The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Quite funny I should show that to some of my more wayward friends. Not to say I haven't made others my Google slave at times, lol. Really is quite convenient though XD

 

Rip, that link was awesome - I might have to save it somewhere for future reference.

Update on stability: crossfire, game patch, overclocking cpu and overclocking video cards, as applied to Sleeping Dogs the video game.

Hooray, 6 hours of trouble-free gaming yesterday. Stability has returned: No issues at all. Cpu cores never more than 80%, frames from 32 to 44, no hangs, no hiccups, no blue screens, first card temps from 75 or less - finished up with the last hour and the 40 mins of afterburner logging showed first card temps at 67. (Thanks for reassuring me about the 85 temperature Jeff, "not too high" but I still love 67 much more than 85 - oh and by the way, I saw the fan profiles available in iTurbo, which is almost identical to Trixx, but I started using iTurbo just when I had the BC2 problems, so I went back to what had worked, Trixx, and MAYBE I'll try iTurbo again later, and also a fan profile, but for now I'll stick to Trixx and the fixed, max fan speed option.)

I suspended the overclock on the video cards. I still had the cpu overclock in effect.

1. core 2 duo quad core 9450 on max overclock, 3.343 ghz up from 2.66 ghz stock
2. crossfire 7950s on no overclock at all, stock 800 core, 1250 memory, but vddc up to 1012, not 981, a mere 30mv increase, because I did have one hang prior at the 981

I completely blame the game patch 1.5 - google shows some other people are also complaining about it.

Remember - what made me suspicious of the patch, was that I had played Sleeping Dogs for more than a month, maybe 40 hours or so, about 15 hours with crossfire (before running BF2 and having my stability come apart, causing me to question whether my components had failed, until testing proved it was only that one game.)

So to have the game stability disappear overnight, then read in Steam that they had just released a major patch - well that seemed more than coincidental.

Furthermore, the description of the patch, was very suspicious. All of a sudden my cores, on my older hardware, were running 100%, cpu bottleneck, whereas before no problems, while apparently other people's more modern computers were running the game "too quickly." So I suspect they artificially loaded up the cpu, just to slow things down, without regard to hardware. Just a sloppy amateurish panic-induced patch, is my suspicion.

And furthermore, after reading the patch description, I recalled clearly that the very first hang EVER, had occurred at the start of a cut-scene, and the second hang - actually a full-on blue screen, occurred 1 hour of gaming later, at the end of a long cut scene. So the patch description raised all kinds of red flags in my mind.

Here again is the patch description from my post on this page of a few days ago:

So I have to conclude that the patch was the villain.

I know, Sam, you said you could not see a patch wrecking stability like that - but let me ask you, have you ever heard of a game "running too fast."

How can a game run too fast? Do they mean the AI events, like the guy selling you the pork bun from the curbside stand, was too fast - he was talking in soprano at lightning speed "A man is not a real man unless he has a pork bun in his hand." Really, tell me what "The game was running too fast" might mean? And how can a game run too fast? I really don't understand what that could mean.

You guys are quite familiar with video encoding, way beyond my knowledge. I recently downloaded, two different times, the h.264 codec, high res, 720 dpi, for Hereafter, the Matt Damon film by Clint Eastwood. Each time, it played fine in my Power DVD 10 for the first 5 minutes, until partially into the tsunami - then it speeded up and was unwatchable. I finally got the movie to play by downloading a different version that was not h.264 - I think it was AC32 - you guys will know what I mean, I can't remember. I had no idea why it would do that - but you guys will know.

So, I saw a movie play too quickly, but how can a game play too quickly?

And then the patch description talked about the cut-scenes, the "bink videos." Another red flag. The source of my first two hangs, one of them a blue screen.

So the game has now returned to total stability, and the patch is gone. Steam says "Update required" and Rich says, "no way, no how, am I going to let Steam re-install that patch." Sam says "Don't activate auto update" and to that I say "AMEN!"

