Curse

Mantis · Apr 20, 2005, 10:58 AM // 10:58

I am hoping that I can get some help here before the games go live. I have 'freezes' or lag in the game that can last for a couple of seconds up to a minute. This can be standing still or in full battle.

I have DSL.

System Specs

DFI Lanparty NFII Ultra B motherboard
Asus 9600xt ATI
AMD AthlonXP 3200+ (2.20GHz)
Samsung harddrive (2 in Sata O) 120GB
1 GB Ram

I am heading to work and will not be able to view this thread until after 5pm central.
I have all the latest drivers for my graphics card and I am running Windows XP SP2. Any other specs that are needed, let me know and I will provide

Sin · Apr 20, 2005, 11:35 AM // 11:35

If you are using spybot, I found it was dreadful for causing those lag moments and hangs during GuildWars betas. Webroot SpySweeper has solved both problems well for me.

kirab · Apr 20, 2005, 08:50 PM // 20:50

Try cleaning off the dust on your fans if you think overheating is the problem. It worked for me.

Mantis · Apr 20, 2005, 10:41 PM // 22:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sin

If you are using spybot, I found it was dreadful for causing those lag moments and hangs during GuildWars betas. Webroot SpySweeper has solved both problems well for me.

I do have spybot installed on my system, but I only use it weekly. Are you suggesting an uninstall to see if this cures my problems? I will give this a try. Any other programs that you suggest being a problem? I also have the Microsoft Antispyware that I kill when I game.

I will post results to the removal of spybot. GW is not the only game I am having problems with...

Quote:

Originally Posted by kirab

Try cleaning off the dust on your fans if you think overheating is the problem. It worked for me.

I put my puter together about 8 months ago. But, I have had the case open in the last month and did the recommended cleaning.

Mantis · Apr 20, 2005, 11:01 PM // 23:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sin

If you are using spybot, I found it was dreadful for causing those lag moments and hangs during GuildWars betas. Webroot SpySweeper has solved both problems well for me.

Ok. Its a little better. I am going to remove all of the spyware programs and tryout the one you suggested. Will post another follow up.....

Mss Drizzt · Apr 20, 2005, 11:18 PM // 23:18

If you are running the lastest ATI drivers I found them to be buggy. You should roll them back or go get an earlyier set.

Download 3dmark05/03 to stress the card out for a good test.

http://www.guru3d.com/

You can get the drivers and 3dmark at this web site.

Mantis · Apr 20, 2005, 11:55 PM // 23:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mss Drizzt

If you are running the lastest ATI drivers I found them to be buggy. You should roll them back or go get an earlyier set.

Download 3dmark05/03 to stress the card out for a good test.

http://www.guru3d.com/

You can get the drivers and 3dmark at this web site.

Thanks Mss Drizzt. The removal of the spyware programs did not help. I am downloading the 3dmark. Is there anything I should look for on the results?

Also, do you have a recommended version driver for ATI?

Lifire · Apr 21, 2005, 12:46 AM // 00:46

I reccomend 5.1 or 4.12 for ati drivers. Many people have had issues with 5.3+, especially with modern cards and games.

Hoever, I read something about someone using winamp while playing causing issues too.

I'm using omega 4.12 for my 9800 pro and they work fine until issues are resolved with newer drivers/games.

Sin · Apr 21, 2005, 12:53 AM // 00:53

What game is it that you are having problems with?

Also, for me it was GuildWars that Spybot interfered with, and just for clarity, when you get a hang or lag does the screen freeze with the image that's there or do the players appear to have lost the commands coming to them? Say you were attacking, does your character just stop but breathing or other animation continues, then he might stand upright and all the characters just stand their like waiting for the next commands, but not like the screen is "frozen?"

*Edit* Jaie thank you for that info on mother boards. Very helpful.

jaie · Apr 21, 2005, 01:00 AM // 01:00

What you are describing is what i see all the time with motherboards that are running in safe mode. Where your motherboard slows down and can do things like stutter and cause wierd freezes here and there.

