Lockups in game menus?

[Esso]

Hey All,

I need your [H]elp troubleshooting an issue that I have had since I built this system back in November '09. I'm guessing it is a problem with the video card, but I am not quite sure where the best starting point is to begin troubleshooting. Since driver & BIOS updates have not seemed to help or hinder, I figured that I should probably get my ducks in a row so that I can get my gear RMA'd before warranties expire (if necessary).

So here's the deal:
My system will sometimes lockup while in game menus. Moreover, when loading a said game, things seem functional for anywhere between 2 to 15 seconds. At this point, the cursor gets jumpy and then stops moving completely. While this goes on, num lock can't be toggled, the system won't respond to alt-tabs, ctrl-alt-dels, or anything else other than a hard reset. Background music of the game continues for quite a while before it completely craps out, probably 5-7 minutes, no short sound loops though.

The issue does not seem to be consistent, but happens often enough to frustrate me... let's say one in every 6 launches. This can happen after a fresh reboot, but seems like rare occurrence.


While in-game or even outside of games completely (desktop or other apps), I have never had a lock up. Everything is running @ stock clocks, except for one minor change. In order to prevent artifacting/freezing while in and out of games, I have raised the 2D clocks on both GPUs as noted below. Also all motherboard/gpu temps check in as normal.

Specs:
Win7 x64
Core i7 860 (stock clocks atm)
Asus P7P557D-E Prem. (bios v0711, I see there is a new rev from 6 days ago... i'll try it but I'm not hopeful)
G.SKILL 2x2GB F3-16000CL9D-4GBRH PC3-16000 (stock timings, switched to XMP profile lately)
MSI Radeon 5970 (2D profile set to 400/900 on both GPUs) [10.3b Catalysts]
SB x-fi xtreme gamer
Thermaltake Toughpower 1200W

The RAM checks out OK from memtest86 & a few other apps I've tried.
I was thinking of popping out the sound card on a whim (X-fi's seem to have issues with Win7 x64) or possibly just replace the GPU if I can find a nice enough friend willing to swap parts.


Any suggestions on a good starting point?



It seems like GPU-Z can't log both GPUs at the same time and also does not play nice if you try to run two separate instances simultaneously...
I am guessing that raising the 2D clocks higher will not really help either... *shrugs*

Oh and for what it's worth, off the top of my head here are the games I've seen lock, but it's probably all games:
-BF BC2
-COD MW2
-L4D2
-Torchlight
-Ghostbusters
-SC2 beta

 

[Esso]

nothing, eh?

arg.

 

[noquarter]

Don't have a specific answer but I like the sound of pulling the X-fi for troubleshooting, if that isn't the cause I'd try underclocking the 5970, and after that try it with Catalyst AI turned off to disable the 2nd GPU Crossfire mode.

 

[staticlag]

It could be your keyboard or mouse going bad.

I've had this problem in the past with Razer products, switched that junk out and it was perfect.

 

[noquarter]

Wait wasn't there an issue with X-fi with Razer mouse a while back?

 

[firextracers]

Try removing the sound card + Drivers reseat the ram and gpu and make shure a setting in ur bios is not causing the problem or ur cpu overheating

 

[Blackforge]

You didn't mention it, but do you hear the USB reconnecting and keyboard/mouse flickering when this happens? I had an odd issue mainly in game menus with lots of animation in the background where my mouse would drop offline and reconnect over and over again as I would move it. Had to plug my mouse in directly into my computer as opposed to my monitor's built-in USB hub. I'm thinking it was a power issue when the video cards would be pushing too much data (especially in 2D modes) to the monitor while also keeping the built-in hub powered. That's a guess anyways. Hasn't happened anymore since being plugged directly into the computer.

 

[Esso]

Thanks for the responses everyone... Looks like I will have my hands full over the weekend.

I don't have any razor gear, but I will try swapping the kb/m as well the other suggestions here.
The keyboard is nothing special (ps/2 generic) and the mouse is a CM Sentinal Storm, it's sorta 'meh' anyway. I have not heard any plug & play sounds or noticed any flickering on the devices (or GUIs) when this happens and all inputs are directly connected to the motherboard. The psu is attached to a ups, which gets angry when I run the FurMark xtreme stress test, but everything still runs normal during that test, say if you wanted to browse the 'net while that was going on. Oh by 'angry' I just mean the ups fan kicks in and the battery lights flash in tandem suggesting that I wouldn't get 2 minutes of uptime from the battery. So by that I am guessing that the PSU is pushing out power without any problems.

 

[evilsofa]

One thing that tends to happen only in game menus is that the video card can generate many hundreds or even thousands of FPS. This is ordinarily a cause of coil whine. What happens if you force Vsync to always be on?

 

[Esso]

All, sorry to resurrect this old thread. In the event that some else ever comes across a similar issue, this did turn about to be a problem with the card itself.

I did test this card on a few different motherboards (1366 & 1156 socket Asus boards and a 775 Gigabyte) the problems stuck through and actually seemed worse.
After a lot of pain, I was finally able to convince MSI to allow an RMA and the replacement card is working without problem.


The good: MSI sent me a brand new card, not refurb'd - This also game with the original peripherals, like mini display port to display port, that may come in handy later on down the road.
The bad: MSI's support team is a joke; I will seriously reconsider buying any product from them again for this reason.