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Gaming Freeze

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by kal_lmn

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Well, I bought and built this computer all on my own, with great results. There is only one minor annoyance. Any game I play on my computer will run perfectly for a random amount of time, then it freezes. I try alt+ctrl+del, but it doesn't work, I try alt-tabbing out of game, doesnt work, no mouse movements either. The sound is still on, only garbled. Like if there is music playing (do da la, do da la), it stops and repeats one sound forever (do do do do do). I restart, and all is well, until I play for a while into another game.

Sometimes this occurs after an hour, sometimes four or five hours. I already tried updating my videocard drivers through device manager, but theyre all up to date already. For reference, here are my computer specs:

EVGA 790i FTW MB
Intel E8600 3.33 GHz CPU
GSkill 4GB DDR3 1333MHz RAM
XFX Nvidia 9800 GTX+ Graphics Card
Seagate barricuda 500GB 7200.11 HD
Antec900 Case
Corsair 750Watt PS
Windows Vista Ultimate X64 SP1
Asus 20X DVD RW lightscribe Optical

8 replies

by older mycroft

What are the names of these? I didn't realise there were any 64-bit games out there yet.

My own E8500@3.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, Windows XP Pro, stills falls over and will freeze occasionally when playing Crysis and FarCry2. It doesn't freeze at all now, on RaceDriver:GRID.

I think, until there is a suitable patch for the particular game causing the problem, you'll just have to live with it for now. ;)

by kal_lmn

It's just a 64 bit OS, most regular games work on vista 64. The games that I have (and experience problems with) are Bioshock, Crysis, Fallout3, Portal, Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion, F.E.A.R Extraction point, and Sacred 2: Fallen Angel.

I have already played and beat Fallout3, F.E.A.R, and Bioshock, even with my freezing problem. Like I said, At least I can play my game for a good while before they freeze, but it gets really annoying some times.

by older mycroft

Just because you got a machine in the cutting-edge bracket, don't be fooled into thinking it is all-powerful because it's not. It's just as prone to crashing as any cutting-edge machine was 15 years ago, just notably faster.

Shut down all unnecessary background tasks and when you've emptied your systray of detritus, have a scan through Task Manager too - some AV and Firewall software may 'look' like it's stopped running, but invariably there remains background modules that are still very much alive.

And even your brute of a machine can be helped by reducing some settings levels within each game's Graphics options.

Never forget - playing a game with everything turned up to the MAX is really only possible on today's fast machines, if the game is a couple of years old! A couple of years ago, the machines of THAT day couldn't run games with everything turned up.

You appear to be experiencing more crashes than my XP Pro system, if you built it yourself why did you opt for Vista (in any flavour) ? ;)

by kal_lmn

Yes, I know what you mean. As for why I chose vista... I was on a budget, and could barely afford the core essentials of my system, hence why I am still using my old mouse/keyboard and monitor from my old computer. I simply got Vista because it came at a VERY good price with several of my parts... though looking back on it, I probably wouldn't mind spending an extra $50 on XP Pro.

by planttrip

I think we may have a similar issue my machine fails even while i'm not playing a game but the failure sounds the same

Allow me to make my case...

My machine freezes up randomly between 2 minutes and 2 hours after booting, there is no pattern to the freezing that i can determine. It happens if i am playing a video game or boot into safe mode with my video card disabled and load nothing. When the system freezes i hear a slightly high pitched two tone droning which can best be described as a stalled playback. To restart I have to manually power off the machine.

My Specs are:

Motherboard: Asus P5E3 Deluxe Wifi-AP
Processor: Intel Q9300 Quad Core @ 2.50GHZ
Ram: GSkill 4GB DDR3 1333GHZ Gaming Extreme Performance RAM
Graphics: XFX Nvidia Geforce 9800 GT 512MB PCIE 16X
PSU: OCZ EvoStream
Storage: Western Digital 500GB 7,200rpm SATA II 3Gb/s Hard Disk Drive
Western Digital 160GB 7,200rpm SATA II 3Gb/s Hard Disk Drive

I'm confident we have a connected problem. You may notice, we have the same RAM, GPU, and i have an antec case as well. Perhaps by concentrating on what we have in common we may be able to narrow our focus.

You have been at this for quite a bit longer than i have, and since it has been a month since your last post you may have even found a solution. I am currently going through thourough system testing but the nature of this issue makes it unbelievably hard to diagnose.

I hope we can work together to find a solution to this problem.

P.S. In my last freeze i noticed one aspect that wasn't frozen it seemed that one of my gadgets that was displaying information about my cores was still working and took several minutes to freeze after the rest of the machine became unresponsive

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