Game freezes at random points

ultipig

ultipig

New Member
Hi, -

I just built this computer a few weeks ago, installed everything, and installed a game. (Mercenaries 2, world in flames)

At random points in gameplay, the screen and sound freezes for about 2-7 seconds, then resumes with nothing else happening. It usually happens at CPU and GPU intensive points in the game, i.e. when something blows up.

I did have all settings maxed out (at 1920x1080 resolution also) when it first started. I have reduced the settings to a little under medium, and it has reduced the frequency of these random "GPU overloads", so I'm pretty sure the problem lies within the video card.

I just want the random stops to be eliminated. Please leave out answers like "it would help if you lowered the resolution", because i have tried every single option, and the screen is either all messed up, or the widescreen is not enabled, stretching the image.

Here are my computer specs:

-AMD Phenom II 9750 quad-core
-ATI Radeon HD 4650
-Asus M3N72-D motherboard
-4 gb corsair RAM
-750 watt PSU
-Windows XP Home Edition v2002
-500gb SeaGate hard drive

If you need any more specs, feel free to ask.

Thanks for your concern.
 
That looks like a pretty fast system, it definitely shouldn't be a CPU bottleneck - so it's probably the graphics card, like you suspect. Are you using a high setting of AA/AF? Also, I'm not familiar with that game, but you could look into the advanced detail settings and see if things like soft shadows, HDR rendering, and other things could be leeching all the GPU/GRAM power.
Usually, explosions and such, having a delay, I always thought to be (as a general rule) a CPU bottleneck, but this just doesn't seem to be the case on your rig...
Do you have any other games you can max out and test?

EDIT: Are you sure that you're 4GB of memory is in dual channel mode? Running in single channel would cause a HUGE bottleneck.
 
@Damascus:

Well, what i meant in my first post by "...I have reduced the settings to a little under medium..." meant that i turned all the settings to the lowest, except for models and shaders, which i turned to high. The game looked horrible with them at low setting.

I do have other games, but they are games from the 90's and most of them are 2D so i could play them pretty much on any computer.

Now, I'm wondering about this dual channel mode you speak of. I have 4 gigs of RAM installed and i have tweaked the virtual ram to 6 gigs, which i have heard, and have tested, to be the best way to max RAM performance. (1.5x your physical memory) In "system", it say's that I have 3.5 gigs of ram, which was expected because of my OS. How would i check to see if it's in dual-channel?
 
@Twist86:

I have checked, and there are no reports of anything like my problem.



@gamerman4: Nothing is overclocked. I want to increase my FSB on my CPU, but I'm not sure how. I've looked into the BIOS, but I can't find anything to change the FSB. My processor has a locked in multiplier, so i cant really do anything. I also wanted to overclock my GPU speed and memory with ATI tool, but I'm also not sure how to do that either. I have cpuz, I'll check that now...

EDIT: I have checked cpuz, and my memory is set at dual-channel.
 
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Yes, the system memory running in single channel mode WILL cause the game to severely slow down in heavy action parts of the game, especially if you're running the game at a highr resolution and very large textures are being transferred.
The graphics card can only display the game you are playing as fast as it can get it from the memory (CPU, FSB, and latency timings also come into play here)... You can have the fastest video card out there, but if you're CPU/RAM can't feed it, what's the point?
As far as checking to see if you're in DC mode, CPUz can tell you, as gamerman4 already stated - another very useful program to use is SiSoft Sandra, which is a benchmarking/testing/diagnostic software suite. The full version does cost money - but demo and older versions are available (e-mail me for more info ;))... It can benchmark you're memory, and tell you how fast it should be running by comparing it with other systems with similar setups, and also give you tips on how to improve the performance and/or stability. It also benchmarks CPU, CPU multimedia, HDD, CD, Network, almost everything you can think of.
Your system BIOS will also tell you which mode your DDR is running in.
Also, since you said you don't have any other graphically intensive games to test - this may also be a problem just with this game running on ATI GPUs/software. Some games were developed to run best on Nvidia products, and vise versa. I hope we can get this straightened out for you!
-D
 
Well, the requirements for the game have been exceeded... It says I need a Pentium 3.0 ghz/amd athlon x2. Phenom is much faster than that right? :P

It suggests that the graphics card should be 256mb or more nvidia 6800 or ati x1600. My card is an ati 4650, and had 1gb of memory. That appears to be a lot better than i thought my system was....

When playing the game, i have nothing else running...

It seems that, whenever this happens and I'm watching my CPU usage, it's only at about 25%... Another reason why i think it has to do with the RAM or the video card.

My memory is running in dual channel mode...

I have nothing else to say... kinda confusing myself.
 
Well I had a similar issue once...but unless you have checked never hurts to be sure.


Download Rivatuner from here

http://downloads.guru3d.com/RivaTuner-v2.09-download-163.html

Install it and on the main tab you should see a "customize" under your GPU information click it and hit hardware monitoring.

Here you can see the temps of your GPU....then run a tool such as rthdribl_1_2 which you can download here http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/rthdribl/


When you boot it up make sure to full screen it and hit I think 6 or 7 for x16 AA. Now watch the temps on Rivatuner and see for 2 things.

1. Your fan RPM is going up as it gets hotter.
2. Your temps on the GPU.


If its a fan issue it can be fixed :)



Also run memtest you can download it here http://www.memtest.org/ burn it on to a CD-R or put it on a FAT32 flash drive and run it for 1 complete loop (takes 2 hours or so) worst case least you know your ram is in fine condition :)



Also what does your CPU temp look like? Stock cooler? If you dunno try a program like coretemp http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/ or Everest http://downloads.guru3d.com/EVEREST-Ultimate-Edition-5.02-download-1072.html


Run Prime95 or Othros to stress your CPU...perhaps the stock is failing to do its job. My Q6600 stock really sucked...my overclocked idle temps are lower then the stocks default clock temps.
 
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