Hardware problem, help needed

ElectroMagneticFreak said:

If you can pull it off ,why upgrade and go broke for a few more frames per second?

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Exactly my point.

What's the point of upgrading your equipement for hundreds of dollars when you can have the exact same performance on a machine costing HALF that amount of money?

So what if you can't use Morphological Antialiasing and 16x Anisotrophic filtering? Those are pretty much extra-stress settings for highest cutting edge PCs which only decrease performance without providing any noticeable, if any, visual gain. But some people just aren't happy if absolutely all possible and impossible settings aren't maxed out.

I always go for "Best buy" options. Best performance on limited budget. When I was buying my PC some 3 years back, I spend almost an entire week Googling through every possible benchmark results and prices to assemble the most powerful $450 machine I could.
With a Radeon 4670 and Athlon II 7750+BE, it ran pretty much everything.

Only Crysis 2 ever demanded a resolution decrease, and DX10 exclusive titles weren't shining.

Now with GTX260 upgrade, even those are all maxed out or almost maxed out.

So yeah we pretty much agree

I'm doing research about ongoing trends in gaming rigs for past few weeks, and will continue to do so until sometime later next month because aforementioned friend of mine is buying a secondary gaming PC and asked me to create a rig for him. And that's exactly what I'm going to do. Squeeze in $1000 OEM machine performance into $600 custom made hand-picked components rig.

The awkward moment, when my graphics card alone cost more then your PC :/

Maybe I should be more like you and research more before buying. I'm an impulse buyer... which isn't a good thing as my bank account has already found out.

Well to be honest, now with my upgrade my GPU costs more than the rest of my computer too.

See, when I was buying my computer, 3 years back, another friend of mine was also buying his.
My entire computer, along with my graphics card, came around at 2350 HRK I think.
His was around 6500+ HRK. GPU alone, the GTX260 from Gigabyte (with 216 stream processors, not 192) was around 2100 HRK.

So if you exclude my GPU which was 600HRK from my computer, rest of my machine is around 1700 HRK, + 2100HRK GPU

And it works, there are no chokepoints in my system. With my old GPU, I could run Modern Warfare 3 at max resolution and pretty much everything turned on and maxed out, except SSAO (they didn't make good of this effect in this game), and some Normal maps were turned down from Extra to High because the lack of video memory.

Not that Modern Warfare 3 is worth a damn, though. MW2 was better game IMO.

If I were to play Battlefield 3 on my old GPU, I would proabably have to turn down the resolution down to maybe 1280x800 like I have with Crysis 2, and optimise a lot od settings - but it's playable, I tried it.

With my new GPU though...

All gametime average of some 40 FPS, sometimes spiking and sometimes dropping but it's more than playable.

Overall I expect this system to last me at least another 3 years.

What is your system? I assume your GPU is somewhere around GTX680 territory

OK.

Usually a game doesn't just force a different resolution by itself.

Also, bobhaha, there haven't been monitor drivers since the 1990s. The only monitors these days are expensive unobtainium monitors that the average consumer wouldn't dream of having. Monitors these days all talk to the card through a PnP interface that pretty much auto-negotiates things like resolution and refresh rate.

Anyway.

First of all, make sure you're running the latest version of AMD's Catalyst drivers, which is 12.4. You can get these from AMD Support & Drivers

Make absolutely sure you're running the latest drivers from AMD. Do a clean install of your drivers.

Second -- is the card stable for all other games, or is it just Battlefield 3 that causes issues? If it's Battlefield 3 that's just having the issue, then I'd suspect it'd be the game.

Start the game with all the eye-candy off (and no AA/AF).

Make sure the card itself is clean. It would've been a better bet to clean the card than the PSU.

Third -- make sure the card is stable and doesn't crash when running anything else. I personally use 3DMark06 for testing (PM me about this if you want to give it a shot). It's still the best of the synthetics for stability testing, and in conjunction with FurMark, can pick up just about anything.

P.S. AA does work, especially if you have a bigger monitor. Then again, that stuff is called eye-candy for a reason. When you're busy [strike]camping[/strike] capping an objective, you won't notice said eye-candy half the time.

P.P.S The rest of you: Shotgun debugging - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

P.P.P.S Too much money? Never.

Eudaimonium said:

Yes that's exactly "disagreeing". If you'd, pretty please, READ my opening post, you will see that I have completely and undoubtfully eliminated the possiblity of PSU causing the fault.

