I just bought an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Brisbane along with some other parts, but heres the problem. Every so often, no matter what i'm doing, Vista (Ultimate 64bit) will hang for 30-60 seconds and then start working again. I watch the cpu usage when it happens and both cores drop to zero usage.

So here's what i've done to troubleshoot this so far. I thought it might be the ram, so I ran Memtest for 1 complete pass, and no errors. I then installed the same copy of Vista onto another computer to see if it was an OS problem, and it didn't occur on the other computer. I then reinstalled Vista on this computer, fresh install, and it did it again before i installed any updates. It was doing it after I installed all updates as well.

So i'm thinking its a bad cpu. Any suggestions?

GIGABYTE GA-MA770-DS3 AM2+/AM2 AMD 770 ATX
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Brisbane
Western Digital Caviar SE WD1600AAJS 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
ASUS EAH4850/HTDI/512M Radeon HD 4850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16

How are your temperatures for the machine?

What is your computer temp? I suggest you use Core Temp and look in the overclocking section for a guide on how to read the temps.

I am currently thinking that your processor is running too hot and is throttling...

It that or Cool and Quiet is playing up...

Download a copy of prime 95 and try the stress test. It should run without error if your cpu is ok.

That 4850 is dumping tons of heat into your case. If you do not have enough airflow, you could very well be over heating your system causing it to throttle. What are the airflow charistristics of your case and what are your temps? What type of CPU cooler are you using? What is your PSU?

Do what he did: http://www.extremetech.com/article [...] 593,00.asp

Anyway how's the case? Have a pic?

I think any cooler would yield an improvement but I would perfer the Acelero S1. Here is hardwarecanucks' review of it on a 4850. Impressive results, 32c idle and 44c load when you have a fan attached. Even passive it stands at 38 idle and 58 load.

If he's getting pauses with 0% CPU usage then throttling doesn't quite make sense. A throttled CPU doesn't stop processing, it just processes slower. I would look more towards your HD and how it is configured. Check to make sure it's operating in SATA mode. If it's running in IDE mode, make sure the UDMA is working and it's not using PIO mode. Check to see if the HD light is solid or rapidly blinking during those pauses, that's a dead giveaway. Windows has a habit of getting hung up on IO requests so you can also check if it's the network adapter... that one you can check by disabling it and seeing if the problem persists.

Edit: Also check your event viewer to see if any errors are showing up in there. IASTOR errors could be solved with an updated Intel Matrix Storage driver. Reference: http://www.intel.com/support/chips [...] 025783.htm

for what it's worth the qvl list for your mobo at gigabyte does NOT list G.Skill ram at all,so j.f.t.h.o.i.,,can you try another ram,the qvl list just means that THEY did not test that particular ram,go figure,,maybe,,maybe not..:> )

Check with CPU-Z if your Processor speed and CPU voltage is slowing down.
Turn off Cool 'n Quiet if so.

Basically I couldn't have said it better than szwaba67. If not you're overclocked and aren't hanging under load then more than likely it'll be an IO management issue, try using the compouter without any dvd's or cd rom's in the drive and see what happens, perhaps it's not terminating. Make sure you check everything szwaba67 mentioned.

Tell us about your power supply.
Hanging can come from a bad PSU also.

Lol @ Fugben

Sorry for the response time. I am not overclocking, using this case and psu

Cooler Master Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6811119129
BFG PSU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817702003

I dont think its a heating problem. The case has just the 2 fans though. I already checked the temps. Both cores of the cpu run at about 35C idle and 42C load, stock everything. the 4850 idles at 75C, 85C load, stock everything. Volts seem to be default/stock as well.

szwaba67 I like where your head is at. When these hangs occured, the HDD light was either solid or off. But NO rapid blinking.

What's UDMA and PIO modes? and where can I find those options?
My motherboard has Native IDE, RAID, Legacy IDE, SATA-AHCI sata modes. Which one would be best? I have one sata hdd, one sata dvdrom and one ide hdd.

On the plus side, I reinstalled Vista and loaded optimum default bios settings, just in case something went wrong. I also took out my WAN card. Since then, it hasn't had any "hangs" so one of the 3 things I did fixed it.

I'm still curious about the HDD modes and which would be best.

Personally I'd buy another HD like your sata (better they are the same model) and use RAID 0. If your looking at upgrading the seagate 7200 rpm 32MB cache 500Gb are great value and I have them in my machine.

All the settings can be accessed control panel/device manager/disk drives

Go to Device manager, IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, right click and choose Properties, choose Advanced Settings.

Alright thanks for the help.

I've got DMA on and set the SATA mode to Native IDE and it hasn't been causing problems. I also have the wireless card still uninstalled so hopefully i can put it back in and no problems.

Well you shouldn't have to set a SATA drive to IDE, maybe you need to leave it on sata and uncheck disk caching or another performance setting.