PC freezes for a few sceonds in 3D apps/games

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undertaker2k8

[H]ard|Gawd
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Here is the original thread: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1731136

Turns out punkbuster removal didn't help!

Installed a bunch of games today and all of a sudden everything started to stutter and freeze for a few seconds so I tried all recent forceware drivers, updated intel sata drivers, realtek drivers etc. to no avail. Researched/installed/uninstalled recent windows hotfixes to no avail. Ran antivirus scanners 2 times and wasted 3-4 hours in the process.

Also tried uninstalling some of the games and checking they leave any processes in the background and that turned out to be futile.

HW specs: Intel 2500k / Gigabyte P67/12 GB DDR3/Galaxy GTX 670 GC/kingston Hyper X 3K

Haven't had a problem with this system in over a year and now this freezing, it looks like a graphics driver issue but rolling back to previous drivers did not help either. On the latest Forceware 310.64

Anyone have any suggestions or encountered this issue before? This is driving me nuts.
 
Yeah pb wouldn't cause that. Is it throttling from overheat? That can cause brief system-wide freezes with no obvious event logs or errors. That can happen when a CPU fan is slowly dieing.

We need more information to really troubleshoot anything like this. Characterize the slowdowns: when does it happen, how long, during which programs, does it happen at the desktop or only in 3d games, etc. Need details!
 
Download and Install:
Realtemp
CPU-Z


THen run them while playing a game in window mode (so you can see the Realtemp and CPU-Z windows).


Watch the temps and check and see if the CPU is throttling down like Ritorix said. It does sound like that is the issue.
 
The CPU is fine and OCCT/Prime 95 runs for hours with no issues: its just 3d games that have this issue all of a sudden.

Its unlike most video card issues (assuming it is one) in that the pc freezes for a few seconds and then comes back to life like nothing happened. Usually a driver crash will force the 3D app to terminate as well.

The only thing apart from the sw/driver install that I did was upgrade the firmware on my boot SSD from 5.01 to 5.03 with the TRIM fix for SF2281 drives but I fail to see that causing the issue?

Given all I have on the machine, i;d hate to do a reinstall at this point but thats what it may take: and system restores from older 'working; states are gone due to the constant drive installs I did yesterday, the only available ones are from last nigh! argh....

Logs do not reveal much either, my hunch its some kind of power-profile issue that the latest nvidia driver caused and won't go away......
 
power profile is a good guess. I would switch to prefer max performance if you haven't already. also, turn off the monitor sleeps. with ssd drives this can cause some weird issues.
 
Tried everything possible: removed intel sata drivers , no go...removed any useless drivers/programs and still no go. Tried the power profile setting and no luck, I give up, not sure what to do next here.
 
Will try a final uninstall of the driver + driver sweeper run + reinstall of the latest WHQL driver 306.97 and see if that helps.

For what its worth, in the NV dawn demo, while the graphics freeze, the mouse cursor stays active so the whole PC is not freezing, just the graphics it seems.

If this does not work, may get a new video card to test next week and see if the solves it....pure agony.....:mad:
 
you aren't running a Seagate Momentus Hybrid drive are you? I had a similar issue with FPS games hanging for 2 seconds. Perhaps you can flash backwards to the before problem bios?
 
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Put everything to stock and see if it happens.

I had Prime95 and other tests say I am stable yet in games I would crash with the OC's. And sometimes the entire PC would freeze, but that would require a reset. Sounds like a HDD/SSD problem though. Don't update your firmware unless A. You know you get more speeds B. It fixes a really bad bug(like the intel 8mb bug).
 
The drive was updated to firmware 5.3 only because of the TRIM issue, I have had enough experience over the years to not touch firmware/bios unless something is broken.

But since that was the major change before this started, I'll probably pick up a Samsung 830 and see if the issue goes way. Really weird though as there have been no such issues reported with this drive and firmware.
 
I tried the Samsung 830 (cloned the existing drive, a new install is not what I want if I can avoid) and it had the same issue, so the drive itself is not the issue. Also, in windows performance assessment the graphics performance has fallen from 7.9 (max which it should be for this card) to 7.4, definitely a card/driver issue going on here.

Now that I know this, I can troubleshoot further...any further inputs will be much appreciated.
 
Looks like a lot of gtx 670s start going bad this way, and then eventually dying.....guess replacing the card is in order and is the only thing that makes sense now.

