Hello.
I'm one of the seemingly many people that is having issues of a new PC hanging whilst playing 'stressful' 3D games. I've had the problem come and go over the past few months, either disappearing or changing pattern. I'll firstly give my system specs (those I think are relevant), if anyone wants more info I have AIDA32 and Everest so I should be able to find out that which I do not know. Next, I'll outline the history of the issue, how it has changed patterns (or lack thereof) and how/when the issue arises. Lastly I'll list the things I have done to rectify the problem, and what I have done to explore into the issue to find out why it is happening.
PC Specs
- AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (1800MHz)
- Gigabyte K8 Triton Motherboard
- 1024Mb of PC3200 DDR RAM (two 512s)
- Sapphire Radeon 9250 Graphics Card (256Mb, 128bit, GPU 240MHz)
- 160Gb Seagate Barracuda HDD, 8Mb cache, 7200 RPM. Partitioned into one 5Gb partition and one 122Gb partition (no idea how I lost so much after formatting..I expected it but not to be so drastic. The HDD does have written on it 160 however).
- Direct X 9.0c
- Running Windows 2000 Pro, service pack 4
Problem History
- PC puchased approximately 2 months or more ago.
- First 3D game ran on the PC shortly after purchase (C&C Generals)
- Game ran fine on highest possible settings (as you would expect given the specifications of the machine)
- After a few hours of gaming one night, the screen goes black and into standby mode. PC stops responding to mouse movement or keystrokes. Manual reset is required.
- Problem persisted at apparently random times. Sometimes the PC would be cold booted and run C&C Generals for 5 minutes before hanging, then after a reboot it could do the same thing again after 5 minutes, or it could happen in 5 hours.
- Some time later (about 2 weeks ago), I purchase more games (Tribes 2, Tribes Vengeance, Half Life 2, Counterstrike: Source).
- Tribes Vengeance presented me with the exact same issues as that of when running C&C Generals. Tribes 2, HL2 and CS:S display no problems whatsoever, even when running on the highest settings. I even ran CS:S for around 12 hours straight (yeah, I got addicted to that game..) with no issues arising.
- After about a week and 40 hours gameplay total between HL2 and CS:S, the same black screen problem occurred in CS:S after about 15 minutes of gameplay. Rebooting and playing the game again resulted in a repeated PC hang.
- HL2 now freezes. A small clip of sound (usually the walking sound effect) will loop for a short time when this happens. PC is unresponsive and requires a manual reset.
Things tried
- I have viewed these threads:
https://www.techspot.com/vb/all/win...lank-during-3d-game-play-on-new-computer.html
https://www.techspot.com/vb/printthread.php?t=25948
https://www.techspot.com/vb/printthread.php?t=29147
- Ran Prime95 via bootable CD, no problems whatsoever. Test ran for just over 30 minutes.
- Computer has been tested on cold boots after being off overnight. Straight into a game of HL2, 5-10 minutes of game play, then a hang. CS:S usually will hang anywhere from 10 minutes in up to half an hour or so. I haven't gotten more than 30 minutes or so on one session of CS:S since the problem reappeared. Tribes Vengeance can go for at least two hours, because I played it for that long with no problems. but I have not tested this game or C&C Generals much at all yet.
- Ran PC with side case off. No change.
- Ran PC with large fan blowing into the case. No change.
- Attepted to find utilities for finding temperatures of CPU and GPU. Thus far unsuccessful.
- Drivers reinstalled, and also tried different (older) drivers. No change.
- Did clean install of Win2k after the problem first arised in C&C Generals. No change for that game but HL2 and CS:S worked for the two weeks or so on the same install.
- Got the "ATI Utility" which is used to overclock ATI cards. I used this to benchmark the GPU, as the application tests the GPU to see how far it can safely go. Since the GPU can be overclocked somewhat far (it got to 30% before I aborted; I decided that was enough for this purpose). Doing this did not recreate the problem, and one would expect this particular test to heat the GPU up a bit, as that is exactly what the test does in order to find its limits.
