Strange Crash

[DarthWombaT]

Problem: After playing a game like EverQuest 2, or Battlefield 2, for about 30 minutes the game crashes. It does NOT crash to the desktop, instead the screen freezes and an audible sound can be heard over the sound card. Sometimes it is a higher pitched chirping or sometimes it is a low frequency bloop noise (which repeats every 1 second until the machine is hard-rebooted.

The video card has it's additional 4 pin molex attached.

Nothing is overclocked, and as I understand the "OC" on the 6600GT is fairly minimal.

I'm not sure where to start looking to diagnose this issue since I really don't know which hardware causes it. It could be anything. However, I recently swapped out the memory (from 1024 MB 3-3-3-8) and the sound card.

The problem still persists on a fresh install of Win XP.

Hardware: ------------------------------------
VID: BFG OC Geforce 6600GT AGP
CPU: Athlon 64 3000+ Venice
MB: Neo2 K8N Platinum socket 939
MEM: 2048 MB G.Skill 2-3-2-5
SC: Audigy 2 Z
PSU: Enermax 485 Watt 12V spec

 

[Sathsayin]

watchdog timer kicking in. Something isn't jiveing in your hardware. I would flash my bios and see what happens?(see what issues have been fixed with your board) Do you overclock?

 

[DarthWombaT]

Currently the only thing different from a 'stock' setup would be the memory timings, but the memory I bought is rated at that latency.

 

[Mav451]

You said you've used a fresh install of XP - what about older GPU drivers? What GPU drivers are you on now?

 

[DarthWombaT]

All of the drivers I am using are fresh off the internet, with the exception of the motherboard drivers. I was having issues a year or so ago with the onboard NIC so I decided maybe this time I'd try drivers from MSI.

VID: Release 178.24
MB: Driver version: package: 5.03 for Win2K/XP

This isn't the first time I'm experiencing this problem. I was getting random crashes like this when I played Battlefield 2 a year or so ago. Some things, like EQ1, did run so I guess I just ignored it and didn't play games that didn't work. And i went through a period of time of about a year and a half where I didn't play games at all so it's been on the backburner, lol.

Also,
The onboard NIC and AC97 are disabled in BIOS
Fastwrites are disabled
Sidebanding is enabled
Set on 4X/8X mode

I've started up EQ2 and Speedfan. I'm going to look at the temperatures up until it crashes. I doubt it's heat though.


Thx so far!

 

[DarthWombaT]

So it turns out it is heat.

Here's the events leading up to my video card approaching infinity:

Sec       GPU    CPU   Ambient
52354    76.0    43.0    42.0
52357    76.0    43.0    42.0
52360    76.0    42.0    42.0
52364    76.0    44.0    42.0
52367    77.0    44.0    42.0
52370    77.0    44.0    42.0
52373    77.0    43.0    42.0
52376    77.0    44.0    43.0
52379    77.0    44.0    42.0
52382    78.0    44.0    42.0
52386    78.0    43.0    43.0
52388    78.0    44.0    43.0
52392    78.0    44.0    43.0
52395    78.0    44.0    43.0
52397    78.0    43.0    43.0
52401    79.0    44.0    43.0
52404    79.0    44.0    43.0
52407    79.0    44.0    43.0
52410    79.0    43.0    43.0
52413    79.0    44.0    43.0
52416    79.0    43.0    44.0
52419    79.0    43.0    44.0
52422    79.0    43.0    44.0
52425    79.0    44.0    44.0
52428    80.0    44.0    44.0
52431    79.0    45.0    44.0
52435    80.0    44.0    44.0
52437    80.0    44.0    44.0
52441    80.0    44.0    43.0
52444    80.0    44.0    44.0

"ambient" is tied to the video card. I took that as either memory temperature or some diode close to the blazing hot GPU.

Here's something for everyone to laugh at:

The stock fan died, and I replaced it with something that spins so slow I can stick my finger in it. I guess I need to get on replacing that fan...