Radnom Freezes /BSOD =(

[Akrian]

Hi everyone , I have a problem that I just can't solve by myself =( .
I can run 4h+ Prime blend test stable , 2+ - OCCT Mix test , Mem Test with no errors and temps withing limits.
But As soon as I start gaming - random freezes , usually first one comes within 25 min , second 1,5-2 h after reboot . for the most part it's just freezeing in rear ocasions - blue screen or black screen with some stripes on top .
My 4870x2 can work fine on my second rig with no prob .
I tried going with higher/lower voltage , higher/lower timings on RAM .
No matter what I do I get the same result ( tried with 438-442 FSB ) .
My rig is :
Vista Ultimate x64
Q9550 E0 ( 3.7 - 3.75 depending on fsb)
Sapphire 4870x2 @ 762/925 ( tried on defaults - same result)
Foxconn BlackOps
G-skill DDR 3 1600 2x2gb RAM -> 1400 , 6-6-6-14
Bios G32 .
PSU - OCZ 850 W
HDD - 160 GB seagate 7200 RPM .
I am absolutely OUT of ideas , any suggestions on what to do ?
P.S. ( I had some problems playing video games with this card when I had Q9550 C1 and Rampage extreme board though .. ).
P.S P.S Gonna try running my 2x 4850 tomorrow and see what happens - my latest possible bet that I haven't try yet
Anyway please help with suggestions

[HuffPCair]

What does the BSOD say when it comes up. That will help alot also.

but I am guessing it maybe the GPU but I am not for sure I would still like to know what the BSOD says..

[Akrian]

Stop X ( then a lot of 0 and 1 combinations ) , I wil make a photo if I catch one , but usually there is no bsod , justa freeze - repetetive sound - restart

[HDCHOPPER]

been reading alot lately of vista problums most indicate a need for .NET framework of at least 2.0 and up esp if you are using google crome which needs 3.0 or 3.5 and better

something to look into

[RAYTTK]

I noticed you have an OCZ PSU, I had a GameXtreme 700 that developed a loose wire on GPU socket, I wasn't aware for awhile about the loose wire but a Freeze up would occur whenever the case was knocked, Once I realized the wire was the problem I RMA'd But OCZ sent me the Newer 850 watt which gave me nothing but grief, Noisy fan trouble with SLI eventually after less than a months use I sent it back when the new one came I sold it. Might be worth at least trying another PSU

[RAYTTK]

Any News Akrian?

[Akrian]

ok, no freezing in RA3 , after which no freezings in LOTRO , no freezing in Clear Sky ( all maxed out)
BUT - GTA 4 - 15 min - complete freeze of PC , after which I can reboot with same OC settings and play without freezes .
On default settings ( in which crazy bios puts 1.58 on NB instead of 1.25 ) - everything goes smoth from the start .
At the moment looking at 438 FSB as an option of stable system , still unsutre though .
I wish I could go stable 441 with GTA 4 , but this game just don't like it =( .(Stalker likes it though ^__^ )
P.S. got my 4870x2 800/935 stable on both core ( w00t)

[Akrian]

WoW that was sudden
I got stable at 438 at GTA 4 ( WOOOOOOOOT ) , had 1.50 on CPU PLL
1.36 ( 1.35 actual) on CPU
1.56 ( 1.60 actual) on NB
tried running prime with those settings with 439 FSB - got BSOD in 45 min , testing it again with my old 441 voltage settings which gave me 4h+ stable in prime last time .
Gonna put it for 1h , then if everything will be fine - turn of my PC for 30 min , and only then run GTA ..... ( for some reason if I play it after reboot as I mention before - after ny type of freeze or bsod it will run like champ , so 30 min - cool down time +) ) .
P.S. after reading about Panda ... I start to suspect Kaspersky ... hmmmm gonna try to delete it tomorrow and run 441 fsb settings in GTA again , maybe

[RAYTTK]

Good luck, My problem may be caused by Ge-force drivers.

