Suggestions to stop games freezing with 2x HD4870s
Forum Homebuilt Systems : General Homebuilt - Suggestions to stop games freezing with 2x HD4870s
Hola everyone. I'm currently in the middle of troubleshooting to figure out what is causing my full system to hard-lock while playing games, but I would certainly appreciate any suggestions or perhaps someone can figure out right off the bat what the issue is.
About April of this year, I built a new PC from the ground up. Here is what I put in:
Intel E8500 Core 2 Duo (Noctua NH-U12P with AS5)
Asus Rampage Formula (BIOS 0219)
8GB Corsair XMS2 PC6400 (4*2GB)
Sapphire ATI HD3870X2
SoundBlaster X-Fi Fatal1ty
2* WD 150GB Raptor (RAID 0)
1* WD 500GB Caviar
Pioneer DVD writer (DVR-115D)
PC Power And Cooling Silencer 750 Quad
Antec 900 Case with Scythe Kama fans (2* 120mm front intake, 120mm side intake, 120mm rear exhaust, 200mm top exhaust)
Dell 24" Ultrasharp
Windows Vista 64bit Home Premium SP1
System ran without incident. Ran every game just fine, can't recall ever having a single crash and I had a mild O/C on the E8500 up to 3.81GHz (9.5x400FSB).
Recently, I sold the monitor and along with a new 30" Dell Ultrasharp (3007WFP), I purchased two Sapphire HD4870s. After putting those in, I can't run a game without my PC hard-locking within 1-3 minutes. I am running the latest ATI 8.9 drivers, Chipset/RAID/Onboard NIC drivers all up to date, my Vista is fully up to date, running the latest DirectX runtime and I set the BIOS to defaults (no overclock). I did also shove in 8GB of Mushkin XP2-8500 ram this morning (I didn't suspect the ram, just wanted the upgrade. Haven't tested with Memtest86 yet, will do that when I get home from work tomorrow morning). At the suggestion of someone on the Sapphire forums, I did clean out the 8.9 drivers and try the 8.7 version as he said he couldn't get his dual 4850s to run with anything higher than 8.7. This did not solve the problem unfortunately.
Heat shouldn't be an issue as the CPU sits at about 34C idle/44C load. I haven't run an actual GPU temp logging program, but EVEREST Ultimate shows my GPU temps as (GPU1/GPU2) 55C/53C at idle and 61C/57C under load (Catalyst Control Center shows them as MUCH higher at 71C/69C idle which I find hard to believe).
So UT3, Sins of a Solar Empire, TF2, CS Source, HL2, WoW (all updated to latest version) all hard lock the PC within 1-3 minutes of playing, requiring a manual reset. But the puzzling thing is the PC will happily plow through 3DMark06 and 3DMark Vantage without any problems (and turn out very nice scores in the meantime). All other applications on my PC (iTunes, Photoshop, etc) have no issues. I haven't run Prime95/Super PI/OCCT/Orthos yet, won't have time until Monday morning unfortunately.
So, right now my suspicion is in the soundcard or the drivers, since 3DMark runs without sound. First thing I will try is flashing the BIOS to the latest 0410 and if that doesn't solve it, i'll blow out the soundcard drivers and uninstall the device and try running the games again.
Beyond that, anything else you folks might suggest trying to looking at? Needless to say, little frustrated right now 
Message edited by SiliconX on 10-05-2008 at 03:24:32 AM
| Proximon wrote : I still maintain a 750W is not a good choice for CF 4870s, but it SHOULD run fine with that PSU. Just another item to consider.
|
Thank you for the quick reply 
Originally, I considered the PSU as not being sufficient for everything in my system as well, and was going to swap out the 750 for a PCP&C Turbo Cool 1200W and replace the case with an Antec 1200 as the extra length on the 1200W would require some serious shoe-horning into the 900 case.
According to a gent on the Sapphire forums, the 60A on the 12v rail of the 750W should be enough for the CF 4870s. The Turbo Cool 1200W is certified for CF 4870X2s though so i'll start looking into procuring one if the troubleshooting doesn't pan out.
I'll try running a solo 4870 as well. Thanks again!
| Granite3 wrote : I finally pulled the x-fi extremegamer from my system, it did not play well with vista for me at all. No issues in XP, but really wads it in vista ultimate 64.
|
Yeah, the X-Fi is what i'll look at first after updating the BIOS to the latest. Seems odd though, as i've been running the X-Fi in this system for about 6 months now without issues (with the 3870X2). I did have to move the X-Fi from the bottom PCI slot to the very top one just above the first PCIe 16 slot as the 2nd 4870 blocks the lower one, maybe that has something to do with it. Perhaps it doth protest its new position 
Sadly, the Rampage Formula doesn't have onboard sound, but includes a PCIe SupremeFX II sound card. I was doing some Googling just now and found a fellow on overclock.net who has a literally identical system, the only exception being he is using the SupremeFX II soundcard, which gives me some hope.
Yeah, was going to try with just two sticks of ram as well as that's a very easy thing to try. I do like having 8GB though. Vista 64 runs noticably better with 8GB, and some programs will use up as much as you have.
Message edited by SiliconX on 10-05-2008 at 05:10:40 AM
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