Possible VRAM problem

[lZKoce]

Hi all, hope you are having an awesome week. Yesterday evening I had an enlightement about a problem I have and I want to validate if I am right. So I got a new laptop, a few months ago. And from day one when I installed Starcraft2 and playing Desert Strike map and when the units become many many - the game would come with something like: Your computer has run out of virtual memory. The specs are in my signature, but in case you don't want to click: the VRAM is 2GB DDR3 and the system ram is Corsair Vengeance 2x4GB 1600MHZ. In other words on 1366x768 is highly improbable. Then once (back then) the whole machine glitched and the screen covered in colorful squares and messed up lines. I thought it was one time only, but recently I put Disciples II Rise of the Elves, as an evergreen to play around with, and it started to appear like beween every 5 minutes and every few hours. Then I tested on Dead Space 3- nothing- I can go on DS3 for hours on, without a hick up. Long story short here's what hit me: one of the memory chips is bad. Let's say they are 4x512mb. When the applications uses below e.g 1gig the card is fine, but when it hits 1,5 gb the bad buffer kicks in and the whole laptop freezes with annoying sound. Is there a way to stress test the VRAM alone? Can you tell me some program>? or any other way. Help appreaciated in advance.

[Mathragh]

Sounds to me like you indeed have a problem, although I can't say for certain what.
I'd suggest the following:

Try different drivers, if you didn't already, and see if the problem persists.
If it does; you'd better just RMA your laptop, because if it really is faulty memory, it will fall under the warranty and they're obliged to replace it with a correctly functioning unit.

[de.das.dude]

yup its a ram problem.

also there arent any specs in your signature

[lZKoce]

Originally Posted by de.das.dude

yup its a ram problem.

also there arent any specs in your signature

Ops my mistake, I never knew there was "show system specs" button. Fixed.

I tried different drivers and it is there. I played a little Blacklight Retribution just a few minutes ago, with nVidia inspector opened on the background. It registers the GPU clock, but under memory usage it shows 0mb during the whole game and when I entered the game it said my graphics card might not have enough memory. I am writing an e-mail to the shop I bought it from and see what happens.

[BiggieShady]

Originally Posted by lZKoce

Is there a way to stress test the VRAM alone? Can you tell me some program>? or any other way. Help appreaciated in advance.

If you want to stress test your VRAM for errors, you can use MemTestCL

[Aquinus]

Originally Posted by lZKoce

I installed Starcraft2 and playing Desert Strike map and when the units become many many - the game would come with something like: Your computer has run out of virtual memory.

Is your swap file disabled? If the 630M shares system memory it is possible that your running out of memory if your swap file is disabled. SC2 uses a decent amount of memory in addition to Windows and whatever else is running in the background.

I would play SC2 with the resource monitor in the background so the next time this comes up you will be able to find out if you filled up your physical memory and if the number of hard faults goes through the roof. If the page file is disabled, it will run fine then give you the error. Otherwise if the page file is enabled, it should slow down the game a lot after swapping Windows out of memory.

All in all, it really sounds like your page file is disabled and you need to turn it on or at least make it bigger if it is already on.

If a memory chip was truly bad, your machine most likely wouldn't boot or you would be getting BSODs the instant you tried to load up Windows.

Did this start happening after you change the ram?

[lZKoce]

Originally Posted by Aquinus

Is your swap file disabled? If the 630M shares system memory it is possible that your running out of memory if your swap file is disabled. SC2 uses a decent amount of memory in addition to Windows and whatever else is running in the background.

I would play SC2 with the resource monitor in the background so the next time this comes up you will be able to find out if you filled up your physical memory and if the number of hard faults goes through the roof. If the page file is disabled, it will run fine then give you the error. Otherwise if the page file is enabled, it should slow down the game a lot after swapping Windows out of memory.

All in all, it really sounds like your page file is disabled and you need to turn it on or at least make it bigger if it is already on.

If a memory chip was truly bad, your machine most likely wouldn't boot or you would be getting BSODs the instant you tried to load up Windows.

Did this start happening after you change the ram?

The page files is set to: "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives" . For drive "D" there is none, for drive "C" it is 1152 right now.

I don't know about the RAM, since I changed it before the first boot of the laptop. All the parts arrived at the same moment. There was never "before" changing the RAM.

[Aquinus]

Originally Posted by lZKoce

There was never "before" changing the RAM.

Always test hardware before you go changing it. Do you still have the old DIMMs and are they DDR3-1600?

[lZKoce]

Originally Posted by Aquinus

Always test hardware before you go changing it. Do you still have the old DIMMs and are they DDR3-1600?

I don't have it anymore. It was Sumsung 4GB DDR3 1600Mhz. Now I register this is a mistake too. Well, it seems, it will be the way it will be. I haven't got a response from the shop yet, but if they want the PC in the fabric order I bought it from, in order to respect the warranty, then I'll just have to shut up and think more next time. I will do the mem test BiggieShady suggested now and post results.

EDIT: the mem test finished. After 50 iterations there are 0 errors, BUT: it said GPU 0 with 128 mb RAM, where is the rest?. (I couldn't make a screenshot, because it closed by itself). Now that explains why BLR asked me if I have 256mb video card.

[Aquinus]

Originally Posted by lZKoce

GPU 0 with 128 mb RAM, where is the rest?. (I couldn't make a screenshot, because it closed by itself). Now that explains why BLR asked me if I have 256mb video card.

Maybe the HD 4000 is GPU 0 and has allocated 256Mb of memory for video. I suspect that the 630 is GPU 1.

[lZKoce]

I wish, but nVidia Inspector assigns GPU 0 to it too. Anyway, thanks a lot to everyone. I'll see to what happens next.

[de.das.dude]

disable the HD4000 and try it.

[Jstn7477]

You can't disable the IGP on NVIDIA Optimus/AMD PowerXPress laptops, as it is connected to the display outputs.

Also, I bought Crucial 4GB sticks for my laptop 2 years ago, and each of them ended up dying after a few months, resulting in the laptop freezing or BSODing with ear raping sounds.

[itsakjt]

Try one thing. Play with only one stick of RAM and see results. If the problem occurs, then try the other RAM. I think it is some memory incompatibility issue.