Please Help!!

[GeForce]

Also, I don't see any evidence at all that your ram is causing the aforementioned problem, so why do you suspect it?

Exactly. If you do suspect it, you should do as I advised earlier and memtest each stick in turn.

Then worry about changing RAM.

Jon

[Hai Perso Coyone?]

Well, I suspected it was my PSU...but then even with my new Hiper Type-R PSU, the problem still occurs...As mentioned earlier...FS9 does NOT cause this problem...only NFSMW and other high end games...shall I try updating my video card drivers...I still run the old 77.77 nVidia drivers...Also, my machine stays on...but my monitor displays entering sleep mode...The only way to get rid of this is to press and hold the power button for 5 seconds...and then reboot...It sucks...If not the RAM, what else could it be?

[Gunny04]

Update the drivers in the graphics card..... that might help... lol anyways in Everest (The thing I hate) My ram all registers as PC3200.... so does anyone know where I might find something to tell me my rams TRUE speed? Cheers, Gunny

[congo]

...If not the RAM, what else could it be?

It could be a number of things, these systems are very complex.

One of my first thoughts is overheat or incorrect bios settings for the hardware you have installed. Crashing ram is often the result of incorrect bios settings for example, even if it did turn out to be the ram.

... lol anyways in Everest (The thing I hate) My ram all registers as PC3200.... so does anyone know where I might find something to tell me my rams TRUE speed? Cheers, Gunny

You hate it because you don't understand it. Everest will show the true ram speed in the Motherboard/Memory Bus Properties section and the true timings are displayed in the Overclock section.

This isn't your thread Gunny.

[NicksFXHouse]

Lets assume for a moment it is not a heat issue.. but you should get a temperature monitoring software program that will record while you play to verify the temps when the crash occurs...

baring that

3 things I see right off the bat... Congo nailed one of them with the memory type

The other 2 are the AGP and Chipset driver and the video driver.. how those are installed makes a HUGE differerence

1. Use the latest chipset drivers from Intel
2. use the latest Nvidia drivers
3. Uninstall/Install them correctly

First of all, the AGP driver can be damaged when the video driver is uninstalled so what has to happen is:

1. Uninstall the video drivers
2. Using Driver Clean Pro, boot into safe mode and use the Nvidia driver clean, once complete, reboot.
3. Uninstall the Chipset drivers, reboot
4. Reinstall the chipset drivers... get the latest drivers directly from Intel

The latest 865 chipset drivers for that motherboard are here:
http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts ... l&lang=eng

NOTE: It is possible you never installed a chipset driver or there is no uninstaller for it in 'add and remove programs'. If this is the case you do not need to uninstall the chipset driver, simply install the new chipset driver and it will update automatically.

5. Reinstall the video drivers, reboot... wait at the desktop for about 2 minutes and reboot again

set up your video drivers... for Nvidia I recommend:

NVIDIA DRIVER SETTINGS

AF=16x
Anisotropic Mip filter optimization = ON
Anisotropic sample optimization = ON
AA = 8xS EDIT: 4x for 6000 series cards MAX
8xS is for 7800 cards an above and only for FS9...set to 4x for everything else

NOTE: Nvidia has a bug where anything above 4x AA will blank out the aircraft preview screen. If that does not bother you then set up the flight as usual without the preview. It

[congo]

Anti-Aliasing shouldn't go beyond 4x anyway on a 6800GT in my opinion, my 6600GT really struggles with 4x AA and indeed I mostly always use 2xQ.

When I see threads like this, I often wish I had the system here with a spare hard disk. I'd do a format/fresh install and in most cases I think the problems would disappear, leaving some kind of software the obvious culprit.

The problem is that you can throw lots of money at the PC, but until you narrow down the actual problem, it's all for nothing.

What's to say it's not a bug in Need For Speed Most Wanted and your video card settings for example ?

I had a terrible time with NFSMW until I resolved an issue that turned out to be my FFB joystick causing dramas in that game.

Ashar, do you have some Asus auto overclock utility running by any chance?

[NicksFXHouse]

Anti-Aliasing shouldn't go beyond 4x anyway on a 6800GT in my opinion, my 6600GT really struggles with 4x AA and indeed I mostly always use 2xQ.

When I see threads like this, I often wish I had the system here with a spare hard disk. I'd do a format/fresh install and in most cases I think the problems would disappear, leaving some kind of software the obvious culprit.

The problem is that you can throw lots of money at the PC, but until you narrow down the actual problem, it's all for nothing.

What's to say it's not a bug in Need For Speed Most Wanted and your video card settings for example ?

I had a terrible time with NFSMW until I resolved an issue that turned out to be my FFB joystick causing dramas in that game.

Ashar, do you have some Asus auto overclock utility running by any chance?

Actually your correct about the 6600... it should not be run at 8xS... that is a 7800 and above setting however if his system is set up right, it should easily do 4x AA

[Hai Perso Coyone?]

