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#1
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"heavy graphics processing" causes video lock up
I am having problems with a computer crashing during what could be referred
to as times of "heavy graphics processing". The self diagnostics that came with the card are coming back OK. The card seems to work OK for most applications. All the latest upgrades and patches are installed both for the card and XP. The problem seems to occur when the computer is performing heavy graphics processing. It simply locks up. No response of any kind. The video freezes until you hit the reset button. I am unsure if the problem is in the video card or the motherboard as I have no way of accessing the computer itself with a diagnostic after it becomes unresponsive. The dump logs haven't been too helpful up until this point either. I'm looking for some general suggestions or hints in narrowing down suspect components. |
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#2
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"heavy graphics processing" causes video lock up
Have you checked the temperatures on the cpu and the graphics cards?
Rivatuner works for nvidia cards, CPUtemp is a program that shows core temps. Are your fans and heat sinks clean and can air flow through your case easily? Pat Glenn wrote: I am having problems with a computer crashing during what could be referred to as times of "heavy graphics processing". The self diagnostics that came with the card are coming back OK. The card seems to work OK for most applications. All the latest upgrades and patches are installed both for the card and XP. The problem seems to occur when the computer is performing heavy graphics processing. It simply locks up. No response of any kind. The video freezes until you hit the reset button. I am unsure if the problem is in the video card or the motherboard as I have no way of accessing the computer itself with a diagnostic after it becomes unresponsive. The dump logs haven't been too helpful up until this point either. I'm looking for some general suggestions or hints in narrowing down suspect components. |
#3
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"heavy graphics processing" causes video lock up
Pat Glenn wrote:
I am having problems with a computer crashing during what could be referred to as times of "heavy graphics processing". The self diagnostics that came with the card are coming back OK. The card seems to work OK for most applications. All the latest upgrades and patches are installed both for the card and XP. The problem seems to occur when the computer is performing heavy graphics processing. It simply locks up. No response of any kind. The video freezes until you hit the reset button. I am unsure if the problem is in the video card or the motherboard as I have no way of accessing the computer itself with a diagnostic after it becomes unresponsive. The dump logs haven't been too helpful up until this point either. I'm looking for some general suggestions or hints in narrowing down suspect components. A simple way of seeing if the video card is overheating and locking up the computer is to feel it carefully after the computer locks up. If the card is too hot to touch it is probably your problem. You can check to be sure that the fan, if any, is running and is not clogged. If the card still overheats you can add a slot fan under the card to help remove the hot air from the case. |
#4
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"heavy graphics processing" causes video lock up
Pat Glenn wrote:
I am having problems with a computer crashing during what could be referred to as times of "heavy graphics processing". The self diagnostics that came with the card are coming back OK. The card seems to work OK for most applications. All the latest upgrades and patches are installed both for the card and XP. The problem seems to occur when the computer is performing heavy graphics processing. It simply locks up. No response of any kind. The video freezes until you hit the reset button. I am unsure if the problem is in the video card or the motherboard as I have no way of accessing the computer itself with a diagnostic after it becomes unresponsive. The dump logs haven't been too helpful up until this point either. I'm looking for some general suggestions or hints in narrowing down suspect components. You can try running this program as a stress test. The Prime95 program (provided by Mersenne.org) has a Torture Test option, which carries out a math calculation with a known answer. The program can check the results for correctness, and since the program uses both the system memory, and the processor, will tell you whether the core of the system is healthy. (If the program asks to "join GIMPs", say no and carry out the test. The default memory allocation should be OK, as it seems to leave enough room so you can do a few other things while the test runs.) This version is multithreaded, and should start a thread per core. http://majorgeeks.com/Prime95_d4363.html The reason I'd suggest running that program, is to distinguish a CPU/memory problem, from a graphics problem. If Prime95 can run for four hours without stopping with an error, then you're in pretty good shape. I've had unstable computers, where an error was detected in under ten seconds. If Prime95 is clean, then that points more towards the graphics card, graphics card driver, or the power supply. I don't really have a good diagnostic for graphics cards. There are certainly graphics related programs you can run, but I don't know to what extent they really test the video card. I use the 3DMark demo loop for simple stability tests (there are a number of versions of 3DMark, and some are a bigger download than the others). http://majorgeeks.com/3Dmark_d99.html The graphics card can overheat (like if the fan is stuck), as can the CPU. "Speedfan" from almico.com, can give you some temperature readouts (even extracting hard drive temperatures via the SMART interface). As Brett points out, there are other programs that can read out the GPU temp. 65C is "hot enough" for a processor. GPU designs seem to allow more than that. To determine whether it is software related, I like to boot an alternate OS and try to test there. While I use Linux for its "boot from CD" convenience, it doesn't really have anything that approaches 3DMark for a graphics test. (GLXgears is an example of something you can run, but it isn't much of a test. I have run a copy of Quake Arena in Linux, but for that you need the data files from the game CD. I used a Macintosh CD, to get some donor data files. Linux even has some code to read Mac discs.) If games fail under both OSes, then you'd know you have a hardware problem of some sort. It isn't likely that the exact same software problem would exist in both environments. There is a test you can try, when a computer "locks up". If you have a second computer, you can open a command window, and try "ping 192.168.1.2" where the number is the IP address of the stuck computer. If the ping command gets an answer, that tells you the CPU on the "frozen" machine, is still running the network protocol stack, and isn't really frozen. There are probably other networking functions you could set up and test as a means of verifying the function of the frozen computer. Like a remote desktop session of some sort. Paul |
#5
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"heavy graphics processing" causes video lock up
Thanks for the help guys. This gives me a good place to start.
