*** Video "black out loop" issue explored ***

cornelious0_0

[H]F Junkie
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Apr 6, 2003
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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.
 
Alrighty... well I am the friend that corny is refering to. System is in Sig. Currently in a temp case being cooled by a Ultra-120 Extreme.

Symptoms started about 3 months ago. Ever since I have gone through many hardware changes trying to fix this issue and at each step I thought I had fixed something and got somewhere just to realize last weekend that I have not gotten anywhere. I was in the process or trying different processors when the SB on my EVGA 680i died... so I had to start over with my Striker Extreme which has known memory issues (Dimm1 is bad) and will be going out for RMA as soon as I get the EVGA board replaced. I am hopeing to get a P5K Premium in exchange for it so that I can get away from 680i...

Anywho... my exact symptoms are this... random lockups, BSOD, no post's... just general iiregular system behavior. Yet I can play Supreme Command for 12 hours straigh with SLI enabled, CPU @ 3.6GHz without an issue... then 10 minutes after closeing the game... system restart.

Recently with the EVGA board I started having the black out issues that Corny was having... that is when we started collaborating together on this. Basically I can recreate the situation by running Prime Small FFT's, rthdribl, and ATI tool artifact scan. What happens is ATI tool starts to detect artifacts, its little 3d box goes all yellow and rthdribl procedes to go haywire. If I stop all stressing right there the system will usually continue to run fine for awile. But direct3D will cease to function and I can no reopen ATI tool or anyother direct3d app.

Well I have tried this with 2 x Asus Striker Extreme, 1 EVGA 680i, 1 x Asus Commando... in the Strikers and commando I have tried OCZ PC2-6400, OZC PC2-8500 SLI (currently in corny's machine), Corsiar Dominators PC2-8888 and finally my current set of OCZ Titanium Alpha PC2-8000 VX2 (second set, first set had one bad module). Any combinations of my two strikers, the commando and that ram gave these results. I have tried 3 x EVGA 8800GTS 320 MB with the same results. I have tried removing my X-Fi with the same results. My last test before the EVGA blew up was with a Presler 940. I did not get any lockups or BSOD's however I still had artifacts.

000ppxdk


Although that kept going for an hour and the system was fine. Every other app I opened worked flawless at this point. I closed rthdribl and opened it again and it was fine. No direct3d problems, no lockups, no BSOD's, no black outs. Just that little bit of artifacting in ATI Tool and when I closed ATI tool rthdribl went funny like that as if ATI tool was causing rthdribls's problem. That was after 22 hours of stressing. At that point I was usually able to get the problems to arrise within 3 hours.

Then the EVGA board died before i had a chance to try my brand new E6850. So I put my striker into that case and kept the QX6700 in it for awhile. I just had the same results after 22 hours and it led to a win32k.sys BSOD. Now I have the E6850 and am trying again.

I have had BSOD's on win32k.sys, watchdog something, every nvidia file under the sun... and some weird BSODs that were only 3 linese long that I wish I would have taken pics of... very generic... just say something went wrong and we shut down the computer.

So now I am off to let the tests run on my E6850...

EDIT: I should note that the amount of pixels ATI tool detecs is always a fixed number and the screen just goes completely yellow while rthdribl goes completely white... lockup, blank screen, BSOD always procede this except for the instance of that pic above. The artifacts were changing and nothing else happened after. So either that video card is bunk or ATI tool has a problem or the presler did not fix the problem. Either way I am using the other 8800 GTS now and still have the X-Fi out.
 
You are still alive? Hi.

Sure am...good to be back, my day to day home forum is rather slow...so I'm gonna give [H] another go. :D

Thanks for posting Bun-Bun...I knew I forgot to bring up something, and it was the ATITool issue.

My ATITool artfact scan will also be fine for a short while and then the 3d window will go completely yellow with a fixed number of artifacts listed, yet it says that there are "no errors" detected.

Previously I remember that Bun-Bun would run into the lockups and whatnot much more frequently when WMP/IE7 were active as well...and this is also holding true for me.

What it seems to be coming down to is if there is errata involving the CPU's cache it could technically cause just about anything to happen, due to the fact that everything (for the most part) has to run through there at one point or another...and the heavier you load a system, the more likely it is that you'll run into the issue in question...just like memory errors that only occur when certain areas of the memory are accessed, more activity = higher chance of failure.

