Desperate for help. ( Games Crashing )

[sp3nny_88]

Hey guys,

I have recently just built my new system consisting of;

PSU: 750W Antec Gamer
CPU: i5 2500k
RAM: 8GB DDR3 1600mhz ram.
Mobo: ASRock Z68 E3 G3.
Videocard(s): Running two MSI Twin frozr III 6950 PE/OC in crossfire.
SSD: Crucial M4 128GB.

Anyway, any games i play crash eventually, never usually can play for longer than 1 hour sometimes crashing in the first 5 minutes. The crashes prevent me from doing anything, I have to restart my PC ( Some times it fails to boot after the crashes ) then i have to clear cmos.

Things i have tried;
Tried each GPU Singularly in each slot.
Removed all forms of overclocking.
Reinstalled drivers.
Ran Memtest, came back fine ( 0 errors ).
I put the memory in different slots, i actually thought this fixed it, then i put the 2nd GPU back in thinking it was fixed and it froze straight away.

This is extremely frustrating as I just can't work out what it is, after paying $1700 for it all and it's not running properly is a little disheartening. If anyone has any advice I would really appreciate it

 

[AdrianPerry]

Your components are all compatible and all 750w PSU should be more than enough for CF 6950's.

The only time i've experienced a game crash on me was playing CRYSIS for about an hour on a mostly "un-tested" 560Ti overclock so the only thing I can suggest is remove all GPU drivers, take both cards out of your system, install just 1 card, download the latest drivers and take it from there. If you can get one card running stable for a day or 2 then go ahead and add your second card back in.

If your still experiencing crashes after this, trouble shoot it down to either the PSU or CPU.

How are your temps during gameplay? Are you monitoring them? What temps are you running when your games crash?

HWMonitor is a great tool to measure temps.

 

[swifty_morgan]

could be because you installed the ATI/AMD sound drivers along with your CCC/graphics drivers. Check your control panel/sound to see what's there. If amd/HDMI sound and on board are both there........ uninstall all amd ( sans mobo ) drivers and start from scratch if needed. When doing a reinstall opt for advanced install and don't install the sound drivers. Look in the BIOS for video. Make it point to pci-e cards/slots. Disable onboard if there.

 

[AdrianPerry]

^^ also as above. Device Manger is a great place to start and check for conflicts/missing drivers.

 

[MackieG]

Try the RAM one by one on the system. This sounds like almost an exact issue I was having. I let memtest run all night, came back the next morning and no errors. Worked on it for a month on and off.

Then tried the RAM 1 stick at a time (triple channel) and found the bad stick within 15 minutes.


Corsair RAM XMS3 1600 was what I had. Their RMA process is pretty smooth too.

 

[cats_Paw]

Id say it "can" be the PSU. If the oc is very agressive on the CPU, + the gpus+ any extras like optical drives, fans etc....

Since you said it happens ALSO when stock and even with 1 gpu... First thing that comes to mind is a MALWARE.

Im assuming you checked your temps already.

 

[AdrianPerry]

Id say it "can" be the PSU. If the oc is very agressive on the CPU, + the gpus+ any extras like optical drives, fans etc....

Since you said it happens ALSO when stock and even with 1 gpu... First thing that comes to mind is a MALWARE.

Im assuming you checked your temps already.

If you have a Genuine copy of Windows, I highly recommend "Microsoft Security Essentials" as an anti-virus protection. It runs almost invisibly in the background with very very little resource usage.

 

[008Rohit]

Well, it could be a virus issue.

Some days ago after using my computer for say 1hr the CPU usage was jumping to 100% I opened taskmanager and saw that a system process called ntvdm.exe was opened atleast 15-16 times and they are hogging the resources together. I installed Avast Free Antivirus and now this problem has been solved. So check for viruses first.

 

[sp3nny_88]

thanks ALOT for the advice guys, it's nice to get home from work with lots of suggestions, ill get right to trying it all tomorrow as I have been busy at work. Much appreciated!

 

[sp3nny_88]

Okay, So i reformatted my PC, and only installed the required drivers / software to play games. It still froze, so i tried testing each memory stick individually with memtest, ( 2x4gb ddr 1600mhz ), they both came back fine with 0 errors found. I didn't bother putting the 2nd RAM stick back in and so far no crashes :S. Very unusual that memtest didn't pick it up but i do think that it must be a faulty ram stick.

 

[swifty_morgan]

or a faulty slot. or the wrong slot. or not enough power getting to the ram. did you try increasing the voltage a little bit ? it's 2 4gig sticks. i've had extra memory in the past that needed a slight increase in voltage to run stable.

 

[sp3nny_88]

Best answer selected by sp3nny_88.