DescentBB

So, after installing Vista, and determining creatives driver support is aweful, so D3 could only get mono sound, I decided to do something irrational, install it on my second PC, running XP, a sound blaster Live, my trusty Athlon XP 3200+ and my long time buddy, my old nVidia FX5700 LE, so, im playing D3, and loving having my 5.1 audio back as well as my trusty FF-Pro, when all of a sudden, BAM, the screen freezes in this psychadelic mess, my PC is frozen, and i got this aweful alien signal emmiting from my speakers, this usually wouldnt bug me, except it did this 3 times in a row, each after playing D3 for about 15minutes. now normally, that PCs life has been put aside as a printer and file server, nothing more, I have it Fold while its not doing anything, which up till now was all the time, but i do turn that off when playing D3, drivers are all up to date, D3, F@H, my Printer, Bluetooth support and a scanner are the only things installed on it. so wtf, best I can think of is maybe somethings over heating, but since it folds 24/7, I dont think D3 is gonna do nearly as much damage, the ram is crap, but ive got the timings reeally loose, so that should be no factor anymore, and the video card is the only thing left I can think of. and the more I think about it, my old FX5900 I had, did something similar while playing D3, except not as frequesntly, so my question, WTF is causing it!

the card withstands everything else I throw at it, so Im pretty sure its ok, but theres doubt. is there like a bug with the FX series in D3? or is there another culprit I may have overlooked?

thanks

Latest Direct X?
Have you set D3 to use Direct Sound?

Use the command line and disable sound/music and play. See if it crashes.

-nosound -nomusic

He is Running XP is SBLive 5.1

Choices are

Directsound

Directsound 3d

Directsound 3D with EAX

Software is not avaiable with NT kernel

he should be using Direct Sound

Also check in Device Manager for \"Creative Misc Devices\"
Make sure any emulation that may be present, is not mapped (sharing) your soundcards or any other device for that matter IRQ If so map it to the printerport (IRQ7)if it is

So EAX wont work?

Ill try direct sound this afternoon

Try switching sound options (types) as stated above. Also Vid types (D3d and OGl).

If it continues, swap vid cards. All fans are working...Right??? clean it thoroughly.

I dont freaking get it. I tried all the different audio components, no joy. tried older video drivers, no go there either. would my ping being a little odd have anything to do with it? like before the video and odd sounds, ping starts to kinda skip around a lot, game turns into a kinda slide show. ...

yeah, everythings fine component wise, I tried OGL, D3D, and Glide of course doesnt work well lol

I can try dropping my old GF3 in this weekend, thats the only AGP card ive got left to deploy in my arsenal. well shitzo, I did try loosening my ram timings even further, if the video card doesnt fix it, I may just underclock my CPU, Id hate too tho...

Spyware ?

Fresh install, constantly scanned, its clean. only thing on it, is F@H, D3, Nortons and drivers.

on a second look, it might be a tad toasty, and the voltages seem a little sloppy atm....bad things....yet my CPU folds 24/7 without a single problem, this just escapes all feasablility!



CPU temp is high becuase it was folding at the time, i cranked up the rheostat on the fan, its currently noisy, and a slightly cooler 45°C (not bad)

the voltages scare me tho, if thats the case, looks like im out of D3 for a while, cant afford a new PSU, cant afford a new case for cooling, cant afford new ram...basically, im fucked

11.73 is a bit low, but not impossibly so, I've seen systems run stable at 11.5 so I don't think that is a major problem yet. Though my current system toggles between 11.98 and 12.05 and is generally equally right on for the 3.3 @ 3.31 and 5v @ 5.08 rails. Though that is at idle, heavy CPU use will cause the voltages to drop a bit. The last PSU I ordered for someone was a 300 watt fortron that set me back all of $30 shipped so don't count out the possibility of a new PSU if you need one. Also, upgrading the case cooling is as easy as removing the side panels and blowing a fan in the computers general direction.

Yeah, thats the quick and ugly method, I may just see if my other roomate left his dremel behind, and drop an 80mm in the side of the case, at least get some fresher airflow in there. PSU still scares me tho.

WOuld it help airflow just to keep a panel off the side of the case? Obvisouly it's not really preactical, ubt alotta fresh air would flow through.

It would help cooling, but the more I look at it, thats really not that hot
126°F for an athlon XP is about normal, I think this might have something to do with it

Yeah that definitely is not helping. Some stuff you can try to improve that: turn up the RAM voltage one notch, if you don't see an improvement at 0.1v over default don't bother with any higher voltage, RAM is touchy around overvolts. If there is no improvement from voltage, try slacking off some of the timings and test again.

Also, use memtest86+ it is a little more up to date: http://www.memtest.org/

my bad, thats from my opteron, when I had the ram way overclocked, this is memtest86 running right now on the wronged PC

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v105/ ... AG0310.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v105/ ... AG0309.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v105/ ... AG0308.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v105/ ... AG0307.jpg

Its still running, I think I need to investigate an RMA on this
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v105/ ... AG0311.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v105/ ... AG0312.jpg

I have had some memory on my PC that at it's default voltages and timings produced errors, but once I applied a higher voltage to it became perfectly stable. Course it was BH5 chips which are known to run as high as 3+ volts and overclock extremely well, at 2.5-2.6v it errored out but at 2.7v it was perfectly stable and error free in memtest for days. However since the timings on that ram you have listed are 3-6-6-10, you might as well return it and get something better. RAM that can do 2-2-2-(9-11) timings should run everything about 10-12% faster in most cases.

P.S. I converted all the images in your post to links, they were too big to post as images in the thread.

sorry 'bout the imahes lol, the defualt timings are actually 2-3-3-6, I just pushed em high to help windows out, when I first bought them, I had like 6 errors, now im up to this

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v105/ ... AG0313.jpg

lol, I rebooted, gonna try one stick at a time, and just RMA the thing(s)

I blame asus, I put the memory in Dual channel just for kicks, becuase I tested each stick individually to see which one I was sending back, and now they work...no erros, no nothing....and the board doesnt support dual channel, but I wasnt supposed to use that bank unless the other 2 were full...go figure.

on the otherhand, i think it really is my GPU overheating, its toasty.

It is possible there was dust or a bad contact on one of the sticks, try dual channel mode again and see if it is still working error free.

well...the board doesnt support DC, it was the cheaper version, so technically its single, so since its working, i dont care, I oiled my GPU fan, its spinning again, so now all I have to do is find a good game of D3, see if it holds or not. If it doesnt, then ill get pissed again