Sadly enough I do not have another CPU to test, but if the E6850 fixes Bun-Bun's issue then it looks like we have an arrangement in which we will both be able to get our CPU's replaced if my issue is also solved the same way.

I welcome anyone to chime in here, or at least for people to spread the word about the thread until it's stickied...as I know there are at LEAST a couple people on [H] I've seen with our exact symptoms who have simply been told to RMA their video card...people who most likely didn't get their issue(s) resolved.
 
Thanks...hopefully the two of us will come to some kind of conclusion to validate this theory or not.
 
A little update to my situation, with my E6850 in the Striker I still get win32k.sys BSOD but with the memory in Dimm slot 1 I don't get memory errors anymore in HCI memtest (I did with the QX6700).

So now I am trying different combinations of ram thinking maybe my ram and CPU had to do with it.
 
Hopefully there is SOME kind of conclusion...I really would like to be able to legitamitely swap my E4300 for an E6550 for the G0 stepping.
 
This might through some oil on your fire but here goes

I got the same issue with a bog standard Packard Bell, P4 3.06GHz setup using an Nvidia FX5200 that had been fine previously. Possibly connected to this issue is that it was at the same time I started to get World of Warcraft dropping to desktop at random whilst I was playing.

It also generated on one occasion, a BSOD that gave an error in the nvid4_dll when the screen came back up. Nothing showing in the Windows event viewer at all, not even the BSOD.

One other event that started occuring at a similar time, was the fact Windows Update was desperately trying to install .Net framework version 1.1 and failing to do so. This is likely because I have version 3 installed :)
 
Well, it has nothing to do with automatic updates if that's what you're implying...sorry, not sure if I get what you're suggesting.
 
I'm trying not to imply anything, simply reporting the facts as I can recall them to try and help you guys out in puzzling this out...
 
Well here is an attempted summary...

EVGA, QX6700, Dimms 1,3 ---- Artifacts, lockups, BSOD's, HCI memtest 10,000%
EVGA, Presler 940, Dimms 1,3 ---- Artifacts, HCI Memtest 3,000%
Striker, QX6700, Dimms 2,4 ---- Artifacts, lockups, BSOD's, HCI Memtest 3,000%
Striker, QX6700, Dimm 1 ----- HCI Memtest < 200%
Striker, E6850, Dimm 2,4 ----- Arifacts, lockups, BSOD's
Striker, E6850, Dimm 1 ----- HCI Memtest 3,000% 48 hours no lockups or artifacts
Striker, E6850, Dimm 1 (other module) ----- HCI Memtest 1,000%, testing....

So Dimm 1 with QX6700 gets errors in HCI memtest... doesn't with the E6850... weird.

Both E6850 and QX6700 get BSODs/lockups with mem in Dimm 2,4. Both modules test fine in Dimm slot 1 wiht the E6850... so why the BSOD with the E6850 with mem in dimm 2,4 but not dimm 1? That I still don't know...

Currently testing with the other stick to see if that stick causes BSOD's even though it passes memtest...

So it would seem that it is a combination of thigns... CPU seems to have fixed something but there is still a memory issue that is more thne likey the motherboard at this point... once I am done with testing in Dimm 1 I am putting 1 module in Dimm 2 and continuing from there... maybe I will just run HCI memtest on the other Dimm slots to see if the different processor just caused the NB to make a different dimm bad...
 
At this point I really have no idea what's going on with either of our systems...but mine hasn't acted up much at all lately and I'm pretty much just waiting to see what you end up with.
 
Try removing that Creative sound card. I've had to do that on my system and on a buddy's. On my system sleep refused to work anymore. On his it would randomly black screen (and i mean random).
 
With the other stick it locked up after 12 hours.... I have the X-Fi removed and only a single 8800GTS for this testing.

Suspecting QX6700 is the underlying problem but the EVGA board killed my Ram...

Running memtest86 on the one stick of ram adn then I will try my testing on the other stick again to make sure it can go 48 hours again or whether that was just fluke.

P5K Premium is on the way though.
 
I technically haven't tried removing the sound card, but I'm running into more direct errors then just sleep issues and whatnot...looking more like memory issues in HCI memtest, but still might be the CPU.
 
Well the stick that locked up after 12 hours has gone 12 hours in memtest86 with no errors... not sure if I should keep it going...
 
