Locking & Sound Looping / Visual Bugs

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Hi everyone. I'm new to this but I will try to explain my problem as well as I can.

I have recently received my PC back from repairs and I noticed that whenever I play Cod2 or Cod4 ONLINE, after a while the PC freezes. I can't Alt+F4 or go into task manager. It just freezes completely and the sound keeps looping. Each time I have to manually restart my PC from the button. Single player works fine for both games and VGA temperatures aren't a problem since I've tried keeping it as cool as possible and the problem still occurred. The VGA is also not the problem cos I've tried 3 different ones, a 280GTX, 285GTX and now I got a 512MB 9600GT, and the problem still occurs.

I've also noticed some visual bugs in some games, visual bugs that appeared with all the 3 different VGA's installed. I noticed that in BioShock2 some water ripples appear with pixels and bright lights emitted from broken electricity cables appear in like a shutter mode.
In Splinter Cell Conviction, some surface reflections also appear with pixels. In Assassin's Creed 2 whenever a bright white light appears in a cinematic, the image is like getting constantly refreshed from top to bottom.

As I already said the VGA's are fine since they are all new. Even the Mobo is new although I really don't know how to be certain the issue is not related.


Here is my rig:

Manufacturer:
Custom Built.

Processor:
Intel Core2Quad Q9550 @ 2.83GHz.

Memory:
OCZ Blade 4GB DDR2 800MHz.

Hard Drive:
Seagate 500GB + a Maxtor 120GB which is always empty.

Video Card:
9600GT 512MB

Operating System:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit.

Motherboard:
Asus P5QD Turbo.

PSU: 750W NOX Extreme Pulsar

Thanks for your time and attention.

 

[DRDNA]

raise the voltage on the NB a little and or the memory too and retest.

 

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My CPU and everything else is at stock clock. Why should I raise the NB voltage?
Thanks.

 

[DRDNA]

too see if the PC becomes stable.

 

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Is the option on the BIOS called something like "nb voltage"? And how much should I raise it to?

Thx.

 

[erocker]

Make sure all of your drivers are up to date.

Sound Drivers
Video Drivers
Motherboard Chipset Drivers
DirectX
Windows Update

 

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Drivers are all up to date.

 

[KingPing]

Run Memtest to check the RAM

What PSU do you have? ( Brand, model, wattage)

 

[KingPing]

My CPU and everything else is at stock clock. Why should I raise the NB voltage?
Thanks.

If everything is stock with no OC, then the RAM should be running 800Mhz at 1.8v, or maybe not, check the RAM frequency and voltage

 

[Mussels]

My CPU and everything else is at stock clock. Why should I raise the NB voltage?
Thanks.

because if your PSU is weakening and not providing the power it should, raising voltages can help compensate.

NB and ram are the two that usually suffer this problem, because they're the least tolerant of voltage drops.

Both of those components when acting up, can cause system freezes like what you have described.

 

[streetfighter 2]

"AI Overclock Tuner" may have to be set to manual in the "Ai Tweaker" tab if "DRAM VOLTAGE" and "NB VOLTAGE" do not appear or are not adjustable.

You can bump the RAM to 2V safely (it is rated to 2.1V). The setting is called "DRAM VOLTAGE" in the BIOS.

Bump the NB voltage to 1.2V (1.3V is reasonably safe). The setting is called "NB VOLTAGE" in the BIOS.

You can go to the "Hardware Monitor" in your BIOS to check what the voltages are currently at. You only need to bump them up a little bit.

An alternative to increasing the RAM voltage is to underclock the DRAM using the "RAM FREQUENCY" setting in the BIOS

 

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I will try and raise the ram and nb voltage alternatively and check if the pc becomes stable.
@KingPing My power suppy is a 750w NOX Xtreme Pulsar.

Sorry for the late reply guys I had the night shift.
Thanks.

 

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@ KingPing - I was wrong about the ram, they are set at 800Mhz.

 

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Artifacts

Okay guy as I said before, I raised the nb and dram voltage and no crashes so far but the artifacts are still visible.

