comp freezing

[Fumz]

Since this problem has existed over the course of "a few" years, perhaps you've already tested with another card? Was the 7600gt the only card you've used?

It's possible the card is the problem, but since you say your games play just fine it's doubtful. It may very well be your board? Perhaps you just got a bad one? Cheapest way to solve this may be to just get another 939 pin board... preferably an nForce 4. Yours wasn't exactly designed with the gamer in mind.

 

[scissormetimbers]

Since this problem has existed over the course of "a few" years, perhaps you've already tested with another card? Was the 7600gt the only card you've used?

It's possible the card is the problem, but since you say your games play just fine it's doubtful. It may very well be your board? Perhaps you just got a bad one? Cheapest way to solve this may be to just get another 939 pin board... preferably an nForce 4. Yours wasn't exactly designed with the gamer in mind.

i havent yet tested it with a different card. and when i said it runs games just fine i meant it does but the games still freeze as well. before i go buying stuff i want to see if i can resolve the problem without spending any money.

 

[Day24]

well, if spending money is inevitable, I'd rather be sure, if I were you. Take it into the shop and explain the problem. Have THEM try a different graphics card for you....

 

[Fumz]

A shop will cost money. Probably much more than a 939 nowadays. Another idea: if you can't get the friend to loan you another card to test, take your card to the friend's house... test it there.

 

[scissormetimbers]

yes i think ill try that one

 

[motarola2]

I was told that you need at least 3 GB memory with vista

at least 2GB

 

[Day24]

Vista will run, and it will even run well, with 1 GB.
Sure, it will be faster the more RAM you give it, but it will run well with 1 GB. At least, it did on my system before I upgraded.

 

[Fumz]

Vista will run, and it will even run well, with 1 GB.
Sure, it will be faster the more RAM you give it, but it will run well with 1 GB. At least, it did on my system before I upgraded.

"run well" with only 1GB? How do you figure that? I'm using 1.18GB's just starring at this page.

 

[scissormetimbers]

i used to have 1GB on this computer and it ran just fine.

 

[Day24]

Vista adjusts its mem usage to what you have. It will simply run slower with less RAM. I'm using 1,71 GB just staring at this page. Probably cos windows is prefetching all kinds of things.

 

[Fumz]

I suppose we're just in disagreement over the phrase, "runs well" given that you say with 1GB it runs slower?

Granted, I haven't tested Vista out with 1GB, but I have with only 2GB, and I have to say it ran like Molasses. The gaming experience was just... well it was night and day between 2GB's and 4GB's. Just curious as to how you could have seen things differently?

 

[Day24]

depends on a lot of other things as well, apart from RAM. I had AERO enabled, but a lot of the special effects disabled (cos I hate them). Also, it depends on more than just settings alone. It also depends on other things such as your CPU and graphics card. They can do a lot for the speed of your setup. As well as that, a system with only 1 GB of RAM can actually benefit from a readyboost drive attached, which is what I had, and a large partition set aside for virtual memory, which is what I had as well.

Sure, I noticed a speed increase when I went from 1 to 2 GB, but vista ran fine on 1 GB as well. It wasn't really slow. It just ran a lot faster on 2 GB. Just depends on your frame of reference, I guess. I upgraded from XP with 1 GB of RAM to vista with 1 GB. Vista responded slightly slower than XP. But only slightly. If you first see vista with 2 GB, then yes, you're going to think 1 GB isn't fast at all. I thought vista on 1 GB wasn't slow at all.

Then again, I had a relatively fast computer.

 

[Fumz]

Mine isn't exactly "slow", which is why I was curious. However, lol, I'm not sure you can conclude that Vista runs good with only 1GB of RAM if you were cheating and really using more than 1GB... ReadyBoost.

DFI LP DK P35-T2RS bios 3/11
E8400 Q815A118
Thermalright Ultima-90/S-Flex 120mm
G.Skill 4GB (2x2) DDR2-1066 F2-8500CL5D
eVGA 8800 GTS KO ACS³ Edition
SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer
OCZ PowerStream 520
WD RE2 500GB Primary
WD SE 16 250GB
Sony NEC Optiarc
Vista 64-bit Ultimate SP1

^ even with that, the diff was noticeable.

