PC Completely freezes after only 10 mins - Hard shut down

Hello!

I have spent last 30 mins looking through threads of this, but could not find any, I am sorry if it is a repeat.

I have had 3 attempts at playing the game on windows 7 64 bit. Each time after around 10 minutes from the start, my computer completely freezes. The music skips back every fraction of a second, and nothing on my pc works. The only way to counter it is to hard shut down by the plug.

Has this happened to anyone else? Anyone have any advice?

I run the following.

Display adapter type ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series
Total available graphics memory 3323 MB
Dedicated graphics memory 512 MB
Dedicated system memory 0 MB
Shared system memory 2811 MB
Display adapter driver version 8.970.100.7000
Primary monitor resolution 1360x768
DirectX version DirectX 10

Total amount of system memory 8.00 GB RAM

Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz

Windows 7 ultimate 64bit

Thanks!

Re: PC Completely freezes after only 10 mins - Hard shut dow

I've had my system freeze on a few occasions without any real explanation. Ran a memtest and chkdsk this morning and nothing. My system also shares system ram with the GPU, and I have somewhat of a theory, but my system doesn't crash/freeze that way very often, and I'm never paying attention to my sensors when it does.....

My theory is that my ram not being as fast as my GPU, or something like that, when my GPU needs/asks for/uses the shared ram, the comp just doesn't know what to do, or is waiting on something (I've had my comp go back to norm after a few mins before....). It might happen more with PA since eats both system and gpu ram since it's not really optimized.

If you're willing to test it out, since it seems to be repeatable on your sys, try downloading "Process Explorer" from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/sysi ... 96653.aspx

When you open it, click on the graphs at the top, in the orange circle in this pic:


You'll get another window open up, and you can select a GPU tab (I know there's some used shared ram, but my theory is the freeze happens when a single process crosses the dedicated/shared boundry):


If you can set up a game and keep an eye on the GPU stuff that would be awesome.

Re: PC Completely freezes after only 10 mins - Hard shut dow

Thank you for your response.

Here is a picture I took from my phone when my PC froze again. My PC has never just frozen like this, and its the 4th time today.



Thanks again

Re: PC Completely freezes after only 10 mins - Hard shut dow

This may or may not be an issue, but your graphics card is aging. It may be that the card's firmware (do GFX cards have important firmware? I think they do...) isn't playing well with the newer version of OpenGL PA uses. But that would hardly explain a hard system crash.

Are you sure it isn't your display adaptor locking up?

Re: PC Completely freezes after only 10 mins - Hard shut dow

Try to install latest Beta Legacy driver:
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/w ... sta64.aspx

Also, can you upload full DxDiag.txt?

Re: PC Completely freezes after only 10 mins - Hard shut dow

OpenGL it's high-level API, card firmware don't know anything about OS/drivers/API and PA doesn't use any "newer version" of OpenGL.
But freeze could be OpenGL related because actual driver working in kernel-space, so yeah, bad driver can freeze OS.

Re: PC Completely freezes after only 10 mins - Hard shut dow

I thought vista/7 moved the graphics drivers out of kernel space to avoid the graphics driver taking down the whole OS?

Re: PC Completely freezes after only 10 mins - Hard shut dow

I got multiple blue screens on Windows 7 (when I played Witcher 2 after release), so I doubt that 100% of driver code is working outside kernel. :roll:

Re: PC Completely freezes after only 10 mins - Hard shut dow

Computer freeze ?
Hard reboot ?
Full memory used ?

Repetable ? Using a recent game ?

Hum, this looks like the Overheating syndrome to me...
Was happening often with my older computers.

Check the temperature of your processor and/or GPU chip in the BIOS or any dedicated software that you could have installed.
If it's more than 70-80°C, then i could be the cause.

If it's a tower :
Try to open a side of the box, to help the cooling fans a little.
If it's a laptop :
Use it on a metal table (or any good thermal conductor surface) to help dissipating the heat.

Re: PC Completely freezes after only 10 mins - Hard shut dow

Yeah it sounds like overheating to me as well. Or possibly a power supply starting to go out.