This is the 3rd vga I've experienced the artifacts with. What I saw till now is:

Pixeled water in BioShock2
Pixeled reflections in Splinter Cell Conviction
Shutter like lights in BioShock2 and Assassins Creed 2
And shadows in Cod 2, 4 and 6 are all randomly spread apart and square shaped.

Thx for the help about the voltages
& sry about the late posts.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

if you have a spare machine around - take your 9600GT n plug it in, run a few 3d benchmarks like 3d06/vantage - if it crashes = time to RMA. if it passes then its nothing to do with your graphics card. at least that eliminates the GPU as the cause/source of your issues. Im suprised no ones already suggested this.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

do you have any other expansion cards installed?? like a soundcard or something?

 

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no FreedomEclipse, I am also using my on-board sound card.

 

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Bad news. The lock and sound loop on cod2 and cod4 still occurred even though I raised the nb and dram voltages .... I will try and raise the nb voltage a bit more, I'll set it to 1.4v instead of 1.2

 

[FreedomEclipse]

then I dont know then - but i suggest giving your 9600GT a some 3d bench tests since artifacts are GPU related. stick it in the other pc, play some games at high rez, run 3d05, 6 & vantage at least 3 times each - always keep your eye on the screen n watch for artifacts - if theres still nothing wrong with it. install MSI Kombustor - max out the settings on Kombustor n put it through 10 or 15mins of stress testing - do note, it would be most wise to krank your GPU fan upto 70/80%. If it is the card Kombustor will fail.

 

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The exact same artifacts and same lock ups that are happening on this 9600GT also happened on the 280 and 285GTX, which were both brand new and tested on other machines. I will try the stress testing anyways and post the results. But as I said, it is rare to have the SAME EXACT freezes and artifacts on 3 different, all brand new and tested VGA's.

Thx FreedomEclipse, I hope that kombustor really does fail.

 

[streetfighter 2]

Bad news. The lock and sound loop on cod2 and cod4 still occurred even though I raised the nb and dram voltages .... I will try and raise the nb voltage a bit more, I'll set it to 1.4v instead of 1.2

I'd go to 1.3V before 1.4V on the NB. 1.4V is pretty high on the NB unless you've installed some aftermarket cooling.

You'd have better luck kicking up your RAM voltage because it is rated up to 2.1V.

Try running memtest. Use another PCI-E slot if you have another. Oh and do what FreedomEclipse said.

 

[Mussels]

The exact same artifacts and same lock ups that are happening on this 9600GT also happened on the 280 and 285GTX, which were both brand new and tested on other machines. I will try the stress testing anyways and post the results. But as I said, it is rare to have the SAME EXACT freezes and artifacts on 3 different, all brand new and tested VGA's.

Thx FreedomEclipse, I hope that kombustor really does fail.

then something else is wrong with your system, likely the power supply or motherboard.

 

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@ Mussels
The mobo is brand new although I have no certain proof yet that the problem is not it. The power supply is indeed a bit old now and the brand sucks so I thought about what you said. Is it possible for a power supply to display these artifacts? A freeze would be logical if the psu was faulty, but ... artifacts???

Thx for responses.

 

[TIGR]

What are your CPU and GPU temps when this happens?

Have you run Memtest? Also run a hard drive scan (I usually use HDTune Pro, the thorough scan not the quick one).

Faulty PSUs can cause a lot of unusual problems because, by providing unclean or inadequate power, they can cause other hardware components to behave erratically. At very least, you can check what voltage values your BIOS reports for your PSU. If there is another PSU around that you can try, it's worth swapping it in after checking the hard drive, RAM, and temps. This really sounds like a video card problem, but since you said the problem remains when you test with other cards, I suspect that the power getting to your video card may be problematic. Otherwise, probably system RAM.

 

[DRDNA]

I am leaning towards the mobo ...sorry...RMA and see what happens. You did say its brand new.

Yes its possible for the PSU to cause these type of symptoms, but the 512MB 9600GT is doing it too and now I would think that PSU would handle that ok so I am leaning towards the mobo, but it could also be the ram and if you proven the ram to be good then I say mobo.
Also hate to say this but it could also be software related (a reinstall of windows would verify that).