Newer motherboards have whats called a safe mode (just like windows safe mode) and if the clock speed and multiplier are set up too high or wrong your mother board will run in safe mode. Safe mode is still fast even though its the slowest possible speed the motherboard will run on, so if its always ran at that speed since day one you would never know it could actually run faster.

So if the spyware is gone and you are still having trouble, you've tried updating your display drivers and still are having trouble my advice is to lower the speed of your clock settings. Remember an underclocked cpu with a motherboard running correctly will run faster than an overclocked cpu on a motherboard in safe mode.

Addition ~
I am on dial-up and i run spybots and i have zero trouble and no freezes with the game and i repeat i am on dial up =P.

Mantis · Apr 21, 2005, 01:04 AM // 01:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sin

What game is it that you are having problems with?

Also, for me it was GuildWars that Spybot interfered with, and just for clarity, when you get a hang or lag does the screen freeze with the image that's there or do the players appear to have lost the commands coming to them? Say you were attacking, does your character just stop but breathing or other animation continues, then he might stand upright and all the characters just stand their like waiting for the next commands, but not like the screen is "frozen?"

The other game is Diablo LoD. On GW, the screen will freeze. The mouse will not always freeze but will at times. If I was doing something, I will find myself finished with the action or if running/walking, I will be further down the path.

With the 3DMark05 test, I seem to have a problem. I will type it out and someone can put it into english for me. I am afraid I know the answer.

The error message is on starting the 2nd test:

IDirect3DDevice9:

rawIndexedPrimitive failed: Out of Video Memory (D3DERR_OUTOFVIDEOMEMORY)

Could not resume test and since I downloaded the free version, I can't select the individual tests to check other areas.

Do I have a bad card? Also, I have the latest driver. Would a wipe of the current driver and a reinstall of an earlier version help with this?

Not sure I will do all this tonight, but I will continue with this tomorrow and follow up with the post/results.

I really appreciate all the help I am getting.

EDIT - I did not mean for an icon to post in here and don't know how to remove it.

Mantis · Apr 21, 2005, 01:15 AM // 01:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by jaie

What you are describing is what i see all the time with motherboards that are running in safe mode. Where your motherboard slows down and can do things like stutter and cause wierd freezes here and there.

Newer motherboards have whats called a safe mode (just like windows safe mode) and if the clock speed and multiplier are set up too high or wrong your mother board will run in safe mode. Safe mode is still fast even though its the slowest possible speed the motherboard will run on, so if its always ran at that speed since day one you would never know it could actually run faster.

So if the spyware is gone and you are still having trouble, you've tried updating your display drivers and still are having trouble my advice is to lower the speed of your clock settings. Remember an underclocked cpu with a motherboard running correctly will run faster than an overclocked cpu on a motherboard in safe mode.

Addition ~
I am on dial-up and i run spybots and i have zero trouble and no freezes with the game and i repeat i am on dial up =P.

Jaie
You have my attention with this. I did not know of safe modes for motherboards. When I built the computer I left alot of the settings in default. I did set the timings for my RAM that were specified/published from their website for my motherboard.

I have never played with clocksettings much, and I am a little green in that area. Can you point me to a good reference site that could help educate me on this? I can google something, but if you have a site you like, I will check it out.

jaie · Apr 21, 2005, 01:24 AM // 01:24

The best advice i can give you is read your motherboard manual =P everything you will need to know in order to change your motherboard speed should be in there.

Some motherboards require you to change a jumper setting while others allow you to do it in bios. Every motherboard is different so there is no general this is how you do it, just check your manual for where and how to do it. Hopefully you stored it in a safe spot =P.

Mantis · Apr 21, 2005, 01:34 AM // 01:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by jaie

The best advice i can give you is read your motherboard manual =P everything you will need to know in order to change your motherboard speed should be in there.