EDIT: Oh my god - Jeff I just looked at your fan profile.



I never realized Trixx allowed that - I thought only iTurbo had that. I never checked off custom to see what was there, duhhhh. Okay, I'll do that - good idea - thanks (And that will keep the second card quiet - it has no need to run 100% as it is so cool. I modified your graph very slightly, Jeff, as on the HIS IceQ cards 80% is actually the highest fan speed at about 3174 rpm, so my graph hits 80% at 75 degrees, flattening the slope just a bit, and keeping it quieter just a bit longer, very minor change. Thanks again.)

Rich

 

Ha glad to see it was helpful

 

Again Rich, it's nearly impossible for a game to be patched in such a way it can cause a bluescreen solely by fault of the game. All it will be is that the patch has exposed a stability weakness in the game that previously it did not induce.
The fact that you had a crash at stock volts on the GPUs means your system still isn't stable, you should never have to mess with the voltages on your GPUs for stability - indeed, changing the voltage, higher or lower, is in fact asking for stability issues in itself.
I have seen game time synchronisation issues before, typically I only see it in very old titles when you're running with 10-100x the power that the developers had in mind when coding the game. However, when it happens, it's really just bad code, there's no real excuse for that happening no matter how much performance you throw at the game. It's simply that game devs back in the early 90s did not anticipate for this being a problem at the time. With modern games, it's pretty much unheard of.
Video playback going too fast is quite common, a 'trip point' occurs in the video, and suddenly it goes at lightning speed (something like 5-10x the normal playback speed), and this is a codec problem. If you fix the codec that will stop happening. Personally, I've only seen that with Quicktime .mov files, but I'm sure it can happen with others.

 

Sam, I think you're right about the patch not being the problem. I'm doing an about-face on that issue.

I got on Steam, per usual, but let it go online for just a minute, and even though the setting was "do not auto update" it started downloading stuff on Sleeping Dogs like mad. I tried system restore again, to attempt to reverse what was happening, and then the game wouldn't start at all. So I examined integrity of local cache, and it found 21 files that wouldn't verify, and then downloaded 7 gigs of stuff !!!! (The whole game is 10 gigs.) So yes, now I have the patch.

I have found what may be a bad mobo temp sensor. Earlier in the day, before this whole download thing, I was running furmark in a tiny 640x400 window, just to exercise the graphics card, so I could test Jeff's fan profile. All of a sudden the computer shut off - no blue screen, no nothing. It was a very hot day, but temps were not excessive on the main card. I had had the computer on for only 20 mins.

It wouldn't restart, until I let it cool off for about 5 minutes. The top of the new case felt warm - heat coming up through the 200mm fan grates from the motherboard. I started things up and opened cpuid, and one temp sensor TMPIN0 showed 117.

Yes. I let the computer just sit there in idle, nothing running, as TMPIN0 started to steadily drop, down to the 90s, 80s, etc. By the end of the evening it was down to -5. Below freezing. A bad sensor, right?

I have seen this TMPIN0 before at astronomical numbers, high or low, which didn't make sense - google research shows that most people think it is the sensor on the motherboard very near the cpu socket.

So, game-play-stability-wise, I got the game running, and I noticed several instances of 100% 100% 100% 100% cpu core usage. At one point I slowed the vehicle down to rest, and the cores were still stuck on max for maybe 5 seconds. A thought came to mind - "Is the fan profile logic pushing the cores over the edge?" (Remember they had been on the razor edge of just hanging on, at 100, 98, 99, 99 type of thing.)

I think the fan profile is great, Jeff, but I went back to fixed fan speeds because as ridiculous as it sounds, it seems as though that extra cpu load showed up in cpu bottlenecking. Additionally, having both fans running at max, seems to keep things cooler overall.

My computer acts up when things are too hot - no surprise there.