[Akrian]

Well I got GTA 4 , Prime stable at 439 ^____^
my G-skill crappy DDR3 1600 ram got stable at 1406 6-6-6-12 2t perf. lvl 6 which is ok i think
440 fsb strap and so on can go prime stable but fails to deliver when it comes to GTA and some-times LOTRO , I think it's because of NB voltage , but I don't want to go past 1.6 ( that's where I am now ) on NB so , 439 is fine ( Q9550 @ 3735mhz ) .
Now I shall wait for Phenom II on AM3 or get corei7 somwhere at summer for 4.0ghz on air on quad-core ^_____^

[RAYTTK]

I took my Northbridge to 1.7 under water all fans up But I could not get my QX6850 to hit 4GHZ, 3.85 was the best. I did get a 466 FSB tho which is great for a quad, So managed to get my Blue Cellshocks to run 1866. I hade to tune the GTL's because I was using 1.5 - 1.6 VTT.
After a week or two I decided to ease the volts.

[Akrian]

Well I don't have watercooling system yet , so 1.6 is my limit =) , besides there isn't much difference in gaming with 3.8 or 3.73 =)

[Akrian]

W00T got OCCT 1h stable ( didn't have time for games to test) on AUTO , and on RAM , with DDR3 1406 6-6-6-9 2T perf. lvl 6 , gives me 10K+ on everest memory test ^____^

[RAYTTK]

Good enough man. Even if you where on water you probably wouldn't get much better results just run cooler. I was overclocking hard with this board for about 4 months with Q9450, QX6850 and recently tried E8600, I just found out what the max stable clocks where then settled for a good 24/7 medium OC with nice temps because I intend sticking with this set up for the next year or so Im not falling for the Hipe so soon after the last time , After the time before & the time before that, Getting Older & wiser LOL

[Akrian]

Welll ..... my OCZ PSU died on me yesterday . At first I though that was my NB burned , or somthing , took eveything off . today got my amd based PC rebuild , and found out that it was my PSU . I think that's the reason of my Random BSOD at 440 FSB and up
Well At least got my Penom 9950 up to 3150mhz ... though I've puted cooler the wrong way and it's blocking one memory slot ... have no idea how to take it off now lol

[Akrian]

Need 1 more question to answer : will it be fine to run 1.635-1.645 v on NB with reasonable temps ?

[RAYTTK]

will it be fine to run 1.635-1.645 v on NB with reasonable temps ?

I would say its fine to run them volts as long as the PWM area,and south bridge are cool aswell. As you prob know my black ops died ( in RMA now) I & others think it was because I had no fans on the PWM or the RAM just water on the northbridge I was monitoring the NB temp all the time thinking it was ok (upto 1.65) but im using DFI UT T3RS now with a fan over the board aswell as water and everything is good.

[Akrian]

I didn't know , sry to hear that .
Is of Now I'm trying to get 442-444 fsb stable , since 439 was stable ( at least before my PSU died on me ) . I got Corsair TX850W now , and after some cable management ,I got my big fan on the panel of my case runnig , so instead of 53-55 under load , I get 44-48 =) on NB
I want to get 1.58 V on NB , was running it for soem time back then with 439 , seemed to work fine .

[Akrian]

Ok , now I konw what could have been limiting my OC - CPU VTT was set to 1.35 on G30 bios , which is actually 1.25 as I've found out in G32 threat ( I thought that they fixed that problem in G30 bios 0_o ) .
I managed to get stable with 443 yesterday , and now knowing that I can put 1.35 up to 1.45 without killing my CPU i'm gonna tray getting 447 ^____^ stabble

[Akrian]

UP
Ok, *back yo my own threaad*
To Saaya :
I didn't changed anything ( absolutely nothing) when I booted the next day .
SOmthing else to think about :
Catalyst 9.1 :
CTD in GTA 4 in 25-30 min on 439-444 FSB
AOC 444 crashes in 1h
Catalyst 8.12 ( ok again , BEHOLD )
ANYTHING more then 439 on fsb = bsod or freeze in GTA 4
starting from 442 ( possibly 441) - I can get random freezes in AoC .
that's the difference by changing just one driver 0_o
once again : HDD temp = checked , NB temps checked , Vid. card - OC/unOC doesnt make any difference , temps checked , CPU temps - checked , PSU temps - checked .