Some motherboards require you to change a jumper setting while others allow you to do it in bios. Every motherboard is different so there is no general this is how you do it, just check your manual for where and how to do it. Hopefully you stored it in a safe spot =P.

I do have the manual, but it does not mention a safe mode. I am not saying it doesn't have one, just that I have never heard of it. I googled a forum sponsored by DFI with tech support. I will go there and see what I can find out. I will let you know.

BTW, would the safe mode have caused a failure on my 3DMark test?

jaie · Apr 21, 2005, 01:46 AM // 01:46

What you want to look for in your manual is how to set the motherboard speed and multiplier to match your cpu clock speed.

Lunarbunny · Apr 21, 2005, 02:26 AM // 02:26

Modern mobo's are almost all in-bios setup. The only jumper nowadays is to clear the CMOS in case you mess up. Before mucking around, try going into BIOS and loading defaults. This will turn off all OCing and either set speeds to auto-detect or lowest, depending on the BIOS.

And as Miss Drizzt said, Guru3d is a great site to get VC drivers from. My set is actually about 5 rebuilds higher than the official Nvidia download site; not sure how far ahead on ATI they are.

Darkmane · Apr 21, 2005, 02:57 AM // 02:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by jaie

What you want to look for in your manual is how to set the motherboard speed and multiplier to match your cpu clock speed.

The thing here is .. most newer motherboards automatically set for cpu and memory timings, the only time you need to change them is if (for one reason or another) your system is drastically running slow and having many more problems than simply stop and stutter.

Ok so now we know it could be hardware and or driver problem. Please try some different drivers like omega's

Mss Drizzt · Apr 21, 2005, 03:05 AM // 03:05

I am running the 5.4 drivers but not the control panel that comes with them.

It is the control panel that is corupted. I am using the control panel that comes from driver 4.12 from guru3d.com. I am running a x700xt 1024 x 768 with almost everything at max. (shadows not a max) and no aa. The game looks just awsome and I ran for 13 hrs straight with not one problem.

Darkmane · Apr 21, 2005, 03:30 AM // 03:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mss Drizzt

I am running the 5.4 drivers but not the control panel that comes with them.

It is the control panel that is corupted. I am using the control panel that comes from driver 4.12 from guru3d.com. I am running a x700xt 1024 x 768 with almost everything at max. (shadows not a max) and no aa. The game looks just awsome and I ran for 13 hrs straight with not one problem.

Guru3d's drivers I've heard are also good to try.

Lansing Kai Don · Apr 21, 2005, 04:42 AM // 04:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mantis

I am hoping that I can get some help here before the games go live. I have 'freezes' or lag in the game that can last for a couple of seconds up to a minute. This can be standing still or in full battle.

I have DSL.

System Specs

DFI Lanparty NFII Ultra B motherboard
Asus 9600xt ATI
AMD AthlonXP 3200+ (2.20GHz)
Samsung harddrive (2 in Sata O) 120GB
1 GB Ram

I am heading to work and will not be able to view this thread until after 5pm central.
I have all the latest drivers for my graphics card and I am running Windows XP SP2. Any other specs that are needed, let me know and I will provide

It might be that another process running is interrupting your CPU. Try ending every process that isn't critical (this includes explorer.exe). And then going to New Task: And browse to your game shortcut or executable and run it this way. This will make sure that it's not another process taking valuable CPU time. From my personal experience with computers, AMD is not near as good at multitasking processes than Intel.. perhaps they need a better pipelined architecture. I don't know.. but I know it seems to run alot faster after you take out other processes (faster than Intel.. is what I'm referring to).

Lansing Kai Don

P.S. Out of Video Memory doesn't exactly mean your out.. it could be a bad video driver (download and install again after removing and a restart into VGA or safe mode). Or check your BIOS for an AGP aperture size (on some motherboards this is buggy)... basically set it to a step higher than your current memory on your video card. If you have 64MB video card memory, make this 128MB. If you want the technical details I'll reply with them.