Game freezes

[Björn Eriksson]

Hi,

Whenever I run a 3D game it runs normally for ~5 minutes, then the computer freezes and I have to reboot.

My system specs are:

AMD 2100+

Geforce TI200 3D card (128 mb)

768 mb RAM

Anyone know what the problem is?

Thanks in advance.

[Schrullenhaft]

3D games can warm up the processor and/or the video card beyond its normal usage. This is especially true for 3D video cards where more circuitry comes into play while running a game than drawing the 2D desktop.

Specifically referring to CM, it runs the CPU at 100% (or there abouts) which can push some CPU cooling solutions beyond their capacity.

So this issue is likely to be either CPU or video card overheating. Taking off the case cover may help (but in some instances it may not offer much more cooling potential). Another solution may be to add more case fans to push air inside the case around (and either vent the hot air out of the case or push cooler air into the case).

There are other possibilities too, but you may want to check for the overheating problems first.

[ October 11, 2003, 05:47 PM: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ]

[Björn Eriksson]

I doubt it is overheating, the problem first came up when I reinstalled the nVidia drivers (was trying to make UFO: Aftermath work).

I think I might have come up with a solution now, though. The AGP speed setting was at 4x, but it should have been at 2x. Now, I'm going to try a 3D game to see if it works.

[Björn Eriksson]

It didn't work . I checked the temperature though, and it was at 60-70 degrees celsius.

[Schrullenhaft]

I assume that the 60-70C is the CPU, is that correct ? When are you measuring this temp, is it while you're playing CM, because if it isn't, then it may not tell you when you're really running into a problem. However CM is one of the few games that will push the CPU to operate at a 100% duty cycle, so the CPU overheating may not be the issue with other 3D games.

A GeForce3 Ti200 should be able to handle AGP 4X (it does support that AGP spec). What motherboard model do you have ?

Another person on this forum ran into a solution (which may have been very specific for his situation) of turning off USWC in the CMOS/BIOS setup (also called "Video RAM Cacheable"). This setting is 'Uncacheable, Speculative Write Combining' which caches the video memory. Setting this to UC ('Uncacheable') or Disabled may help. You don't need to worry about Video BIOS Shadowing/Cacheing. You can also experiment with the AGP Aperture size, larger usually being better (if it makes any difference anyway).

If your motherboard is based on a VIA chipset, there are also other settings for AGP such as "Drive Strength" and "AGP Fast Writes". Messing around with 'Drive Strength' can be disasterous since it can result in a system that doesn't display AGP video (until the setting is changed with a PCI video card installed). AGP Fast Writes should work with GeForce family video cards, but disabling it may be another possible solution here.

Make sure you have installed the latest (or most appropriate) chipset drivers for your OS. In the case of VIA drivers, I had heard that going beyond 4.38 for Win9x/ME wasn't recommended, but I don't know if that recommendation has been changed with the newer drivers.

[CHUK]

i am having a similar issue with the newest nvidia drivers on 2k, it will lock up but if i wait it will come back, or i can alt+tab out after a few tries

is this the case with you as well bjorn

let it sit and see if the game doesn't start back up

don't think its heat due to happening when comp first booted sometimes , sometime after its been on all day. also doesn't always happen but when it does it will happen to cmbo and cmbb

off to do more testing