Going back to the other night, with 85 degrees for about 4 hours on the main 7950 totally stable - that was a cool night overall - everything was not excessively hot - not ambient, the case seemed fine - so when one card is at that temp, but everything else is relatively cool, that seems to be stable.

On the other hand, when the card is in the mid to high 70s, along with hot ambient temps causing the mobo and northbridge and all to start running hot - then those gpu temps are actually too hot for the overall situation, and it is better to get them down to low 70s, if possible.

I found last night that one way is to underclock the cards, even down to 700 core, and at that low core, drop vddc to 981.

By the way, iTurbo, created by HIS, is almost exactly like Trixx, but the iTurbo bottom vddc is 1035. If I set vddc by Trixx at 1012, and open iTurbo, it will see the 1012, and even allow me to save it. But if I log off and come back in, the minimum iTurbo vddc on the saved profile is no longer 1012, but it is 1035.

Since vddc seems to be a big factor in heat, I now only use Trixx, like before.

And that new strategy, running the cards at 700 underclock, 981 vddc, keeps them in low 70 temps, or even down to the high 60s, and also drops cpu usage to under 90%, and gives me a stable game at about 30-34 fps, sometimes dropping to 24 in the vehicle, but I can't tell - driving 3rd person is tricky anyway even at 40 fps.

So I guess it wasn't the patch. Really stability is not just one thing, apparently.

Stability seems to be dependent upon a Campbell's soup of a variety of factors, ambient temps, combined with gpu temps.

In hot weather, like the really hot weather we are having just now, I need to do everything I can to keep my graphic card temps down - because I guess ultimately, it probably IS the motherboard after all - something on the mobo isn't quite right.

Understanding that, hopefully I'll be able to nurse the system along for another 6 months to a year, before a final upgrade.

Rich

 

Considering an upgrade around tax time myself. I'm really wondering about my LAN port. Though it could be as simple as a shoddy windows 7/mobo driver. Windows 7 is so wonderful, but my problems always seem to be network based. Excellent gaming OS. Certainly by comparison to XP. I recall when windows 7 first came about, that some times, one had to disable, and re-enable the local area connection to fix connectivity issues when starting up windows. But I thought that was corrected by now.

I'll have this board for some time. I'm sure I'll get it figured. I'll probably get the 1090t for it, and have it run encodes 24/7. And my electric bill, I'll laugh all the way to the bank...

 

Again Rich, as I stated before, if there's a stability issue you can't quite put your finger on, most of the time it's either an overclock, or it's your motherboard. Graphics driver issues can be complex some of the time, but usually their behaviour can be radically altered (if not cured) by updating/changing drivers. I've had suspicions about your motherboard ever since you posted the stability issues - having been down that road myself, I've been trying to steer you in that direction for a while!

Although I leave the graphics cards at stock as it's just much simpler that way, my CPU has been overclocked by more than 50% for over two and a half years, and even when the system gets very hot (GPUs in the high 80s and the CPU in the low 70s), it's still rock solid. You can pull off pretty high temperatures and still have a stable system, even if it's overclocked, as long as you do it right, and the hardware isn't faulty. If you can't get your system stable within normal tolerances (even if the upper end - and by normal I mean CPU below 75ºC and GPUs below 95ºC for AMDs, 85ºC for nvidias) then you're either doing something wrong (e.g. bad overclock) or something is faulty.

Omega: The onboard NIC on my X38-DS4 is officially decommissioned now, as it DoS attacks my internal network when it's plugged in! PCI or PCIe NICs are pretty cheap though, so there's a PCI one in there now.

 

I need to call my ISP today, and find out what the frick is going on. My internet bandwidth is spiking well above my subscription plan. And I've been told I pay for my MAX MAX connection speed. When it actually runs stable at that, it's stable! They've already throttled it back once, but now it's back up again. Once I get it stable again, I can fool around with starting up windows over and over again, and see what happens I just don't like that I can't connect to the router at times...