I do realize that one of the threads I claim to have read talks about the power supply being at fault, but I don't discuss what I have done to explore that possibility. That's because I have no spare power supplies (this is a new one however - my old PC just simply is too old and uses a different kind of power supply.) and can't get a hold of one of the testers that it was suggested to Tlaloc to Google for. Also, the internal and external wiring is all at room temperature or lower.
The cooling system in this PC is extremely basic. However, regardless of that I don't see how it could be an overheating problem personally. The random way the problem goes away then comes back, and the GPU benchmarking are evidence enough for me unless someone would like to say otherwise. I would like to find a way to get the temps of my CPU and GPU just for calrification anyway.
The CPU has a fan which pulls air from a vent in the side of the case. There's a plastic funnel attached to the case on the inside, which makes sure the air the CPU fan pulls in comes from outside the case and directly to the CPU. The GPU has no fan at all, which I suppose is understandable for such a low-end card. Like all power supplies, this one has its own cooling fan inbuilt. For a case that has no special modifications, airflow is quite good I think. The CPU fan pulls in air, which I can feel being blown back out through a vent at the rear of the case and another vent at the bottom of the side panel. This would cool the area of the case where the Graphics card is somewhat, and would be unrestricted given that the IDEs and other cables are all at the front of the case and kept out of the way by the plastic funnel.
I think that covers everything. PC hangs in one game, keeps doing it after a fresh OS install but new games are fine, some time later problem reappears in new games. The games are C&C Generals, Half Life 2, Counterstrike Source, Tribes Vengeance, just to reiterate. I try some things out, no solutions or reasons found thus far. Any other ideas someone has I will gladly try out, because at the moment I am at a loss and, to be completely honest, extremely frustrated.
If someone wants more info on the PC, or even photos, don't hesitate to ask. If you have an application that I can run to get more info on something for you, link away.
Thanks in advance to anyone who reads about this and/or posts about it.
I'm one of the seemingly many people that is having issues of a new PC hanging whilst playing 'stressful' 3D games. I've had the problem come and go over the past few months, either disappearing or changing pattern. I'll firstly give my system specs (those I think are relevant), if anyone wants more info I have AIDA32 and Everest so I should be able to find out that which I do not know. Next, I'll outline the history of the issue, how it has changed patterns (or lack thereof) and how/when the issue arises. Lastly I'll list the things I have done to rectify the problem, and what I have done to explore into the issue to find out why it is happening.
PC Specs
- AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (1800MHz)
- Gigabyte K8 Triton Motherboard
- 1024Mb of PC3200 DDR RAM (two 512s)
- Sapphire Radeon 9250 Graphics Card (256Mb, 128bit, GPU 240MHz)
- 160Gb Seagate Barracuda HDD, 8Mb cache, 7200 RPM. Partitioned into one 5Gb partition and one 122Gb partition (no idea how I lost so much after formatting..I expected it but not to be so drastic. The HDD does have written on it 160 however).
- Direct X 9.0c
- Running Windows 2000 Pro, service pack 4
Problem History
- PC puchased approximately 2 months or more ago.
- First 3D game ran on the PC shortly after purchase (C&C Generals)
- Game ran fine on highest possible settings (as you would expect given the specifications of the machine)
- After a few hours of gaming one night, the screen goes black and into standby mode. PC stops responding to mouse movement or keystrokes. Manual reset is required.
- Problem persisted at apparently random times. Sometimes the PC would be cold booted and run C&C Generals for 5 minutes before hanging, then after a reboot it could do the same thing again after 5 minutes, or it could happen in 5 hours.
- Some time later (about 2 weeks ago), I purchase more games (Tribes 2, Tribes Vengeance, Half Life 2, Counterstrike: Source).
- Tribes Vengeance presented me with the exact same issues as that of when running C&C Generals. Tribes 2, HL2 and CS:S display no problems whatsoever, even when running on the highest settings. I even ran CS:S for around 12 hours straight (yeah, I got addicted to that game..) with no issues arising.