[Akrian]

ok , so here's the sum of what I did and didn't have much effect :
Problem description : Prime , IBT , memtest ( the one that's you can ran after booting to windows , since I didn't make any CD with memtest86) can run fine ( Prime 6h+ stable , IBt 1h+ stable , mem - 3h+ ) , games will freeze in 15 min , with repetetive sound , and no reboot , sometimes with bsod screen saying somthing about blah blah blah not less or equal to .... but that really rare occasions) .
1. CPU V - 1.35-1.385 - problems with complete freeze with repetetive sound , and no reboot still there .
2. NB V increase - I didn't go past 1.6 with 8.12 drivers , and really I don't want to .
3. CPU GTL's +10,+5,+10,+10 - gave me stable 6h prime95 blend test on 439-444 fsb , didn't affect gaming problem though
4. +5 on NB gives me the stability in prime , at 444 fsb
5. Vista reinstall - with 8.12 I will still get crashes in games in 15min .
6. Got 2nd PSU - Corsair 850W , with 70A ( if I'm not mistaken ) on +12V rail
7. Tried different voltage on ram , with anything from 1.686 to 1.98
8.Tried Cpu VTT - 1.35 or 1.42 set in bios
9.Tired CPU PLL from 1.5 to 1.58
10. Tired p02,P05,G30,G29,G32 Bioses
11. Tried Swaping my vid. card into my second rig ( before it died) , if i'm not mistaken it worked fine there
12. Tried 8.12 , 8.12 hotfix , 9.1 drivers for vid. card
with 8.12 , or 8.12 hotfix - games will freeze at 444 fsb , at 441 only GTA 4 will freeze , at 439 - it will go "out of video mem. " error in 40-50 min , other games seems to run fine
with 9.1 at 44 - I WON'T have ANY system freezes at all , at lest not the one that require hard reset . I will test 9.1 toady again on Clear Sky , but it seems so far that Conan will just freeze playing music and then you have to ctrl+alt+delete -> close program in about 1h.( tried 2 times got approx. 1h in both runs before it was doing this thing) . GTA 4 will do the same in 20-30min on 439-444 fsb with those drivers .
Prime will go with no issues though .
13. Tired chenging PCI-E slots for my Vid. card - no effect
While on friday I was at college , I ran Prime for 6h at 8.5 x 444 , After I cam back , and shut down prime , all temps were fine , and I played AoC , at first for 3H , and then for 2h with NO errors , freezes whatsoever, WITH 8.12 catalyst drivers . The next day i turned my PC on , started AoC without chaning any of the setting in bios , or anywhere else , and got freeze with repetetive sound withing 15 min . once again , I didn't chenge ANYTHING .
I'm just lost on how to make those 444 stable in games .
Things to try :
1. Reinstall vista with 9.1 drivers / do not allow to install updates for x48 chipset , and get everything from the disk that came with black ops
2. Try to run 101 , or 102 mhz on PCI-E instead of 100 exactely .
2. kick the out of this PC



******Update********
OMG I found another guy with exactely SAME problems as me ...... when I was reading his posts , it was almost as if I was reading about my own ps . same possed sound , same stable prime etc .
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=203024
Well post 4264 from the thread that HD CHOPPER gave there , also represents my problem ( 444 fsb / 439fsb) .
But still , exactely same problem .... hmmm ... well I mighyt as well get an excuse for buying new hard drive =) . I'll try to remount it thought first .
Thankfully I don't get freezings at stock ( At least I wasnt )
*******Update N2 *******
tested 444 fsb with 9.1 catalyst : a) Had apllication error in 1h , no freezings etc , just like before.
tested 443 fsb with same catalyst - 1,5h of pure gameplay no issues , and them BAM game froze , possesed repetetive sound , no reboot , no blue screen , had to reset .
well , tomorrow , given that I'll do all my stuf at the first part of the day I will try 439 and 441 on it , and see what will happen he he
besides I've never tried lowering the volts , only going up ....

[saaya]

lets see...
2d seems to be stable, but 3d crashes are pretty reproducable, right?
now which of the components could cause problems...

vista ultimate - excluded cause you tried a fresh install
Q9550 E0 - unlikely
Sapphire 4870x2 - suspicious candidate
Foxconn BlackOps - possibly
G-skill DDR 3 1600 2x2gb RAM - unlikely
PSU - OCZ 850 W - excluded cause you swapped it with another one
HDD - 160 GB seagate 7200 RPM - possibly

most likely its the vga... or the board.
first of all, does this happen at stock speed?
If no, then go back to stock speed and clock your way up bit by bit and try to find the breaking point, and then try to find whats causing it and fix it. the easiest thing id recommend you is to try another vga in your rig, ideally an nvidia vga to make sure its not a driver issue either with the games your playing.