Just got a nvidia display driver stopped error just sitting in windows.....looks like the card is going.
 
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Tried a new card, same issue...really dunno whats up. Guess I have to try a reinstall now, something is seriously screwed here. Any ideas?
 
The cpu fan is running fine and the cpu does not throttle on any benchmark like prime 95 which taxes it more than most games. Whats telling is the Windows Experience Index has gone down for the graphics portion only, the rest is where it used to be. Since the SSD and video card are not at fault, this has to be an OS issue somewhere.
 
undertaker2k8 said:
The cpu fan is running fine and the cpu does not throttle on any benchmark like prime 95 which taxes it more than most games. Whats telling is the Windows Experience Index has gone down for the graphics portion only, the rest is where it used to be. Since the SSD and video card are not at fault, this has to be an OS issue somewhere.
Click to expand...

I have had similar issue with new os installs. It usually took care of itself after updating a couple of times. For some reason, windows just did not completely update. It took as much as a week to do so. Maybe you can find a completely updated version online and try that.
 
I haven't done a new OS install yet but looks like that may be my only route. I have a W7/SP1 install usb drive and that seems to be a good baseline as this issue may very well be due to a recent windows update (I tried unrolling them but you never know if they are totally unrolled)....this has turned into a useless mini project. I'm taking monthly images of ssd (should have been doing that already) when I get this resolved.
 
undertaker2k8 said:
I haven't done a new OS install yet but looks like that may be my only route. I have a W7/SP1 install usb drive and that seems to be a good baseline as this issue may very well be due to a recent windows update (I tried unrolling them but you never know if they are totally unrolled)....this has turned into a useless mini project. I'm taking monthly images of ssd (should have been doing that already) when I get this resolved.
Click to expand...

Yeah I would try it. You have a gremlin somewhere.
 
Guess what: updated to 310.70 and everything is fine now, this is the worst driver experience I have had since the days of Windows 98/2000, even with ATI's botched beta driver attempts, an uninstall of the new one and installing the old one restored things pretty nicely (all through the included installer no manual fiddling needed), but no matter what driver I installed prior to this for this GTX 670, it seemed that some remnant of the bad 310.64 stayed and caused issues. WEI graphics score is back to 7.9, heaven runs smooth as butter.TOUCHWOOD.

Funny thing is Nvidia first released these as WHQL certified and then made them BETA, so these may have some quirks too but def better than before. Bottom line: Not installing beta drivers from NV, no matter if they claim a 200% increase in performance and if this shit happens again, I am going back to the red camp. I was on ATI since 2009 (my last NV card was an 8800gt prior to this), may be should have stayed that way...I did try a 7970 ASUS DC II but that behemoth would not fit in my case.

Lastly, is there a good, current NV driver install guide out there for handling these situations? Most of the ones I found are from 2011 and apparently driver sweeper is not that helpful anymore.
 
Those Nvidia 310.64's blue screen / restarted my nephew's pc every time he played Diablo 3. Glad you found the culprit.
 
So the problem reared its ugly head again, interestingly furmark does not exhibit any such issue though at 2560x1440 it heavily taxes the gpu, so may be the directx files are corrupt somewhere.

I did try to use sfc to check for them but that yielded nothing,

Going to install Win8 pro and see, I do not like metro but seems like only matter of time before such issues become common in Win 7, as MS and developers adopt windows 8 as their standard going forward.
 
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Update: Loaded the dawn demo on my SSD instead of HDD to rule out any HDD related stutter, and the issue still arose.

Then I opened up AIDA and task manager on my second monitor and ran the demo multiple times, for some reason the issue did not occur in windowed mode (even at 2560x1440) and the cpu load never went over 30% so cpu throttling was definitely not an issue (based upon my P95/OCCT tests it was not likely but needed to be sure) so I went to Nvidia control panel and disabled threaded optimization (one of the settings I had not tried) and then ran the demo again in full screen mode and so for 10 minutes there have been so issues.

Really seems that this was the culprit at this point, so leaving threaded optimization off is a very good idea.
 
Nevermind: That didn't work either, I officially give up. PC gaming is no longer worth the trouble for me.
 
Did a clean reinstall of Windows 8 Pro and the ghost has been exorcised *touchwood*

One of the weirdest problems I have ever seen, and I do this for a living (Windows/Linux admin for a large firm)....ah well, all that is lost is a few save games, first world problems :D
 
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