stuttering.

This happens in all applications, even when my PC is idol on the windows desktop (can notice it if moving the mouse around). The stutter is extremely fast in itself.

I have no idea what can be causing this.

PC Specs

OS: Windows XP Pro SP3 (tried with no sp, 1 & 2)

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (stock speed)

MOBO: Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS4 (latest bios - stock speeds)

RAM: 4 x 1GB PC-8500 1066mhz Corsair Dominator (stock speed)

VGA: Sapphire ATi HD3870x2 + Catalyst 8.4 drivers (stock speeds with 8 + 6 pin connectors both plugged in)

HDD: Seagate Barracuda 500GB
Seagate Barracuda 80GB
Western Digital 200GB

OPTICAL: LG DVD-RW

CASE: Antec 900

PSU: Thermaltake 750W Toughpower Modular


My ram and hdd's all passed testing. I honestly have no idea how to solve this problem.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Bush.

 

[royalcrown]

sometimes bad video or chipset drivers or bios setings can cause it, make sure your chipset and viseo drivers are updated, and if they are, you can always try an older video driver and see if that helps too.

Make sure your bios is on default setup also and see if that helps.

Those are good places to start.

 

[bush elephant]

What applications do you have running in the background?

0 Applications

Processes currently running as i type this on a fresh system restart:

Please note it does it upon a fresh xp install with only the latest drivers for my system installed.


Tried my bios on default
Tried my bios on custom settings
Latest motherboard and video drivers
Tried old ATi drivers that support the HD3870x2

Getting depressed about this... especially when i'm working on a uni assignment and my pc freezes/restarts. The stuttering is really getting on my nerves.

Appreciate the help so far

 

[seboj]

Try removing components one at a time (ram and HDDs) to see if any of those are the culprit.

If that doesn't help, and all your voltages are in line, all your drivers are up-to-date, and you're not infected with something, I'd go ahread and RMA the board.

 

[bush elephant]

Yeah, i've bareboned the PC and couldnt find the culprit. Thinking of returning the mobo after ATi releases catalyst 8.5 drivers, i'll see if they help.

 

[azhimazhim]

Have you installed the windows XP multi core hotfix? http://support.microsoft.com//kb/896256

Also, you can try changing the BIOS setting "Is PNP OS Installed?" to "NO" - I found this fixed a similar problem for me.

 

[bush elephant]

Have you installed the windows XP multi core hotfix? http://support.microsoft.com//kb/896256

Also, you can try changing the BIOS setting "Is PNP OS Installed?" to "NO" - I found this fixed a similar problem for me.

I believe that hotfix is included in XP SP2

My pc seems to be 100% stable now. I fiddled around with the overclocking features in my bios. Manually set the ram timing to 5-5-5-15 (auto was thinking it was 5-5-5-18) and adjusted some voltage settings as per some suggestions of friends.

Thx all for the help