- After about a week and 40 hours gameplay total between HL2 and CS:S, the same black screen problem occurred in CS:S after about 15 minutes of gameplay. Rebooting and playing the game again resulted in a repeated PC hang.
- HL2 now freezes. A small clip of sound (usually the walking sound effect) will loop for a short time when this happens. PC is unresponsive and requires a manual reset.
Things tried
- I have viewed these threads:
https://www.techspot.com/vb/all/win...lank-during-3d-game-play-on-new-computer.html
https://www.techspot.com/vb/printthread.php?t=25948
https://www.techspot.com/vb/printthread.php?t=29147
- Ran Prime95 via bootable CD, no problems whatsoever. Test ran for just over 30 minutes.
- Computer has been tested on cold boots after being off overnight. Straight into a game of HL2, 5-10 minutes of game play, then a hang. CS:S usually will hang anywhere from 10 minutes in up to half an hour or so. I haven't gotten more than 30 minutes or so on one session of CS:S since the problem reappeared. Tribes Vengeance can go for at least two hours, because I played it for that long with no problems. but I have not tested this game or C&C Generals much at all yet.
- Ran PC with side case off. No change.
- Ran PC with large fan blowing into the case. No change.
- Attepted to find utilities for finding temperatures of CPU and GPU. Thus far unsuccessful.
- Drivers reinstalled, and also tried different (older) drivers. No change.
- Did clean install of Win2k after the problem first arised in C&C Generals. No change for that game but HL2 and CS:S worked for the two weeks or so on the same install.
- Got the "ATI Utility" which is used to overclock ATI cards. I used this to benchmark the GPU, as the application tests the GPU to see how far it can safely go. Since the GPU can be overclocked somewhat far (it got to 30% before I aborted; I decided that was enough for this purpose). Doing this did not recreate the problem, and one would expect this particular test to heat the GPU up a bit, as that is exactly what the test does in order to find its limits.
I do realize that one of the threads I claim to have read talks about the power supply being at fault, but I don't discuss what I have done to explore that possibility. That's because I have no spare power supplies (this is a new one however - my old PC just simply is too old and uses a different kind of power supply.) and can't get a hold of one of the testers that it was suggested to Tlaloc to Google for. Also, the internal and external wiring is all at room temperature or lower.
The cooling system in this PC is extremely basic. However, regardless of that I don't see how it could be an overheating problem personally. The random way the problem goes away then comes back, and the GPU benchmarking are evidence enough for me unless someone would like to say otherwise. I would like to find a way to get the temps of my CPU and GPU just for calrification anyway.
The CPU has a fan which pulls air from a vent in the side of the case. There's a plastic funnel attached to the case on the inside, which makes sure the air the CPU fan pulls in comes from outside the case and directly to the CPU. The GPU has no fan at all, which I suppose is understandable for such a low-end card. Like all power supplies, this one has its own cooling fan inbuilt. For a case that has no special modifications, airflow is quite good I think. The CPU fan pulls in air, which I can feel being blown back out through a vent at the rear of the case and another vent at the bottom of the side panel. This would cool the area of the case where the Graphics card is somewhat, and would be unrestricted given that the IDEs and other cables are all at the front of the case and kept out of the way by the plastic funnel.
I think that covers everything. PC hangs in one game, keeps doing it after a fresh OS install but new games are fine, some time later problem reappears in new games. The games are C&C Generals, Half Life 2, Counterstrike Source, Tribes Vengeance, just to reiterate. I try some things out, no solutions or reasons found thus far. Any other ideas someone has I will gladly try out, because at the moment I am at a loss and, to be completely honest, extremely frustrated.
If someone wants more info on the PC, or even photos, don't hesitate to ask. If you have an application that I can run to get more info on something for you, link away.
Thanks in advance to anyone who reads about this and/or posts about it.