 

You're complaining about getting a higher speed than you pay for?
Bear in mind that with cable the speed limit is set artificially at the ISP's end, so it's very common with cable to spike briefly well over your connection limit until the bandwidth limiter takes effect (this therefore means that speedtest on cable connections is often inaccurate).
Not being able to connect to the router is clearly not an ISP fault, but a fault with the router, so if the connection's not stable, buy a new router, don't yell at the ISP!

 

You misunderstand. My router is not at fault here. My ISP is sending MORE bandwidth than my line strength can handle. This has been confirmed My DSL drops out because of it. When they throttled it back to 5MB last time, it stabilized rock solid. Believe me, I didn't like calling them and telling them I was getting too much LOL! But it was/is obviously the problem. Not being able to connect to the router is the LAN driver or Port issue. Don't know how to explain other than 2 different units behaving the same way. Trust me I'm also reminded of how windows 7 behaved in its early stages. Surely you remember how it behaved? I recall you having trouble too. Having to disable and re-enable the LAN. It was typical for this to happen upon entering windows. Sometimes it would do it, other times it would not. But I believe patches were sent out by MS. Because the problems in this regard have been extremely minimal up til now.

 

That's not 'more bandwidth than the line can handle' - that's an unstable analog line.

With DSL the sync speed is only set a fixed upper boundary by the ISP (usually 24Mbps in the case of ADSL2+). What determines the speed you actually receive is the line attenuation and signal to noise ratio. The longer your line is from the exchange, the lower the speed you will end up with. This is a physically automated process and cannot be altered by the ISP.
In the case of a faulty line that's unstable (due to noise/interference, poor wiring and so on) at the speed you end up receiving due to the line length, you will experience DSL dropouts. This is combatted either by having the fault diagnosed and repaired (long-term solution) or by reducing the speed (short-term workaround). The speed reduction is enforced by the ISP, either by their decision or from a manual request from a user, and can be achieved in one of two ways - either by increasing the signal to noise ratio, and therefore forcing the DSL process to sync at a lower speed, or by enforcing an IP profile at their end lower than the maximum sync speed available (the former is usually the better method, and for the record, raising the IP profile above your maximum normal sync speed achieves nothing, as you are still limited by how fast the DSL sync can work given the line distance).

By all means ask the ISP to reinstate the lower speed, but it is not strictly speaking the ISP at fault here, if you're getting dropouts unless the speed is capped, it's a wiring fault somewhere which will likely need an engineer callout, and you should work on that basis.

I remember the disable/enable LAN bug, although i thought that was just with Vista, it might be with Windows 7 too. There is a different bug with Windows 7 that prevents the control service set from enabling for the first 2-5 minutes after boot. (This prevents access to computer/device/disk management, as well as the network and sharing center, but does not prevent use of internet connectivity, as often you can still browse, although the lack of these services can cause crashes with google chrome and skype until the service is available). It's prompting me to want to reformat my PC soon, although I'm hoping to hold off until I can afford to get a bigger SSD - currently looking at the 180GB Intel 520 series.

 

Well whatever the problem is, having them drop the speed back to 5Mb cured it last time. We are over a mile from town. The technician that has been out here, told me that 5Mb is the absolute max that we can receive. So seeing more than that tells me something is not right. And they are able to correct it.

It should be noted, that I'm not the only one in this area with trouble. They had a huge blackout recently. Me and my mother (separate connections) were unaffected.

 

That's amazing - the one problem I've never had is internet. Maybe this apple router is the reason. I'm running Cox cable and their cable modem, plus this apple router - the older 8 year old round type. But up in LA I'm running two Time Warner cables, at two different locations near each other, and the two used WRT54G Linksys routers from Amazon on each. Stable. But they don't have the speed we have here with the apple - maybe only 1/10th the speed we have here - and they don't game.

