Is it my RAM or something else?

I've been getting random system lockups and the occasional blue screen on my desktop system (see sig). Typically the system will lock when i stress it out by playing a game such as Left4Dead, but it can also randomly happen when I'm doing relatively simple things in windows such as a java applet.

In Left4Dead the system will usually have a few little half second stutters, almost like it freezes for a split second. It will do this a few times over the course of 30 seconds then it will just freeze...i have to hard boot to get out of this freeze. When i do hardboot I notice that it sometimes will get stuck on the 'checking IDE channels' on initial boot screen or on the 'verifying DMI'. If i turn off the system for 20 seconds or so that seems to clear the boot-sequence issue and it will load vista again.

I was unfortunatley unable to get all the info from the occasional BSOD screen i had except for it saying something like 'driver_irq_not_less_or_equal'.

THINGS I'VE DONE SO FAR THAT HAD NO EFFECT:
- installed new nvidia drivers for my vid card (evga 8800 gtx)
- reinstalled drivers for my soundcard (X-FI xtremegamer) and creative alchemy

RAN A MEMORY TEST WITH MEMTEST86 in DOS MODE:
- this did one complete pass without errors but I left it running overnight and in the morning i found that the screen had gone completely corrupt... it looked like a all fuzzy wavy lines all over the screen. I hit escape and it rebooted itself (i believe this is normal for memtest86 so it was still running in background even with the video distortion)


I don't know a lot about memory testing but is this video corruption that i'm getting during the memtest indicative of a RAM failure or would it be more likely a video card issue or something else?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

its your gfx card.. id blame the drivers first before the card.. but monitor the temps on the card while playing L4D.. my 8800GT does this when i have my video memory overclocked to high.. also if you do ctrl+alt+delete or tab+alt to your desktop when the stuttering happens it will usually keep it from hard locking..

sirmonkey1985 said:

its your gfx card.. id blame the drivers first before the card.. but monitor the temps on the card while playing L4D.. my 8800GT does this when i have my video memory overclocked to high.. also if you do ctrl+alt+delete or tab+alt to your desktop when the stuttering happens it will usually keep it from hard locking..

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I just installed the newest nvidia drivers, though I'm not sure if I cleanly removed the old ones in the best way...still getting used to vista.

So does it sound like an overheating issue or something else wrong with the gfx card? If its toast i guess i'll have an excuse to go get a new vid card

it sounds like the vram thats the problem.. you could always try underclocking the vram a little bit.. play for a while and see if it still screws up..

as for the nvidia drivers installing.. i dont understand people saying you should uninstall the old ones and crap.. i never have and have never had a problem with the drivers.. besides the fact that nvidia's drivers suck to begin with..

sirmonkey1985 said:

it sounds like the vram thats the problem.. you could always try underclocking the vram a little bit.. play for a while and see if it still screws up..

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Very solid advice given what has been described.

as for the nvidia drivers installing.. i dont understand people saying you should uninstall the old ones and crap.. i never have and have never had a problem with the drivers.. besides the fact that nvidia's drivers suck to begin with..

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nVidia drivers, while not always the best, were updated frequently and fixed many issues. Now they update less often, but I still don't think they are too bad, it's their hardware that has slipped up forcing the driver team to try and fix it.

As for the uninstall old drivers first, there were a few cases where registry entries would get hosed up and the OS would try to use older driver components and the new components at the same time. It would fubar your system pretty good.

zoobaby said:

Very solid advice given what has been described.



nVidia drivers, while not always the best, were updated frequently and fixed many issues. Now they update less often, but I still don't think they are too bad, it's their hardware that has slipped up forcing the driver team to try and fix it.

As for the uninstall old drivers first, there were a few cases where registry entries would get hosed up and the OS would try to use older driver components and the new components at the same time. It would fubar your system pretty good.

Click to expand...

yeah im just getting sick of updating drivers to only find that my performance has gone down and not up..

Thanks for the great replies all. I'll try to underclock the vid card a bit to see if that solves the issue.

If the underclock doesn't work then I guess I'm shopping for a new vid card. I guess i'll head to the vid card forum to learn what is hot in vid cards right now.