Re: PC Completely freezes after only 10 mins - Hard shut dow

My AMD GPU working on 102-109°C for _hours_, I doubt it's GPU overheating problem.

Re: PC Completely freezes after only 10 mins - Hard shut dow

I have the same problem.

My PC crashes after 10min of playing the Game.

Alienware M17
a Quadcore CPU 2GHz
Radeon 3870 x2
4GB Ram
Windows 8

No Overheating, no other signs of a problem like out of Ram or whatever.

I've installed the latest drivers for the Radeon but had no luck so far.

Re: PC Completely freezes after only 10 mins - Hard shut dow

This certainly doesn't invalidate my theory. GPU mem is within 9 megs of being full, and it looks like a fair bit of sys mem is being used for graphics.

Whats the speed on your ram? DDR3-1333? Any one know how to disable shared ram on win 7? It would be interesting to see what happens when the game/system is forced to use only the gpu ram.

Re: PC Completely freezes after only 10 mins - Hard shut dow

Higly dependant on hardware quality & tolerance
My old computer was starting an alarm sound at 80° for the CPU, and shutting down at 100°.

Re: PC Completely freezes after only 10 mins - Hard shut dow

The ram i bought just a few days ago (was 4gig) is 8GB 240 pin dimm 256mx64 ddr2 pc2-5300.

The other person who stated they had same problem as me has an alienware, this is also a Dell PC, XPS 420.

I will also try and monitor the temp of the GPU and CPU and try again. I will also update to the latest gp software (i am sure i recently did this as well)

Thank you all for your help and ideas, hopefully we can find a fix to help others with the same problem. I just want to play lol!

I will keep you all posted,

Steve

Re: PC Completely freezes after only 10 mins - Hard shut dow

According to http://www.crucial.com/support/memory_speeds.aspx your ram speed is like half mine, and if I remember correctly, the peak clock on my GPU ram is like 10x what my system ram is.

Could this be some problem swapping stuff to/from gpu/shared system ram, or even that the gpu ram is clocked to not bottleneck the GPU, but the system ram will cause such a neck?

EDIT: I also tried to fill up my GPU ram with PA and a few other games, but my system ram would've filled up before the GPU started wanting it, so I failed to lock up my computer

Re: PC Completely freezes after only 10 mins - Hard shut dow

Ok, so this was interesting, I got a few programs for monitoring some things, and as soon as the temp on my gpu hit 80 degrees boom. I mean the second it hit 80 degrees. I even had a desk fan running chilling my leg, with the side of the computer open.

Here is a pic of the temps at crash. I have poorly attempted to add the description of the lines which was covered by PA.



And here is a shot of both programs with normal temps.




It almost seems like my graphics card just does not want to stay cool, the fan barley turned on at all. Do I just need a new graphics card?

Thanks

Steve

Thanks again!

Re: PC Completely freezes after only 10 mins - Hard shut dow

I think my chances of getting it working are annihilated. Found out the power supply is only 375 watts, and from what I have read up on, cant get a decent compatible graphics card for this system.

Looks like I'll have to save up

Steve

Re: PC Completely freezes after only 10 mins - Hard shut dow

It's really strange why your GPU fan speed is only 33% when card at 80 degrees, you need to fix it.

Also if you doesn't care about noise you can add extra cooler. Long time ago when I use SLI it's overheated lot, so I just i glued few 2000rpm coolers right on video cards (they both blowing air between cards) on it and overall temperature was much lower.

I don't sure if it's available for HD 3800 cards, but probably you might downclock video card for 10-15%.

Re: PC Completely freezes after only 10 mins - Hard shut dow

Any way you can force the fan to 100% or something? I've done that on mine, once. 2x85mm fans do not sound quiet tho, and auto seems to keep it below 50.

Also, your main cpu at ~60 is a little troubling. I get scared above 45 :shock:

Quick Edit: Well, I guess that settles your crash. Mine are just random I guess :? Oh well. They don't happen often enough, or are something I can force recreate apparently :|