Crashes is it my radeon?

[mac7320]

Recently i put together a brand spanking new system. Unfortuanatly I am crashing quite frequently during game play. It normally results in a complete hang with the sounds repeating themselves..or a horrible noise like the scratching on a chalkboard..It sounds kinda like this..bzzwazzbzz waahahhazz yysssbbwwzz.. I dont know if im making any sense but the game crashes really annoy me. I have felt this might be a heat problem. The radeon puts off quite a bit.
My setup goes as follows
Asus a7v8x mobo
amd xp 2400
windows xp
western dig 80 gig hardrive
lighton cdrw and dvd.
512 mg ddr 333 ram.
most importantly ATI Radeon 9700 pro.

As far as cooling goes. 2 80 mm front intake. 1 80 mm side intake. 2 rear 6o mm exaust. One of these is a real power house running at around 5800rpm. Coolermaster cooler on cpu..not a perfect one but decent. And dual fan power supply. Nothing in this case is overclocked. The mobo temp stays around 78..which is 8 degrees above latent in my hot texas house.

Basically the crashing needs to stop. Any hints on what I can do? The card is set to defaults. Im not overclocking anything. And im getting pissed off. ATI has not been much help. Any ideas on what to do..
Last thing I have played with the fan setup seeing if different combos of being on or off helps..not much difference. The main game is warcraft 3 so not incredibly graphic intesive. And the side intake blows directly on top of the radeon..so it would seemingly push cold air where needed.Advice needed please.

 

[drednox]

if you are hanging on sound, try turning off your sound hardware acceleration down to 1/2 from full, if it doesnt help, turn it off completely. thats from control panel (providing you are on win xp), sound and audio devices properties, audio tab, advanced playback, performance tab. then do the same where it says "voices" and finally, check teh ingame settings on teh game in question and make sure those are not all maxxed out.


i also had some sound problems, the thing that eliminated my crashes were the number of voices. scale it down to maybe 24 or 16 from 32 and scale down teh sound quality a bit, also double check any sound software if its up to date.

also, run dxdiag and run all the tests in it, it will help you a lot, if you hear any noises during the tests, or if some of them wont run, then you will pretty much know immediately where your problems are coming from. likewise you can run video tests and see results as well.


las but not least, what game is it ? or is it all games ? if its software specific (for example Hitman 2 crashes a lot due to crappy programming not peoples hardware) seek help on that software forum, if it isnt then your problem is based mostly at your end.

 

[Stoochie]

What you are experiencing is most likely a memory fault. That squeaking repeating sound is exactly what i get when i OC my ram and have my latency too aggressive.

Aside from making sure that all software and drivers are up to date, you should run memtest86 for about 5 passes (the more the merrier) and make sure you arent getting any errors. If you are getting errors then i suggest bumping up the dram voltage up one notch. Run more tests and raise voltage until the errors go away, its usually pretty safe to run your ram at up to 2.8 volts but its wise to verify this with the manufacturer. Also, you can always slack up the timings for the ram if you dont wish to raise voltage, refer to the company website for those settings as i dont know your ram maker nor would i know the timings off the top of my head.

Id like to stress that your system needs to be up to date. everything should be of the latest build, update your mobo bios too if you havent. Also when i say latest build, i dont mean BETA unless they specifically address your issues. Betas are best left for people who have no problems with their systems and are willing to be guinea pigs.



Asus A7N8X ND + Athlong XP 2700(2.17ghz)
Mine is 192fsb x 12 = 2304mhz @ 1.775v
Corsair PC 3500 512 @ 5-3-3-2T
Audigy 2, Western Digital 80GIG SE 8meg cache
and Some CocknBalls.

 

[GeneticWeapon]

Yep yep....memory....what is your cas-latency set to?

Pic's of me and my PC...<A HREF="http://www.lochel.com/THGC/html/Genetic_Weapon.html" target="_new">http://www.lochel.com/THGC/html/Genetic_Weapon.html</A>