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I did read it, I still think it is the issue, I fix pcs, I have run into the exact same issue, and your method of testing a psu was hardly 100%, test what you want, I have had no issue with BF3 on a 1400 x 900 monitors, out of freq error, is 9 times out of 10 is a driver crash caused by bad hardware, if you really do think its the monitor, try a TV see if it still does it. Also you say you messed with settings but I hate to ask, did you turn off AA.

"ALSO I had him run Super Pi in background along with Just Cause 2 (the only other DX10 exclusive game he had installed) to fully stress out the system, and it didn't crash"

does not 100% eliminate your PSU, you need to use an oscilloscope on the 12v rail or use a psu tester, and even then you would not be at 100%. I gave an old 775 chipset PC to a freind to game with me, I put a 6670 gpu in it, it has a hp 1400x900 moniter, and low and behold 15 minutes into the game, same thing. I fixed it with a new PSU.

It may not be the issue, the issue could be even a intermittent handshake error on your monitor, but I doubt it.

Oceansoul said:

OK.

Usually a game doesn't just force a different resolution by itself.

Also, bobhaha, there haven't been monitor drivers since the 1990s. The only monitors these days are expensive unobtainium monitors that the average consumer wouldn't dream of having. Monitors these days all talk to the card through a PnP interface that pretty much auto-negotiates things like resolution and refresh rate.

Anyway.

First of all, make sure you're running the latest version of AMD's Catalyst drivers, which is 12.4. You can get these from AMD Support & Drivers

Make absolutely sure you're running the latest drivers from AMD. Do a clean install of your drivers.

Second -- is the card stable for all other games, or is it just Battlefield 3 that causes issues? If it's Battlefield 3 that's just having the issue, then I'd suspect it'd be the game.

Start the game with all the eye-candy off (and no AA/AF).

Make sure the card itself is clean. It would've been a better bet to clean the card than the PSU.

Third -- make sure the card is stable and doesn't crash when running anything else. I personally use 3DMark06 for testing (PM me about this if you want to give it a shot). It's still the best of the synthetics for stability testing, and in conjunction with FurMark, can pick up just about anything.

P.S. AA does work, especially if you have a bigger monitor. Then again, that stuff is called eye-candy for a reason. When you're busy [strike]camping[/strike] capping an objective, you won't notice said eye-candy half the time.

P.P.S The rest of you: Shotgun debugging - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

P.P.P.S Too much money? Never.

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Done done and done.

Single and solely BF3 - everything else runs perfectly.

Will try.

I figured since he game is running nicely there's no reason to turn all the eye-candy off. I'll give it a shot - first turn off absolutely everything and gradually turning on different settings until I hit the jackpot, then just avoid that and optimise everything else.

Also, it's a pirated copy of the game, meant solely for singleplayer, so camping an objective is kind of a weird thing to do when playing offline

TheReddish said:

I did read it, I still think it is the issue, I fix pcs, I have run into the exact same issue, and your method of testing a psu was hardly 100%, test what you want, I have had no issue with BF3 on a 1400 x 900 monitors, out of freq error, is 9 times out of 10 is a driver crash caused by bad hardware, if you really do think its the monitor, try a TV see if it still does it. Also you say you messed with settings but I hate to ask, did you turn off AA.

"ALSO I had him run Super Pi in background along with Just Cause 2 (the only other DX10 exclusive game he had installed) to fully stress out the system, and it didn't crash"

does not 100% eliminate your PSU, you need to use an oscilloscope on the 12v rail or use a psu tester, and even then you would not be at 100%. I gave an old 775 chipset PC to a freind to game with me, I put a 6670 gpu in it, it has a hp 1400x900 moniter, and low and behold 15 minutes into the game, same thing. I fixed it with a new PSU.

It may not be the issue, the issue could be even a intermittent handshake error on your monitor, but I doubt it.

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Uhh, I believe it does 100% eliminate PSU, since the system was under higher stress than running only BF3 which causes the crash.

Antialiasing Deffered was completely turned off,
Antialiasing was on Low, same as on the screenshot from my system above.

However, I'll give it a shot.

I'm not a mega computer nerd, though AFAIK a computer isn't able to just force off it's power like that, at least, not without leaving a trace, and it wouldn't be intentional either otherwise M$ would cop a lot of crap about their OS becoming corrupt because the computer forced itself off.

Hardware issues can be very odd sometimes. It may not seem like one at first, and just because it doesn't do it on anything else doesn't mean it's not the issue.

