cornelious0_0
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Apr 6, 2003
- Messages
- 12,783
I have recently been dealing with an issue in which my monitor will go completely black, and after 4-6 seconds it refreshes and everything's fine. Typically VPU recover kicks in and says that it was involved, but often it does not. While the display is blank audio still plays, and the system still runs, as you can hear menus responding in games (as an example) if it happens while playing a game. After happening 3-4 times the system eventually does not "recover" from it's "black out" and the system must be restarted. This has lately progressed to the entire system locking up and/or restarting. I (obviously) initially thought this was a video card issue, but I have started to think otherwise.
A friend of mine is running a QX6700 on an Asus Striker (680i based) motherboard, with a pair of 8800GTS's and 2GB of OCZ Titanium Alpha DDR2. He has been encountering the same issues, except he (obviously) does not have VPU recover popping up on occasion. He has tried different video cards to no avail...and after moving his system between two other Strikers, an eVGA 680i board, and an i965 based Asus board the issue(s) remain. I am running an RD600 based DFI board to boot...so that's 5 motherboards over 3 chipsets, and multiple video cards swapped in and out...all without any resolution.
It was brought to our attention previously that Intel had reported some possible underlying issues/errata that could effect the performance and reliability of nearly all Core 2 Duo based CPU's...expanding even to quadcore and extreme models.
There was a microcode update released by Microsoft on July 9th that addressed (what seemed to be) related issues for people running Intel C2D based CPU's...but I have had the update installed since the 12th to no avail. I have the MS Microcode update linked below if anyone wants to try it out, but it hasn't helped my situation.
At this point my friend and I are at the point where after trying 3 different motherboard chipsets, multiple ATI and Nvidia video cards, different brands/speeds of DDR2 and different sound cards and hard drives...it doesn't seem to make sense that it could be anything OTHER THEN the CPU...as the only thing that our systems have in common is the C2D architecture.
What lead me to submit this thread is that in a search for information I stumbled across 2 or 3 other people on [H] with C2D based chips that are/were experiencing the exact same issues as well. Obviously everyone is going to suggest that it's the video card, but I'm suggesting that they look elsewhere, and that if the issues persist after the mentioned microcode update is installed...that a replacement CPU is most likely in order.
I wanted to make sure that people are aware of the possibilities of the situation(s) outlined above...and that if someone is experiencing the same death spiral of monitor blackouts they at least consider this possibility.
I know it seems strange to begin with...but explain to me how the same issues could/would continue to persist across multiple motherboard makes/chipsets and numerous video cards of different manufacturers as well, along with a wide array of memory configurations...other then of course, the worst luck imaginable...which I find hard to believe after all we've gone through. One more quick point that I'll add is that both of our CPU's will run through as many hours of Memtest and/or Orthos stresstesting...up until the blackouts occur, and no it's not related to an overclock or heat, as it happens to both of us (and other [H] users from what I saw) when the system is idle and the cpu and video card(s) are both WELL within acceptable temperature ranges.
Hopefully this thread can be stickied for the time being, as this could very likely be an issue that has been/will be addressed improperly without the diligence that my friend and I have had to troubleshoot what would normally be labelled an obvious video card issue.
I will try to keep people updated on our two situations as well as answer any questions that you may have if things are not clear in my descriptions...but I beg you all to at least consider this a possibility and not to write it off the same issue(s) as a dying video card.
Link to the Microsoft microcode update
Link to Intel's PDF that outlines the related errata...starting at page 29 of the document as listed in it's table of contents.
A friend of mine is running a QX6700 on an Asus Striker (680i based) motherboard, with a pair of 8800GTS's and 2GB of OCZ Titanium Alpha DDR2. He has been encountering the same issues, except he (obviously) does not have VPU recover popping up on occasion. He has tried different video cards to no avail...and after moving his system between two other Strikers, an eVGA 680i board, and an i965 based Asus board the issue(s) remain. I am running an RD600 based DFI board to boot...so that's 5 motherboards over 3 chipsets, and multiple video cards swapped in and out...all without any resolution.
It was brought to our attention previously that Intel had reported some possible underlying issues/errata that could effect the performance and reliability of nearly all Core 2 Duo based CPU's...expanding even to quadcore and extreme models.
There was a microcode update released by Microsoft on July 9th that addressed (what seemed to be) related issues for people running Intel C2D based CPU's...but I have had the update installed since the 12th to no avail. I have the MS Microcode update linked below if anyone wants to try it out, but it hasn't helped my situation.
At this point my friend and I are at the point where after trying 3 different motherboard chipsets, multiple ATI and Nvidia video cards, different brands/speeds of DDR2 and different sound cards and hard drives...it doesn't seem to make sense that it could be anything OTHER THEN the CPU...as the only thing that our systems have in common is the C2D architecture.
What lead me to submit this thread is that in a search for information I stumbled across 2 or 3 other people on [H] with C2D based chips that are/were experiencing the exact same issues as well. Obviously everyone is going to suggest that it's the video card, but I'm suggesting that they look elsewhere, and that if the issues persist after the mentioned microcode update is installed...that a replacement CPU is most likely in order.
I wanted to make sure that people are aware of the possibilities of the situation(s) outlined above...and that if someone is experiencing the same death spiral of monitor blackouts they at least consider this possibility.
I know it seems strange to begin with...but explain to me how the same issues could/would continue to persist across multiple motherboard makes/chipsets and numerous video cards of different manufacturers as well, along with a wide array of memory configurations...other then of course, the worst luck imaginable...which I find hard to believe after all we've gone through. One more quick point that I'll add is that both of our CPU's will run through as many hours of Memtest and/or Orthos stresstesting...up until the blackouts occur, and no it's not related to an overclock or heat, as it happens to both of us (and other [H] users from what I saw) when the system is idle and the cpu and video card(s) are both WELL within acceptable temperature ranges.
Hopefully this thread can be stickied for the time being, as this could very likely be an issue that has been/will be addressed improperly without the diligence that my friend and I have had to troubleshoot what would normally be labelled an obvious video card issue.
I will try to keep people updated on our two situations as well as answer any questions that you may have if things are not clear in my descriptions...but I beg you all to at least consider this a possibility and not to write it off the same issue(s) as a dying video card.
Link to the Microsoft microcode update
Link to Intel's PDF that outlines the related errata...starting at page 29 of the document as listed in it's table of contents.