"Paul" wrote in message ... Pat Glenn wrote: I am having problems with a computer crashing during what could be referred to as times of "heavy graphics processing". The self diagnostics that came with the card are coming back OK. The card seems to work OK for most applications. All the latest upgrades and patches are installed both for the card and XP. The problem seems to occur when the computer is performing heavy graphics processing. It simply locks up. No response of any kind. The video freezes until you hit the reset button. I am unsure if the problem is in the video card or the motherboard as I have no way of accessing the computer itself with a diagnostic after it becomes unresponsive. The dump logs haven't been too helpful up until this point either. I'm looking for some general suggestions or hints in narrowing down suspect components. You can try running this program as a stress test. The Prime95 program (provided by Mersenne.org) has a Torture Test option, which carries out a math calculation with a known answer. The program can check the results for correctness, and since the program uses both the system memory, and the processor, will tell you whether the core of the system is healthy. (If the program asks to "join GIMPs", say no and carry out the test. The default memory allocation should be OK, as it seems to leave enough room so you can do a few other things while the test runs.) This version is multithreaded, and should start a thread per core. http://majorgeeks.com/Prime95_d4363.html The reason I'd suggest running that program, is to distinguish a CPU/memory problem, from a graphics problem. If Prime95 can run for four hours without stopping with an error, then you're in pretty good shape. I've had unstable computers, where an error was detected in under ten seconds. If Prime95 is clean, then that points more towards the graphics card, graphics card driver, or the power supply. I don't really have a good diagnostic for graphics cards. There are certainly graphics related programs you can run, but I don't know to what extent they really test the video card. I use the 3DMark demo loop for simple stability tests (there are a number of versions of 3DMark, and some are a bigger download than the others). http://majorgeeks.com/3Dmark_d99.html The graphics card can overheat (like if the fan is stuck), as can the CPU. "Speedfan" from almico.com, can give you some temperature readouts (even extracting hard drive temperatures via the SMART interface). As Brett points out, there are other programs that can read out the GPU temp. 65C is "hot enough" for a processor. GPU designs seem to allow more than that. To determine whether it is software related, I like to boot an alternate OS and try to test there. While I use Linux for its "boot from CD" convenience, it doesn't really have anything that approaches 3DMark for a graphics test. (GLXgears is an example of something you can run, but it isn't much of a test. I have run a copy of Quake Arena in Linux, but for that you need the data files from the game CD. I used a Macintosh CD, to get some donor data files. Linux even has some code to read Mac discs.) If games fail under both OSes, then you'd know you have a hardware problem of some sort. It isn't likely that the exact same software problem would exist in both environments. There is a test you can try, when a computer "locks up". If you have a second computer, you can open a command window, and try "ping 192.168.1.2" where the number is the IP address of the stuck computer. If the ping command gets an answer, that tells you the CPU on the "frozen" machine, is still running the network protocol stack, and isn't really frozen. There are probably other networking functions you could set up and test as a means of verifying the function of the frozen computer. Like a remote desktop session of some sort. Paul |
#6
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"heavy graphics processing" causes video lock up
Years ago I had overheating problems with an AMD CPU. Turns out it was the
fan. The fan was not working at all. Replaced the fan and it worked great again. |
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