It could even be something as complex as the GPU clock frequency causing a resonance in the computer PSU, freaking out it's protection circuitry .. who knows.

Do you at least have a spare PSU you could try?

Eudaimonium said:

What is your system? I assume your GPU is somewhere around GTX680 territory

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Intel i7 920
12GB corsair 1666MHz DDR3 RAM
OCZ 120GB SSD Vertex 3 + 500GB 7200RPM WD drive for storage
HD 5970 with aftermarket cooler
Corsair 650W PSU

Also, bobhaha, there haven't been monitor drivers since the 1990s. The only monitors these days are expensive unobtainium monitors that the average consumer wouldn't dream of having. Monitors these days all talk to the card through a PnP interface that pretty much auto-negotiates things like resolution and refresh rate.

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Actually I think you'll find most manufactures do have drivers for the specific monitors they sell. I know cause I've updated mine from Viewsonic. But I do agree.. most run off a plug and play driver.

Things said:

I'm not a mega computer nerd, though AFAIK a computer isn't able to just force off it's power like that, at least, not without leaving a trace, and it wouldn't be intentional either otherwise M$ would cop a lot of crap about their OS becoming corrupt because the computer forced itself off.

Hardware issues can be very odd sometimes. It may not seem like one at first, and just because it doesn't do it on anything else doesn't mean it's not the issue.

It could even be something as complex as the GPU clock frequency causing a resonance in the computer PSU, freaking out it's protection circuitry .. who knows.

Do you at least have a spare PSU you could try?

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Sure it can. How else do the Windows power the computer down when you press "Shut down"?

A few lines in low-level Assembler language can do an overload on your processor's power regulation and burn it out.

I don't have a spare PSU to try it out.

bobhaha said:

Intel i7 920
12GB corsair 1666MHz DDR3 RAM
OCZ 120GB SSD Vertex 3 + 500GB 7200RPM WD drive for storage
HD 5970 with aftermarket cooler
Corsair 650W PSU

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Damm.

That system could last you some good 5-6 years if you're willing to accept compromises in quality. About 2 if you are "Nothing less than FXAA on ULTRA" kind of guy.

What is your monitor resolution?

Eudaimonium said:

Sure it can. How else do the Windows power the computer down when you press "Shut down"?

A few lines in low-level Assembler language can do an overload on your processor's power regulation and burn it out.

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It turns it off after performing the correct shut down sequence, there wouldn't be a way for it to just hard shut down the machine without something being corrupted.

This seriously sounds like a PSU issue to me though. If it was anything to do with software, there would be traces of an error. I'm assuming you've checked the event log and found nothing.

Things said:

Do you at least have a spare PSU you could try?

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What I would try doing too. Aside from a PSU issue I have never seen a computer turn off by itself.

Did you tried another monitor ? I can hardly believe a monitor can cause a computer locked up.

If it were a PSU issue, it would also present itself during Super Pi + Just Cause stress testing - PSU doesn't give a cr*p what game you play as long as it's shelling out the amps required by the big guys.

I am almost 100% positive it's a GPU issue, with some sort of software incompatibility/bugs.

I'll let you guys know when my buddy gets online and tries lowering all the settings to bare minimum - if it STILL crashes, then I blaime cocaine residue in processor's die. And black magic. Can never go wrong with black magic.

Eudaimonium said:

Sure it can. How else do the Windows power the computer down when you press "Shut down"?

A few lines in low-level Assembler language can do an overload on your processor's power regulation and burn it out.

I don't have a spare PSU to try it out.

Damm.

That system could last you some good 5-6 years if you're willing to accept compromises in quality. About 2 if you are "Nothing less than FXAA on ULTRA" kind of guy.

What is your monitor resolution?

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Well that was the point

Native resolution is 1960x1080 if I recall correctly

Eudaimonium said:

If it were a PSU issue, it would also present itself during Super Pi + Just Cause stress testing - PSU doesn't give a cr*p what game you play as long as it's shelling out the amps required by the big guys.

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Like I said in my previous post, just because it doesn't fail in a stress test doesn't mean it's not a PSU issue. Everyone on this forum knows how damn fussy semiconductors can be

Well, I am going to have to put that thesis on hold for now, because I really do not have any other PSU to try.

If the settings minimum doesn't get it, then I'll see if I can perhaps borrow a spare PSU from a computer store ran by a guy who's a family friend. That's pretty much the only thing I can think of right now.

So you know why I'm reluctant to go ahead to bother people when problem might or might not be somewhere else.