another thing is your getting sound loops or weird sounds when the system hangs right?
it might be a soundcard problem! try the latest soundcard driver and remove the soundcard all together and see if everything works fine then

[Akrian]

lets see...
2d seems to be stable, but 3d crashes are pretty reproducable, right?
now which of the components could cause problems...

vista ultimate - excluded cause you tried a fresh install
Q9550 E0 - unlikely
Sapphire 4870x2 - suspicious candidate
Foxconn BlackOps - possibly
G-skill DDR 3 1600 2x2gb RAM - unlikely
PSU - OCZ 850 W - excluded cause you swapped it with another one
HDD - 160 GB seagate 7200 RPM - possibly

most likely its the vga... or the board.
first of all, does this happen at stock speed?
If no, then go back to stock speed and clock your way up bit by bit and try to find the breaking point, and then try to find whats causing it and fix it. the easiest thing id recommend you is to try another vga in your rig, ideally an nvidia vga to make sure its not a driver issue either with the games your playing.

another thing is your getting sound loops or weird sounds when the system hangs right?
it might be a soundcard problem! try the latest soundcard driver and remove the soundcard all together and see if everything works fine then

Vid. Card worked fine in my AMD rig , well I can try tu install my 2 4850's to get approx load for NB as 4870x2 gives it .
sound drivers installed , reinstalled , sound card - shuten off , didn't unplug it though
with 9.1 catalyst system can lost way longer then with 8.12 , for some reason .
See the last Nvidia card I had was geForce Mx440SE , a loooong time ago , since them I was a 100% ATI supporter ( had 9200 , x1950xt , 3870 toxic , 4850 ( 2 of them) , and 4870x2 . And to be honest , at the moment I don't think I can afford getting somthing that will have same performance as 4870x2 form nvidia camp =( ( student = limitetr amount of money X_X ) .
I'll try to go with testing 2 4850 , or one 4850 . and see how it will work .
but first - tommorow I'm gonna test 439 with lower NB voltage , maybe because of high volts , somthing overheats somwhere ....
About audio - when it freeze it makes a sound loop , for sure , but because it's really fast , it's just as Chris descibed in his threat "sound like possesed" =)
P.S. the last time I checked - GTA4 runs fine at stock , I din't go for long play though , I'll try that tomorrow as well


Also in support of what makes 4870x2 unlikely to be 1st suspect is that the lower the FSB I put the longer I can Play in games , and with different drivers , I get different results in stability ( so at least the harware fault of 4870x2 is less likely to be true)

[saaya]

just try a single 4850 and if that works fine, then the problem has def to do with the vga.
it might not be the vga but the nb, sure, but at least then we know its somehow related to the vga.

remove the soundcard and see if you still get those crashes.

how are you cooling the nb?

i know that looping sound with a game freeze... for me it was almost always when the vga was overclocked too high.

[Akrian]

Colling NB with fan that was with the mobo ( the small and ugly one ) + the giant big ass fan that is on the right side panel of the case , it gives me 39-40 temps with 1.6V idle , and 45-47 under games .
without the big ass fan on , I get up to 50-53 under games .

my 4870x2 is OC indeed , but I tried it at stock speeds , and got the same results . Also I have no clue how to explaing this by saing it's bad OC on vga - if I lower the FSB I get more stable right away .
Also I woke up today with strange idea : when I use Prime 95 blend tests , ram usage never goes more then 2 gigs , while under games it goes up to 3,5 .... even thought I passed hours of memtest in windows , it might be that timings are just too tight , when it comes to games , and thus i get crashes .... so 7-7-7-18 PL8 test will also be done today .
I'll start as soon as I get home ( In about 4,5 h) , and post results at midnight ( most likely) .
The problem is that between each test I have to wait 30 min , otherwise if I reboot I can play with no freezes up to 1,5h each time ( confirmed issue under 8.12 drivers) .
The last time I tested 4850 on This board , when my PSU was down , and I couldn't use 4870x2 , I got freezes while watching movies at 444fsb . But I had no additional fans on that I have now , so we'll see what will happen .
BTW thanks for support , I feel that after 2 month of OC struggling I will finally get it stable soon
*******
Just zoomed through ATI forums , sound like some people have similar issues to mine , and here's some solution to try ( didn't help to everyone thoguh)
1. disable catalyst AI
2. turn of Aero in Vista .
Well 2 more things to do then huh