I have an issue sort of similar to this one, I'm running a E6600 on some cheap Abit motherboard, and run Vista HP. I'm also running an EVGA 8800GTS 320. Every couple of days, I'll be watching TV in Media Center and the screen will black out for 2 seconds, then come back on. I've never seen messages about VPU recover or any errors for that matter. It has never done it twice in 24 hours that I remember, though occasionally when it's supposed to be putting the display in power saving mode, the screen goes to static and won't come back until I restart.. Hope that helps.
 
It happens to me when I am playing 3D games, usually world of warcraft.

The screen will go black for 2 seconds, then it will come back, and it will sometimes have a small white snowy pixels flashing/shimmering on the screen very very fast.

It will sometimes do this repeatedly in the course of a minute or 2.

Sometimes it will do it once in an hour, or once in a day.

I have tried the video card in all 3 of my PCI-e slots, and I know it's not the video card.
 
Both of you above are experiencing the exact same issues I have run into recently, and are both (coincidently) running C2D based systems. It may not be the most practicle fix for some people to replace their CPU's or to even try, and because the issues we have been facing can be somewhat sporatic (the black outs anyways) it might be tough to say something is fixed within a short period of time.

I just wanted to make sure that you two (gyranthir and fraggable) are experiencing EXACTLY what I already have, but VPU recover obviously isn't going to come into play if you're running an Nvidia card...just wanted to make that clear.

So yeah...eventually I'll have time to do some troubleshooting of my own to chime in along side Bun-Bun but the system has been alright lately (enough to put up with) and I just got my first LCD so I've been enjoying the system on a few more levels lately.
 
I too have been having these blackout crashes. It happens for every game i play and it happens on both XP pro and Vista ultimate. It also goes along with the whole random crash because it will run for like 5 mins one time and then the next it will run for like 8 hours. Sometimes it will run all day. I am completely baffled i tired downloanding the microsoft unicode update or whatever it is and it said it doesn't apply to me system so i have no idea whats going on. I was also wondering if maybe everyone was using SLI or is it a mix of single and dual card configurations. Im running X6700, 2 8800GTXs and 3 gigs of OZC ram. Any help would be awesome.
 
Sorry for not joinging in lately...

Well after all my testing this is what i have come up with...

WCG (world community grid) is the best for bringing these issues to the surface. It happens with either of my 8800's in, it happens with my X-Fi removed. It happens with both a QX6700 and E6850 at stock. It has happened with 4 different mobo's.

two weeks ago I swapped memory with my media center. I ran my titanium alphas in the media center at 333MHz (667 DDR) 3-3-3-8 for about a week just fine. And the PC2-6400 that wa sin there went into my striker at 400MHz (800DDR) 5-5-5-15 and it went that week just fine...

So I bought some PC2-6400 Platinums 4-4-4-15. While I waited for them I put the titanium alpha's back in teh striker. they were fine for a few days then started the same issue again. it got to the point where anything that used video at all would cause the screen to start flickering really bad. Got the platinums and put them in... I have been playing WoW, NFS:MW, and bioshock while running WCG for over a week now... no problems.

What is common between the ram that has problems and cornies system? D9 memory. FYI my titanium alpha's can go 48 hours in memtest without error... it seems to be a something very picky with C2D arch and memory...
 
have u tried switching monitiors, all this equipment swap out and no monitor swap out, at least, not reported. Also you should get a volt meter around your incoming power, cuz if you are losing power, or experiencing power drops that could cause troubles, i have personally seen it happen in other instances with electronic equipment. A line filter would help you out best, so this could be a power situation at the wall or with the power supply.
 
I have occasional blackouts as well with my QX6700, but it is very occasional.

If it happens - I have to do a shutdown and restart to get it to comeback up correctly.

i am on my 3rd EVGA 680i and have had a few different intel boards for testing as well. If i run the system for more then a few days, it will eventually have one of these little blackouts.

It has happened in games... just last night as a matter of fact in Bioshock. It has done it when going to sleep. It has done it when just surfing the web.

Again, this is pretty rare for me - maybe once every couple weeks or so.

Just adding to the list of others I guess
 
have u tried switching monitiors, all this equipment swap out and no monitor swap out, at least, not reported. Also you should get a volt meter around your incoming power, cuz if you are losing power, or experiencing power drops that could cause troubles, i have personally seen it happen in other instances with electronic equipment. A line filter would help you out best, so this could be a power situation at the wall or with the power supply.

