My New Dell Crashes!

[tsumake]

Hey Guys,

I just got a new Dell:

P4 3.6ghz

1024 meg RAM

ATI X800XT PCIe

Audigy 2 (plain, just 5.1)

WinXP, SP1a

DirectX 9c

Catalyst 4.10

Here's the problem: After playing a game that requires 3D acceleration, like Far Cry, Thief III, Men Of Valor, etc, for anywhere from an hour to 30 friggin minutes, the screen freezes, with the sound playing on, then the screen goes blank and I get a screeching noise from my speakers. Funny thing is, I played Doom 3 with no problems!

After talking to Dell about it for days, they finall came to the conclusion that the sound card the problem, so they replaced it. But, the problem didn't go away.

So, I'm wondering: Is the memory at fault? I have 2 sticks of 512 ram (I forgot the specific format) or the Video Card, or the motherboard or what? This is really pissing me off. I can play Far Cry in all its visual glory....until it crashes!!!

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[ExCyber]

http://memtest86.com

Also, have you tried reference drivers for the X800 XT and your mainboard chipset? If Dell shipped customized ones they could be older code with some bugs.

 

[IceDigger]

It's a dell, thats why it crashes.

 

[Quadriflax]

It sounds like your video card is overheating. Check to make sure the fan is spinning on it and that everything is well ventilated. Except the fact that Doom 3 works fine. Hmm.

Does it do anything weird right before it crashes? I know when I was having these kinds of problems things would play okay but flicker here and there until it crashed after an hour or so. I replaced the stuck fan and everything is fine now.

 

[Alexvrb]

Although I'm inclined to agree with Ice, there is obviously a problem. Try running it with the side panel/casing off. The fact that it consistently works for a good amount of time indicates to me a heat buildup and eventual overheating of the GPU or other components. If it was bad memory, it would probably be more random. But just take things as they come.

 

[tsumake]

Well, I talked to dell again. They told me to disable all of my non-MS services, and that seems to work. Only time will tell, though. Thanks again for the suggestions.

 

[Alexvrb]

I hope so. Their next suggestion will surely have you calling an exorcist.

 

[Quadriflax]

I'm surprised they didn't tell you to reinstall Windows yet.

I've only delt with Dell CS a couple of times here at work. When the hard drive died on my boss' computer it was incredibly easy to get a replacement. All I had to do was give them the service tag number and they overnighted the replacement.

The second time, however, was more difficult. We had a 19" LCD monitor die on us. The only problem was it was purchased seperately through the campus computer store. I didn't have a service tag this time. Trying to get them to replace it resulted in three calls to Dell and two to the campus store. The guy on campus said all I'd need was the serial number. Dell didn't know what to do with it. Finally I ended up giving them the service tag from the computer my boss has (remember, this was purchased seperate from the monitor) and then magically they were able to ship me the replacement.

Bottom line: without a service tag they have no idea what to do. And I talked with people here in the US and people overseas. In fact it was actually the guy overseas that finally was able to ship the replacement. Go figure.

[apu]

"My name is Steve, how may I help you?

[/apu]

 

[Alexvrb]

Now hang up! and call again...

 

[ExCyber]

If it was bad memory, it would probably be more random.

Since Doom 3 works fine, I was thinking that there may be a difference between the memory management in the OpenGL and DirectX driver code that makes the DX code much more likely to grab the bad RAM for internal use, or to flip it around, perhaps some piece of the GL code or Doom 3 itself uses it for something like textures or sound effects, leaving it unavailable to the kernel for stashing Important Stuff like page tables.

It's a bit of a long shot, but it's a weird set of symptoms.

 

[Alexvrb]

You don't think that it would cause oddities elsewhere at any point in using the box? Not like its an issue anymore apparently.

 

[ExCyber]

You don't think that it would cause oddities elsewhere at any point in using the box?

Of course it would, but most data touched is not immediately user-visible, and most programs are written with the assumption that the hardware is reliable, so quite a few things can go wrong undetected until the proper conditions for a user-visible failure come together.

 

[it290]

I had the reverse happen on an older PC of mine once. DX games would run fine, but anything using OpenGL would hard-lock the system eventually. This machine had one of those crappy early AGP chipsets from ALi. It turned out that the only way to work around the problem was to disable AGP entirely. I wouldn't be surprised if today's PCI-e implementations are causing similar problems.

 

[Alexvrb]

I doubt it. Unless you're using an early ALi PCI-E chipset.