MSI 9800GT is making a noise when gaming...

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eturnal

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Hey All - I just recently swapped my MSI 9800GT and 600W PSU from my older machine to my wife's machine. When I put it in her machine I updated the drivers and fired up StarCraft 2 to see if there would be a performance boost (since she has a much faster processor and ram, in greater quantities, too).

When I turn on StarCraft 2, there was a faint 'tapping' that was pretty high-speed. The sound only showed up when I turned the game on... the moment I closed it out, the sound stopped.

When I fired up Torchlight, the sound turned even faster. This time I minimized the game and the sound slowed and softened, a bit. When I close it, it stopped.

In both cases, when I played either game there would be a brief pause every couple seconds for less than a second. During that time, the sound would stop.

Is there a tool I can use to diagnose this problem? Has anyone heard of this before?
 
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eturnal

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Do you know if there are any utilities I can install to get information on the PSU output and/or the details of the cards (temp, fan speed, etc). I have a 300W PSU but the recommended specs on the card say it needs 400W.

I'll take your suggestion on air - maybe something is a bit clogged.
 
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Frizzo

Frizzo

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the 9800gt sucks up about the same amount of power as a modern gtx 460. you need a quality PSU with that card that has at least 26a on the 12v rail. a quality power supply that is 450-500 will meet this requirement. a junk 450-500w will not meet this requirement. I generally only use Corsair for my power supplies, but there are many many good power supply companies.
 
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eturnal

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Just to clarify, I have a 600W PSU that I pulled from my machine and put into the wifes computer (which is the computer that's causing all the trouble.) Before, I accidentally typed that I have the 300W. I mean, I do have it... but it's not installed or in use. I guess it's easiest to just detail the total current configuration...

***Current configuration***
PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182016 (I thought it was 600W, but I guess it's 500W?)
Video Card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127387
Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 820 (2.8GHz)
OS: Windows 7 64-Bit
RAM: 8GB DDR3-1333
Mobo: Pegatron M2N7B-la

*** Optional Items*** (which aren't installed, but could be to test something...)
PSU: Whatever 300W PSU came with the desktop.
Video Card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150316
 
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Frizzo

Frizzo

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ok, thankyou. that was not my intent. over the course of time i've come across countless links which have the 9800gt at 24-26a and the gtx 460 at 26a approx. this was in the back of my mind, but i never thought to look at the official information. usually you don't see information like this repeatedly, unless it's correct. in this case, it was apparently incorrect.
 
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pell380

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hello dude your gpu is still able to play games on medium settings you should buy an xfx,antec,corsior psu of 500watt with 80+ efficeny so then when you upgrade your gpu then u dont need to intsall new psu :)
 
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eturnal

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Hey Pell - The game is set to low settings and I'm still getting crap performance even with a 500W PSU plugged in. I just recorded a video of it on my cell and uploaded it to youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HowAHBtkhBA

I had my computer run diagnostic checks on the HDD, Memory and Processor - Everything came back good. If we suspect that the PSU is the problem then how do I test that without buying a $100+ PSU? I've got a multi-meter that I barely know how to use... could that be of use here? Is there free diagnostic software that I could download to read PSU output?

Thanks for the discussion thus far, all.
 
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eturnal

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Update:

I just swapped the old 300W PSU and the XFX Card into my wife's computer, since they were originally in her computer and it played games well enough, despite the under-powered PSU. I fired up StarCraft 2 and the game performed the same as the other configuration. I'm starting to believe that the issue lies somewhere other than the PSU and Graphic Card. To test this, I will swap the items into my other desktop (the Dual Core with the 32-bit OS) and I'll see how it runs. If it runs fine there then something else would be amiss, right?

Another clue to this problem (which looks to be evolving into something other than the 9800GT) is the computer blue-screening itself at random times throughout the day. I asked my wife about this and she said the machine would reboot itself from time-to-time in the two years we've owned it. I checked the Event Logs and I have 52 Critical Events between Feb 2010 and Dec 2011, where 25 have been since I made the hardware swaps.

Cruising through the details of the event log, the source for all 52 errors is 'Kernel-Power', Event ID '41' and a Task Category of '63'. "The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly." is what most of the critical errors say.

Another interesting pattern I've found (which might not mean much) is that most of the Critical Kernel-Power events are followed with a BugCheck Error, within 30 seconds of the intial reboot. The BugCheck information says stuff like, "The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x00000019 (0x0000000000000022, 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000). A dump was saved in: C:\Windows\MEMORY.DMP. Report Id: 120911-36909-01." Not exactly sure if that's significant, but I figured I'd drop it here for safe measure.

The last stuff I have to report on the issue is the results of looking at the .dmp files:

The last couple dumps... (without all the details)

Loading Dump File [C:\Windows\Minidump\120911-29640-01.dmp]
BugCheck 50, {ffffffff90909090, 1, fffff80002a907c6, 5}

Could not read faulting driver name
Probably caused by : memory_corruption

Followup: memory_corruption

Loading Dump File [C:\Windows\Minidump\120911-28750-01.dmp]
BugCheck 109, {a3a039d8989fba11, b3b7465eeb1d895f, fffff80002f83000, 0}

Probably caused by : Unknown_Image ( ANALYSIS_INCONCLUSIVE )

Followup: MachineOwner

Loading Dump File [C:\Windows\Minidump\120911-36301-01.dmp]
BugCheck FC, {fffff88001deb192, 800000020cc00121, fffff880055259f0, 2}

Unable to load image \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\AVGIDSFilter.Sys, Win32 error 0n2
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for AVGIDSFilter.Sys
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for AVGIDSFilter.Sys
Probably caused by : AVGIDSFilter.Sys ( AVGIDSFilter+34c4 )