4 monitors actually ahve been connected to this rig, a Samsung 930BF, Samsung 244T, Dell 1907FP, and a LG something...

I have two Belkin 1500VA UPS connected to all of my equipment. Checknig the logs on the one doesnt show anything on the mains that could cause problems. Both PSU's I have (HX620, M12-700) both are solid on the voltage regulation. Less then 1%...

However I am looking into getting a unit that can take mains power and supply my UPS's with 120v 60hz of clean unchanging power.

A note to those that have blackouts randomly. If I just let my system go normal it probably would be as random as you as well but I always have at least WCG running and usually rthdribl or soemthing. I am trying to get the culprits to show themselves...
 
I just bought a 8800GTX and when I play BF2142 for about 10-15 min. it crashes to the black screen with weird sounds and then the blue screen memory dump stuff. I installed the latest beta drivers and it only has crashed once now so far.

I use Windows XP-32 bit on my system that's in my sig. Don't know if this is the same issue as you guys have????
 
For those of you experiencing this issue with an ATI card. I suggest an small vid card memory voltage increase using ATI tool and test it again for lower frequency of occurance. I have experienced this issue (blackouts) with previous hardware across several platforms built with AMD cores and that solved the problem for me. So far I haven't seen it on this core 2 rig(fingers crossed). Hope that helps someone.
 
Hey guys just checkin in to see if anyone has made any progress to a solution. The blackoutsare starting to annoy me because i have no idea when they are going to occur. Anyone else have any suggestions? I don't think its the video drivers because i ha ve used 3 different versions and they all do it. I am running Vista Ultimate and XP pro sp2 both updated.
 
Hey guys just checkin in to see if anyone has made any progress to a solution. The blackoutsare starting to annoy me because i have no idea when they are going to occur. Anyone else have any suggestions? I don't think its the video drivers because i ha ve used 3 different versions and they all do it. I am running Vista Ultimate and XP pro sp2 both updated.

I would try some different ram.

Ever since I put in some PC2-6400 OCZ Platinum Rev 2 4-4-4-15-2T ram I have had no problems. No blackouts, no lockups, no BSOD's. I have been running ~2 weeks and right now my windows up time is 6 days and I have been running WCG the whole time while playing WoW.

A theory me and corny and someone from another forum have is that Core 2 architecture is really stressful on the chipset, system memory and video memory. Which is why these video problems are occuring. It also seems that D9 memory is more susceptible to these problems.

So if anyone is looking to test this theory and are looking for some memory I recommend the new OCZ Raaper PC2-6400 4-4-4-15-1T memory as that stuff looks really nice, will perform just as good as my Titanium Alpha's and is relatively cheap. If this turns out to be the problem that is the kit I am going to pick up.
 
I am having the same problems with my rig, although it hasn't hit the point where it crashes my system yet, I just get blank screen for 4-5 seconds, and then everything is fine. Sometimes it will happen soon after Windows loads, other times it will happen while in the middle of internet browsing, and once I got a BSOD while playing Bioshock. my temps are great (37C under full load) my video card runs at 75C full load, so nothing is wrong on those points, I was just assuming it was my overclock until I read this post.
 
Random fuck ups like that are always in my experiance motherboard issues, but then a CPU issue would, it would seem, cause the same sort of random issues.

I am suprised orthos didn't get it tho.


edit: Test the CPU!! Plug in a $40 prescott, or ceader mill or sumfin. If it runs then I'll jump on the newly formed "suck it intel" bandwagon! I havn't been on it in years! brings back old-bad memories... shrink from 130 nm to 90nm increases power consumption and heat... bastards...
 
I would try some different ram.

Ever since I put in some PC2-6400 OCZ Platinum Rev 2 4-4-4-15-2T ram I have had no problems. No blackouts, no lockups, no BSOD's. I have been running ~2 weeks and right now my windows up time is 6 days and I have been running WCG the whole time while playing WoW.

A theory me and corny and someone from another forum have is that Core 2 architecture is really stressful on the chipset, system memory and video memory. Which is why these video problems are occuring. It also seems that D9 memory is more susceptible to these problems.

So if anyone is looking to test this theory and are looking for some memory I recommend the new OCZ Raaper PC2-6400 4-4-4-15-1T memory as that stuff looks really nice, will perform just as good as my Titanium Alpha's and is relatively cheap. If this turns out to be the problem that is the kit I am going to pick up.