Congo, I do not have an Asus Overclock utility...Shall I update my drivers to 91.47 and see if that helps?

EDIT: Okay, I installed the 91.47 drivers...I could finish one race...but when I got to the main menu again for another race, the same thing happened...I am starting to think this is either RAM or heat...Just before the black screen comes up, everything goes greenish/pinkish and then it turns off...kinda hard to explain...also, I forgot to mention, when I had the RAM installed in the beginning, it did some crazy stuff too...and I think the dude fixed it somehow and said that it shouldn't happen again...it didn't...and now it's started to happen...

Nick, where can I get a good freeware temperature monitoring software...Also guys, keep in mind that this not happen with FS9...I have no clue why

[Hai Perso Coyone?]

No-one else wants to help?

[NicksFXHouse]

Is it only one software title this happens in?

As for checking if heat is the culprit... instead of going to all the trouble of installing monitoring software, try something simple instead...

Open the tower.. place a small fan blowing toward the inside of the tower at the motherboard and components. it does not have to be right up inside the tower, just a good flow of air from the fan into the tower.

Play the game again and see if it happens. If it does, see if it takes longer before it occurs. If it does not crash, continue to use the fan for a few sessions and then put the door back on the tower and see if it crashes.

If it crashes with the door on, you are dealing with heat, its than simple. If it crashes with the fan blowing a good amount of air into the tower, I doubt its heat and more than likely either a software issue or a defective component such as a memory stick.

[Hai Perso Coyone?]

Is it only one software title this happens in?

As for checking if heat is the culprit... instead of going to all the trouble of installing monitoring software, try something simple instead...

Open the tower.. place a small fan blowing toward the inside of the tower at the motherboard and components. it does not have to be right up inside the tower, just a good flow of air from the fan into the tower.

Play the game again and see if it happens. If it does, see if it takes longer before it occurs. If it does not crash, continue to use the fan for a few sessions and then put the door back on the tower and see if it crashes.

If it crashes with the door on, you are dealing with heat, its than simple. If it crashes with the fan blowing a good amount of air into the tower, I doubt its heat and more than likely either a software issue or a defective component such as a memory stick.

Well, this happens with almost all intense games...Need for Speed MW, GTR2...it does NOT happen with FS9...I too am starting to suspect heat...but not to sure...I have Everest Home Edition...shall I get a screenshot of my temperatures?

[cheesegrater]

Actually your correct about the 6600... it should not be run at 8xS... that is a 7800 and above setting however if his system is set up right, it should easily do 4x AA

It depends what your other settings are. I run my 6600GT at 4x and sometimes 8xS and have no FPS problems - 25FPS lock.

Anyways, I would only leave the 512MB PC3200 stick in slot one and take everything else out to eliminate the possibility of RAM problems. Also, you can disable quick boot so the system will check for RAM errors on startup.

You can use Speedfan to check temperatures. This is a great little monitoring utility - only 1.4MB.

http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

The only thing it doesn't tell you is the GPU temperature. You can use the nVIDIA drivers to check that.

[NicksFXHouse]

The 8xS setting in conjunction with setting the mip detail slider to full ( 8 ) in FS9 will overcome the flickers. Thats why I recommend it for Nvidia cards. Some of the older cards do not like the setting if the sim is not set up with a good low poly cloud set and FSUIPC set up to control the cloud layers.

Speedfan is what I use but if his system crashes it wont tell him what his temp was at the time of the crash because there is no 'record' feature as far as I can see. He will ned to play the game while running the graph system, drop out of the game after a period of time and look at the temp graph to see if it has spiked or is running high contantly.

[congo]

Anyways, I would only leave the 512MB PC3200 stick in slot one and take everything else out to eliminate the possibility of RAM problems.

And if the 512mb stick is the problem ? (and it isn't..... I'm almost sure now)

cheesegrater, Ashar has a dual channel ram mainboard, it requires a dual channel setup to perform as designed, not a single ram module. A single module should be used in a process of elimination only.

Ashar, the Pink - Green screen thing is an overheat crash on any system I ever had.

Do what Nick suggested and open up the sidecovers and blow a big old fan through it, I'll bet it doesn't crash again, and make sure you clean the heatsinks and fans out carefully first for the cpu and video card.

[Hai Perso Coyone?]

And if the 512mb stick is the problem ? (and it isn't..... I'm almost sure now)

cheesegrater, Ashar has a dual channel ram mainboard, it requires a dual channel setup to perform as designed, not a single ram module. A single module should be used in a process of elimination only.

Ashar, the Pink - Green screen thing is an overheat crash on any system I ever had.

Do what Nick suggested and open up the sidecovers and blow a big old fan through it, I'll bet it doesn't crash again, and make sure you clean the heatsinks and fans out carefully first for the cpu and video card.

I too was thinking the same...I wanted to know as a safety precaution, can I remove my side panel for heat removal? Will it create static? I don't want to mess up my computer...also, shall I post my temperatures from what Everest gives? I can take a screen shot...

Thanks for the help guys!