Followup: MachineOwner

Loading Dump File [C:\Windows\Minidump\120911-36909-01.dmp]
BugCheck 19, {22, 0, 0, 0}

Unable to load image \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\avgmfx64.sys, Win32 error 0n2
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for avgmfx64.sys
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for avgmfx64.sys
Probably caused by : avgmfx64.sys ( avgmfx64+4a5d )

Followup: MachineOwner

Loading Dump File [C:\Windows\Minidump\120811-33197-01.dmp]

BugCheck 109, {a3a039d8989b9533, b3b7465eeb186489, fffff80002f17f40, 1}

*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for win32k.sys
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for win32k.sys
Probably caused by : memory_corruption

Followup: memory_corruption

Loading Dump File [C:\Windows\Minidump\120811-34523-01.dmp]
BugCheck A, {28, 2, 0, fffff80002b0fbd0}

Probably caused by : memory_corruption ( nt!MiFindNodeOrParent+0 )

Followup: MachineOwner

Loading Dump File [C:\Windows\Minidump\120811-33041-01.dmp]
BugCheck A, {28, 2, 0, fffff80002b22bd0}

Probably caused by : memory_corruption ( nt!MiFindNodeOrParent+0 )

Followup: MachineOwner
Click to expand...

With my I-dun-know-what-the-hell-is-going-on eye, it looks like I might have an issue with AVG and my memory. I've run memory tests before but they've always been short passes... like one or two passes. I'm going to set it to 100 passes or so... maybe more, and see where that get's me.

Would RAM issues coincide with the problems I've been experiencing? Today when I fired up SC2, I was also getting some pretty bad sound echo, repeating, etc.

Will update soon. Thanks for reading and I look forward to your suggestions.
 
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Computerhelper

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Hi, as you may or may not know it it says on the hp website that due to amd limitation the 8gb memory that runs at ddr3 1333 is reduced to the lower speed cuz the cpu supports only 4 gb of that speed for ram so the ram runs ddr3 1066 with 8 gb, another thing is the speed of the hard drive, the speed of the hard drive if not replaced with another hard drive already is shipped with the 5400 rpm speed, in order for it to be faster you would either have to have a Sata 2 with 7200 rpm or faster like a 10,000 if supported by the motherboard. You would have to upgrade the cpu and hard drive and then maybe the computer would not be bottlenecked by problems that appear with the computer and is a better way of pc health. You can use a free monitor utility like cpuid hardware monitor you can find on search engines that you can download for temperature support, You have to look at the computer as a gaming machine first before you can start thinking it's a gaming machine. It's also a great idea to take some time and have the case open to look at the inside of the computer and look for signs of dust and lint and get rid of all that in your pc by dusting it all out not preferably with a can of air if it's a threat to the computer but you can use something like a brush of some sort to dust off the motherboard and everything inside the pc case and really take care of the pc and you will get cooler temps and less risk of it overheating or causing more problems. Here are some references. http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01925562&cc=us&dlc=en&lang=en&lc=en&product=412...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_Phenom_microprocessors

I hope this helps you in supporting your computer better.
It's a good idea to keep a 500 watt power supply in the computer with a fast video card cuz video cards like that require more power than a 300 watt and it won't run like a bottleneck and it's better for the pc. Another thing if u updated the bios lately which may be dangerous due to what appears to be an error in fan engine speed and overheating of the cpu on this webpage people are talking about, it can be a threatening problem for the computer which must be fixed or it might die. Here is an url about the page people talk about updating their bios with that computer. http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Desktop-Hardware/P6320y-Problem/m-p/756385#M34508
 
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eturnal

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Thanks for the reply both here and at the HP site. Since I've posted this I've performed the following steps (in this order).

1) AVG appeared to be causing some crap performance based on a lot of the problems I saw in the error logs. When I had the XFX Card/300W PSU installed, I uninstalled AVG and I was able to then play SC2 at high settings.

2) With the XFX Card/300W PSU installed I ran Memtest for 12 hours and the test came back clean.

3) Since the memory test was clean and SC2 played somewhat well, I figured AVG was the culprit for my problems. I removed the XFX Card/300W PSU and installed the MSI Card/500W PSU. I fired up SC2 and the game returned to it's poor performance.

4) Since the issue appeared to be related to this configuration, I ran Memtest and over 11 passes it turned up 205 errors within a 24 hour period.

5) I removed the MSI Card and re-ran the Memtest with the 500W PSU installed in the machine. It was running for about 10 hours and already turned up 50-something errors.

6) I removed the 500W PSU and replaced it with the OEM 300W PSU (without either PCIe GPU installed). After running MemTest for 14 hours, it too returned 30ish errors.

In all possible configurations I'm getting memory errors (which coincides with the 'memory corruption' in the logs). This leads me to believe that the memory is crapping out, that both PSUs are crapping out, or that the PSUs aren't getting enough power, in turn shorting the output. I'm not sure the memory is why my SC2 is running so poorly. After all, the 300W PSU and XFX 9800GT card can run SC2 somewhat well but the 500W PSU and MSI 9800GT or 500W PSU and XFX 9800GT can not. If it were a memory problem wouldn't the issue persist across all configurations?

As for your other suggestions:

1) I'll look into the BIOS update.

2) I have a Hitachi 1TB 7200RPM Sata drive in my other computer. (I don't think Sata 2 was big when we bought this computer two years back.) I'll try to back up all my stuff to our NAS, swap HDs, install Windows 7 and start anew.

3) The spec sheet on my computer says that I can upgrade to a Phenom X4 Deneb, so I'm looking at this AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4GHz. I'm also looking at getting EVGA GeForce GTX 570 HD Superclocked, which will require I get a different PSU anyways since I'll need to get one with two 6-Pin connectors and one that has enough output for it, the new processor and everything else. Any suggestions on PSUs?
 
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