Games Freeze for 20 seconds then begin play again

[Beatniche]

i am having a problem where i will be playing a game of UT 2003 for instance and all of a sudeen the game will freeze and a noise will come from my pc that sounds like the hard drive is rebooting, i'm not sure what this problem is, i replaced the old hard drive with to new 60 gigs on raid-0 but i still have the same problem. i am moving onto the ram as my next guess but i'm not totally sure so i'd like to get some opinions on what it might be, if others have had the problem and if so what they did to remedy the situation.. thanks alot for replys in advance.

Athlon XP 1900
Soyo Dragon Plus KT266A
Crucial 256MB PC2100
Radeon 9700 Pro
2 60gig Maxtor 7200rpm drives
Sound Blaster Live 5.1
Linksys Ethernet
also 1 30 gig maxtor 7200 rpm that i run windows on.

hmmmmmm......

 

[sturm]

If your running windows XP deffinitly get another 256 mg of ram. What your seeing is probably the computer using the swap file for something. I have 512 meg memory on an origional athlon 1.4 and dont ever see it.
XP uses alot of memory just to run.

 

[jiffy]

How do your other games play? I don’t know anything about raid, but what is your CPU temp, plus how many watts is your power supply? Yes, get yourself some more ram. By the way did you mess with the swap files, if so try letting windows manage them.

***************************************
When you feel that reality does not suit you, live a fantasy life.

 

[LeprechaunJoe]

I had that very same problem and it happened in every game and it pissed me off like no other. I finally figured out that it was probably because the fan on my graphics card was broken and was causing my Ti4600 to overheat. So I swapped it for a new one and things are running beautifully. So even if I was wrong about the fan being the problem, it was the graphics card...for me at least. I hope you figure it out.

 

[Beatniche]

eh, thanks for the replys, it could be the graphics card overheating, it has the stock cooling for the 9700 pro, though i would hope ati would release a graphics card with sufficent cooling power. i have windows managing the swap file because i thought of that already. and also not sure of my CPU temp, it very well could be something overheating though. i don't have any cooling on the HD's and every other fan in the case is stock that came with the product. thanks for the replys when i get mre money i'll start to invest in some new cooling solutions.

hmmmmmm......

 

[jiffy]

If you built the system you might have a utility that came with the mobo to moniter the heat and volts. But if you didn’t built it and have no such utility you can get it <font color=blue><A HREF="http://mbm.livewiredev.com/" target="_new">here.</A></font color=blue> What you could do to see if it is a heat issues is to take off the side of your case and blow a two foot fan in there. Also you should have at least a 300 watt power supply, maybe even more, if you have less then that, that could be the problem too.

***************************************
When you feel that reality does not suit you, live a fantasy life.

 

[aliu42]

I've had the same problem with UT2003 and Unreal 2..

I figured it out though...for me at least..

I was running DX9 on a GF4Ti4600....

I went back to DX8.1 and it runs great...

I think that with my current card..DX9 tries to speed things up..and the Ti4600 doesn't like it...

But like I said...I went back to DX8.1 and it's gone...

Aliu

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
--Albert Einstein

 

[jiffy]

Did you use a restore point to go back to DX8.1? DX9.0 has been updated to DX9.0a maybe that would work for you. There really is no hurry to upgrade, but it does look promising, especially for supporting cards. I don’t know when, but I expect games are going to start shipping with DirectX9. Anyway I have had DX9.0 and DX9.0a on two PC one w a GF4 4400 and GF2 ultra and had no problem.

***************************************
When you feel that reality does not suit you, live a fantasy life.