Please keep me up to date with what you find out becuase if it is the casei will get a new kit and run with it.
 
I actually have the same problem on my Quad, I thought it was just my moniter acting up, but...

I have a B3 Q6600 *currently* running at stock thou I've had it at 3.2 for a while. I've been encontering this problem quite a bit with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. as well as other games. I haven't gotten to the point where I crash or anything, BUT I do get the screen flicker, and sometimes the entire screen goes off while everything else still works in background (music and etc) thou being up the sercurity window (Vista x64, Ctrl-Alt-Del) usually brings back the display.

I was getting this problem as well before I upgraded my video card to what it currently is (and it isn't drivers, I went from an ATi card to an nVidia card, with a full format inbetween, as well as the motherboard and ram are diffrent now as well)

EDIT - I just remebered, Whenever I play Need for Speed Carbon, I get these strange crashes, now I just calked it up to a game bug or it hating vista, but now I'm thinking otherwise, anayways rightnow all these problems are so eratic that they don't bother me too too much (used to windows 9x/ME crashing at least 3 times a day just doen't go away, even after years of FLAWLESS AMD A64 and Intel P4 Northwood XP exprences{for the most part anyways} )
 
Well i think i found a solution, only time will tell if it is correct or not. I pushed up the voltage to my memory and that seemed to work i haven't had a lock up yet. I think im running my RAM linked as well but i will have to double check. But for now i haven't locked up once in 2 days straight.


Well it last for about 5 days then the blackouts came back. I can't seem to figure it out. I also want to add that a friend of mine bought a brand new laptop and she said she gets the same black out problem. I don't know what to say its all across the board anyone get any further with their findings?
 
Random fuck ups like that are always in my experiance motherboard issues, but then a CPU issue would, it would seem, cause the same sort of random issues.

I am suprised orthos didn't get it tho.


edit: Test the CPU!! Plug in a $40 prescott, or ceader mill or sumfin. If it runs then I'll jump on the newly formed "suck it intel" bandwagon! I havn't been on it in years! brings back old-bad memories... shrink from 130 nm to 90nm increases power consumption and heat... bastards...

I use to think like you. But explain this then.

2 Strikers, 1 EVGA board, and 1 Commando all exibit the same symptom.

QX6700, E6850, Presler 940 all show the same symptom (albeit the 940 never locked up just gave artifacting problems however I only tested it for 24 hours).

I have never had any errors in orthos, prime 95, folding@home, stresscpu. WCG is the only thing that has given errors (and only with the titanium alphas in) along with various memory tests, errors, BSOD's.

Also trying older architecture ignores the Core 2 arch being more stressul on memory.

Anyway I have been playing wow pretty hard core (80+ hours in the past week) and I have not had any problems wiht my platinums in.

I will be testing a P5K Premium soon. It is sitting in a box in my closet at the moment. The OCZ Reaper 4-4-4-1T set is looking more tempting every day...

Well i think i found a solution, only time will tell if it is correct or not. I pushed up the voltage to my memory and that seemed to work i haven't had a lock up yet. I think im running my RAM linked as well but i will have to double check. But for now i haven't locked up once in 2 days straight.

I am trying to remember... I upped the voltage on my ram a bit and it helped but eventually I had the same problem... adn that is when I swapped ram... I think.
 
Man, sorry to hear you guys are having these problems. But I want to chime in as a person who has an much older system than you guys and I too have the blackouts for 3-4 secs. I have an MSI K8N Neo4 plat. - AMD athlon 64 3200 - 2 GB kingston valueram - ATI X1900XTX, hooked up to a samsung 204B LCD 20 in. display.

It frist started happening to me though just recently here about a week ago while I was in scrim with my DOD:S clan. Picture on monitor just went black and stayed that way for about 3-4 secs then came back on like nothing happened and I could still play the game and it hasn't crashed or BSOD'D either just blacks out. Someone had mentioned to me maybe the problem was with the DVI connection on the monitor but I have no idea. :(
 
I'm also having this problem when viewing videos on YouTube or playing Oblivion. I'm running Vista 32-bit. My system specs are in my sig.

This is the error I get...
gpurecovergs0.jpg


I'll try installing the microcode update to see if that helps, although I noticed that most people experiencing this issue have OCZ RAM, so could that be a factor?
 
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