CoD4, UT3, & CoH-OF crashes windows please help!

Bladerunner2019

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I've been having endless trouble with my new pc, crashing with no warning and immediately rebooting without an indication of the cause. It has the most trouble playing .bink videos for opening credits on CoD4 and UT 3, which makes it crash almost instantly. When I remove the movie folders for the offending games, they will load into the game, but after 10-30 minutes of play pretty much everything invariably ends in the game crashing with the same reboot. CoH-OF will play the intro videos, but also crashes with a reboot after about the same amount of time. I found I could play these loading videos with a .bink file player I downloaded without any troubles whatsoever.

However, I've found that the .bink videos will play, and I only get in-game crashing, if I use the display driver CD's that came with the GPU (version 7.8 catalyst drivers I believe), but with the drivers up to date, videos and in-game crash as mentioned.

I bought the 2nd GPU (the ASUS one) thinking it was the sapphire card causing the problem, but on its own or in crossfire with the sapphire, the ASUS card still has the same crashing. I'm not sure what the suspect part is now. I've tried formatting, and even with just the display drivers and a patched copy of the offending games, it still crashes in all the same ways.

please, please, please help!

Here's my current setup:

MOBO:
Intel BOXDX38BT LGA 775 Intel X38 ATX DDR3 Intel Motherboard

RAM:
OCZ Gold Edition 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory

CPU:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Conroe 2.66GHz 4M shared L2 Cache LGA 775

GPU:
ASUS EAH3870 TOP/G/HTDI/512M/A Radeon HD 3870 512MB 256-bit GDDR4 PCI Express 2.0 x16
&
SAPPHIRE 100225L Radeon HD 3870 512MB 256-bit GDDR4 PCI Express 2.0 x16

HDD:
Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD 150GB 10000 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 1.5Gb/s Hard Drive

PSU:
Antec NeoPower 550 550W ATX12V Power Supply 100 - 240 V UL, CUL, TUV, CE, FCC, CCC, CB, C-tick


I admit I'm a newb at building gaming pc's, so any mention of some egregious error I've made would be appreciated...
 

Alex The PC Gamer

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Does it only crash in-game or could it crash when you're doing other stuff on your PC?

So have you formatted your PC, reinstalled a fresh copy of Windows, and have now installed the latest drivers and have patched your games?
 

Bladerunner2019

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Yes, I reinstalled windows, reinstalled latest display drivers and reinstalled & patched the offending games with no change.

It crashes only due to games, either in the opening .bink videos, or in-game.
 

Alex The PC Gamer

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And you said you have 2 videocards right? You tried with one...and then tried with the other?

If you have then here's what it could be...

Software: (and that is assuming you have legit copies of the game)

If your PC crashes when rendering bink videos (or similar) then it might be that you're missing a codec (which is usually included in the game install but still). Try and download the latest codecs.

If your PC crashes when it's rendering a 3D application (in-game) then it could be quite a few things.
-Try playing the game with no programs running in the background (including FRAPS, antivirus or any other programs).

Hardware:

It would suck but maybe both V-card are faulty (however, it is unlikely).

It could be that your power supply simply isn't enough for your V-Cards...or that your PSU is cheap and isn't providing the jus your PC needs to run well. IMO, you need a good PSU with at least 600W (700W recommended) for Cross Fire!).

Take out every extra componnent such as sound cards and other non-important devices from you PC and see if the problem persists.

I assume that your are not Overclocking and are running at regular stock speed. If not, then put it at stock.

 

Bladerunner2019

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Yes, I've tried the 2 cards individually (the problem originally showed up when I just had 1)

All the games are legit copies,

Like I said, I can render the .bink videos out of the games when I download a .bink player so I don't think its a codec issue.

Also theres nothing running in the background, I still had the problem with a fresh install of windows (ie nothing else to run but the display drivers and the games, fully patched 'course)

I was concerned it might be the PSU, but I when I asked ATI if the 550 watt Antec PSU was sufficient, they said it should be ok.

I took out my sound card much earlier in this process, and it didn't help. I'm running with the onboard sound from the mobo now.

Not overclocking, running everything at factory stocks.

Right now I suspect 3 things

1- the PSU like you mentioned, but the only way to test that is buy another...

2-some unknown RAM issue (what I don't know)

3- something is overheating (but wouldn't it tell me on the reboot that something had overheated prompting the reboot?)


 

Bladerunner2019

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this may sound stupid but, does it matter which plugs I plug everything into on the PSU? Do I need to make sure they're in a certain order, or is each one equivalent?
 

Alex The PC Gamer

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check you CPU temperatures.
You can use "Core Temp" or other temperature monitoring software to see if your CPU overheats in games. Then again, running a virus scan or similar would also stress your CPU.

Some motherboards provide a temperature monitoring software to monitor other parts of your motherboard (but its unlikely that your FSB is overheating.

Geez man, I don't know really. The only thing I can suggest is to install the "safe" drivers as oppose to the Beta and see if that helps. But other than that, its hard to troubleshoot unless you test each device seperatly.

Try this, Open all the programs you can think of....virus scan, spyware scan, downloading a demo(or whatever else), while doing a disk scarn, etc. Stress your system (but don't run a game). See if your computer gives you trouble then. If it doesn't then it is unlikely that it is your RAM or CPU overheating, or FSB overheating.

If you've stressed your PC and still it only crashes in-game then I say take an old videocard (your previous one) and see if you get the same results. You may also do the same kind of temperature monitoring for your videocard. See if that crashes your game. It still woudn't explain the Bink video issue thou.
 

Bladerunner2019

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Is there any possibility that the mobo is the cause (im not sure how)...

I do recall it being listed as supporting 1.5V ram, but the ram I got is 1.7V rated (I thought pretty much all of it was now), but I was also under the impression that this shouldnt matter anyways...
 

mi1ez

Splendid


Depends how you mean the question!

If your PSU has multiple rails then you need to spread the load across the rails, if there's only one you're plain sailing. the actual order (chronologically) that you put them in won't matter.

I'm thinking there could be a hot spot in the corner of the case. I know this is an unusual suggestion, but have you tried gaming with the side panel off the case? Try it with the side off and a desktop fan blowing in and we'll see if that helps. What case are you using?
 

robshardware

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I have an antec trio power and i remeber the manual had some fine print about which blocks (of a moduler psu) to use, with special rules for crossfire. Might be wroth checking the manual. Changing a few jacks around ? Good luck.
 

Bladerunner2019

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I dont know if this is helpful, but sometimes after this thing crashes, my mouse will not respond. I usually just have to unplug it and put it back in, and its all fine. I dont know if this is just because of the reboot, or a symptom of the problem. Anyone know?
 

Bladerunner2019

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oooook...

I went into the bios and screwed with the memory settings. Seems that the default had it set to 1.5V, when it should be at 1.7V, so I changed it, and the crashing seems to stop.

Thanks for your help


.... now I just need to figure out why the likes of Crysis and CoD4 have big ugly scan lines when I try to play...

I sense more hours wasted screwing with display drivers in my future...