ATI Radeon X850XT passes all benches, crashes with most recent 3D games

[Zforgetaboutit]

2.5-3-3-7

Recall that I was recovering from a raid crash and since BF 1942 wasn't on the array but on a 3rd disk I tried playing it as is. It still froze at the menu screen. I reinstalled it and it played OK. So no smoking gun there.

 

[trog100]

he he he.. i spose part of the memory could go faulty in a way that stops it running at the timings its supoosed to run at..

i put the heat sink on an XP 3000+ on the wrong way round and fried the thing.. it wouldnt run at all at its proper speed of 2.2 gig-ish.. but it ran pefectly at about 1.8 gig.. dead but not dead so to speak.. more like injured.. he he he

trog

 

[Zforgetaboutit]

I didn't recall (I knew this before last summer but forgot about it after I first build this PC)

• when using 4 dimms you should expect to have to relax the timings because the CPU's memory controller has more overhead handling dual channel memory. E.g. Command Per Clock goes from 1T to 2T when migrating from single channel to dual channel ram
  
• every mobo has its own signal progation characteristics coupled with timing abilities dictated by its BIOS

Put all this together and you may or may not be able to achieve the dimm's nominal timings.

 

[trog100]

well just to add a twist to this story.. i have just discovered after about six week of running my new system i have "memory" problems.. i mentioned a past experience with farcry at the begiinning of this thread.. this was a long time ago on another system..

i thought my system was stable.. played all my games okay.. doom.. quake 4.. fear.. seriouse sam.. ran all the 3dmarks perfectly.. u name it the system seemed perfectly okay..

i just bought a new wide screen monitor.. tried to run flatout a game i aint played for while.. some levels loaded and played perfectly.. some locked up on the loading screen.. i was useing my past saves so i had plenty to go at..

i put it down to some kinda weird file corruption or save thing and never thought any more about it..

just recently i have tried to install some new games.. one installed okay but bombed back to windows as soon as i tried to play the first level.. i just put it down to a duff copy.. the other came up with corupted cab-file error during the install having quickpared and unrared okay..

my quickpar has come up with some weird "fail to verify" errors on some very large downloads.. most of the time it works okay..

anyway i tried useing my laptop.. same bunch of rars.. this time quickpar just did the business and repaired any missing bits and installed the game okay.... hmmm.. so it aint crap downloads like i thought its my main machine.. he he he..

u guessed it.. yep its memory problems.. slowed the timings down to cas 3 from cas 2.5 and flatout will now play all levels as opposed to just some and quickpar has stopped coming up with the odd error on certain large downloads..

having read thru this forum a lot i recon memory problems (memtest only finding the real bad cases) are at the root of many a wierd and seemingly inexplicable AMD dual channel 64 bit chip system problem.. that on chip dual channel controler is a bit iffy in some instances i recon.. he he

my memory wasnt set too fast it should run cas 2.5 at the speed it was running at.. most of the time it did but some times it didnt it seems.. ????

i found the problem (once i knew i had one) by slowing things down overclocked or not.. i arrived at "memory"..

trog

ps.. i know one thing.. running prime all night and all the usual stability tests aint worth a wotsit.. its whether or not everything works as it should on a day to day basis that matters.. the other junk gives only a very rough idea and should never be relied upon entirely..

 

[Zforgetaboutit]

I've also experienced Quickpar issues from time to time on really big sets. It's happened 4-5 times in the last 9 months and not all since my crash.

Here's a funnie for ya: sometime when I unrar an archive it'll take, say 30 seconds. If I do it a 2nd time right away (I was curious if anything got cached) it takes maybe 10+ seconds longer. If I delete the target, or have the target go to another disk it still takes appreciably longer. Same longer times for 3rd and 4th unpacks. Wierd.

My PC was otherwise idle during these operations. This is fairly reproducible on my nightly drive-defragged system.

Note: I've specified no Win XP swap file(s) since inception because I feel 2 GB ram will handle everything I throw at it.

 

[trog100]

"Note: I've specified no Win XP swap file(s) since inception because I feel 2 GB ram will handle everything I throw at it"

they do say thtat doing that is bad idea.. if u have enough real memory u wont be useing your swop file anyways so having one dosnt matter.. and they say that windows caches stuff just for the hell of it and its best left to do it in its swopfile sooner than clutter up your real memory with it..

who knows.. i have one.. but just a limited size one. just to be only safe side.. he he he

trog

 

[Megatron]

Some programs wont work without a swapfile, I heard some graphical programs.

 

[trog100]

yes i think u are right megatron.. they look for it and if it isnt there they wont work..

trog

 

[Dynamic]

The problem with using 4 sticks of memory in dual channel mode is that you realy can't overclock it as well compared to 2 sticks. Also as suggested if you have tried 2t MA-TIMING or not since most boards will not run 4 sticks of memory at 1t command rate. Have you tried taking two of the extra sticks out for further testing? You should keep everything at stock default speeds and then test to see where you stand, good luck!

 

[Zforgetaboutit]

So far, with relaxed RAM timing, I've been able to play UT2004 for hours. Before the timing change it would crash instantly.

CPU/Video are still at stock.

I'm not worried about them, and will OC the cpu in phases, back to its former 2.6 GHz glory.

 

[trog100]

yep one thing at a time..

trog

 

[zekrahminator]

...and to think I thought you melted your GPU RAM, carmelized your X850XT's heatpaste, or just plain melted your card . I think that suddenly pushing the card to 600/600 could have made the memory run faster then it could, and that might have melted something...lol. but then you started talking about RAM timings, and how all sorts of system stability tests were running fine, so yeah, I got confused . Have you tried reseating card/cooler? Replacing cooler is definitely a good idea.

 

[zekrahminator]

and if you're thinking about a cooler replacement, zalman or arctic both make good coolers.

 

[Zforgetaboutit]

... Have you tried reseating card/cooler? ...

I reseated the Radeon during my initial debugging when I tried another vid card.

As of the time of this post I can report that I've had no graphics problems at all since the tentative recovery (using relaxed ram timings) from the original incident.

There were lots of good suggestions within this thread.

 

[trog100]

having read thru lots of "problem" posts.. one thing is clear.. the amd 64 chips memory controler can be a bit iffy when running dual channel.. the bigger the memory modules the greater the problems..

memory can not always be guaranteed to work at the timings or speeds the makers claim it can work at..

trog