Of course, from time to time, we have to turn off the power strip that has the cable modem and router on it, for 30 seconds, and let everything reset. And once in a while, maybe once every 2 months, the problem turns out to be a required reset of my trailer linksys access point, Wireless-G, which wirelessly connects my trailer LAN to the apple router.

I guess I do have one port left, port 2, if I ever had a nic problem on my gaming rig. What does "as it DoS attacks my internal network" mean?

And Sam, "You can pull off pretty high temperatures and still have a stable system, even if it's overclocked, as long as you do it right, and the hardware isn't faulty." - would you agree that something is suspicious with a sensor that goes from 117 C, near the start of a gaming session, down to -5 C, after several hours, my TMPIN0 as reported by CPUID. That has to be a bad sensor, right? And if so - evidence of a motherboard problem - would you agree?

I can't gripe too much about faulty motherboard, since if it had been rock solid, I would never have been gifted it in 2010, with only 2 weeks usage. So despite its faults, I''ll continue to be appreciative, and just try to nurse it along.

Meantime, those idiots at Sleeping Dogs have taught me the last little karate move, the most powerful which they think has made me superman, and now they've thrown 20 guys at me in an impossible kung fu mission. So I'm either done with the game, because I suspect the plot won't move along until I beat that section, or I'll find an unlimited life cheat, or I'll reduce graphics to try to make my cpu more responsive so the special little move actually works for me like on a console, without my normal PC lag, or I'll see if they'll let me pull a gun in the mission, or all of the above. LOL

By the way, if you haven't heard, one of the most amazing games ever to come to PC is Walking Dead, the game. Steam has it. It's a Tell-Tale publishing story, an RPG, an incredibly well-acted gripping drama, unlike anything I've ever done on the PC. I played section 2 last night, and there are 3 more to come eventually. I'm a big fan of the AMC TV series - downloaded all season one and season two in high def - Miles told me about it two years ago as they were launching the series - but I've never read the book or comic books. For all of you non-gamers, you might like THIS game. Google it and check out the reviews.

Rich

 

I assure you, 90% of my troubles are ISP based! Can't wait to be rid of DSL! Unfortunately, Fiber optics is probably decades away for me...

 

Yeah, I was looking very closely into fiber optics in LA. The phone rep described the service, and it sounded good - we would have had to have paid an installation charge of about $100 to get the full fiber into the house, which I was not averse to doing. But within a few months, AT&T basically more than doubled the cost of the service from where it had been for 5 years, $15, suddenly to 38/mo, claiming the $15 was just a short term special. So we went to cable, which I already had for the other relative about a 1/2 mile away - and it was stable, 3x faster, and rates had not really gone up above $30 in 3 years.

In that town you are in, in Oregon, close to Portland I think you mentioned, probably there is no cable alternative - or is there?

 

I'm 8 miles from a larger town. I'm actually 180 miles from portland(born and raised). Hermiston (8 miles away) has cable companies. Charter I believe. People speak fairly high of them. And others compare them to comcast. I plan to move to Hermiston in under a year. I'll likely go with the best option at that time. I'm betting money won't be a problem by that time

 

Crazy old man on the loose alert!

Got my driver's license back! I just bought a classic 87 Fiero GT, 2.8L V6, 5 Speed Getrag, for a great price. Sounds like fum to me!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Pontiac-Fiero-GT-/190725404941

Best,
Russ

 

Had a work colleague that had a similar vehicle. It was a Fiero, but nothing so exotic.

 

Well, probably anybody will agree that cable is better than DSL - a lot of the cable is fiber optics, even if not up to the house. So Hermiston and Charter sounds great. Will that add to your commute, or are you expecting a job change and/or promotion?

EDIT: "got my license back." BACK? What'd they take it away for, lol. Congrats on the new hot car, Russ.

 

Promotion. And if that doesn't happen, I will be still working my second job. But there are contract talks going on, that will significantly increase the wage of people in my position Next year is already looking quite good