 

[scissormetimbers]

mine wasnt running slow at all with 1GB, in fact the only reason i got another gig was because i thought it would fix my freezing problem.

 

[Day24]

readyboost is far from the same thing as adding ram.

 

[Fumz]

readyboost is far from the same thing as adding ram.

Obviously, adding more system RAM would be better, but using ReadyBoost isn't "far from" the same thing. ReadyBoost uses flash memory instead of SDRAM to perform much the same function: caching. You can access flash memory a lot faster than you can access a disk. ReadyBoost's reason for existence is to increase performance.. so, imho, it's not a stretch. It's not the same as RAM, of course, but they're related.

But this is getting us off-track.

How was gaming with 1GB? Since even XP has a hard time gaming with only 1GB, I imagine very bad?

 

[TheShadow]

One person will say that their computer runs great on 1 gig of ram and another person will say that theirs doesn't.
I thought my own PC ran great on 1 gig, till I added the second gig. The jump in performance was visually noticeable. I don't use any Benchmarking software.

A good bit of the difference in performance between one person's PC and another's is in the basic differences in the two computers. For instance:
A typical PC right out of the box, will run at about 30 to 40% of what the hardware is capable of. PC's come from the factory with the most basic settings and loaded with bloatware. If the PC is then tweaked and tuned and the bloatware is deleted, and the TSR's and un-needed services are shut down, the performance will take a huge jump. Remove the load on the cpu and ram and performance will increase.

Then too, a PC with a SATA2 hard drive will outperform the same PC with an IDE drive.
With minimum RAM (like, only one gig), the OS will rely heavily on the Pagefile, (on the hard drive), and if that hard drive is the old and slow IDE, performance will suffer.

Since no two computers are exactly alike and no two users run their computers alike, it's really hard to compare Joe's PC with Jane's PC.

It somewhat amazes me that there are PC makers that still install IDE drives and only one gig of ram in a PC loaded with Windows Vista and tons of bloatware. Yeah, they run, but at a very minimal level of performance.

For many years, my work as a Computer tech has revolved around trying to squeeze every ounce of performance out of a PC. But again, that performance will vary because of the way that people use their PC's.

Sorry for the long post.

Y'all have a great day now, Y'hear?
The Shadow

 

[xcountryTom]

hey, i got a new computer for my birthday a few years ago and one of my parents work associate's built it for me, he bought all the parts from newegg and assembled it. so ever since i've had it its been freezing up quite often. usually 1-4 times per day. i was wondering what could be the problem? i was thinking maybe its a compatibility problem with some of the components, or perhaps my CPU isnt powerful enough. i used to have 1gb of ram but i put in an extra stick to see if it would handle it but it didnt. here are my specs:

OS:Vista Premium x64
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3700+ 2.20 GHz
Motherboard: Biostar GeForce 6100-M9
Memory: 2046 MB
Graphics Card: nVidia GeForce 7600 GT
Hard Drives: 111 GB HD

Probably the first thing to do is establish that your ram is good.
Running "Memtest86+" would be my first thing to try.
By the way, what brand of memory did you get from New Egg?
There are a few brands that are pure garbage.

Finishing that with NO errors, I'd be running a Hard Drive analysis program.
Every major hard drive mfgr puts out their own version of a hard drive tester program. Like, "Seatools" from Seagate and "MaxBlast" from Maxtor.

Next, just for your information, if you didn't get a SATA2 hard drive, you should have. An IDE hard drive on a Vista system is one HUGE bottleneck.

Then, have you checked to make sure you have the latest Vista drivers for all your hardware as well as the latest BIOS update for your motherboard.

If the system is still under warranty, you might call New Egg and see if they can offer any assistance.

Good Luck,
The Shadow

i have a seagate HD and one of my memory sticks is corsair valueselect and i forgot what the other one was but i think its also corsair.


ok so heres the thing, i set my computer to use the onboard video card and i think it stopped freezing, i ran every program i could think of that froze my computer and it didnt freeze. this tells me that its probably the video card right? so then i uninstalled my driver software and reinstalled and switched back to using my video card and it just froze on me a couple of minutes ago. anyone have a solution?

If using the onboard video got it to stop freezing and you want to use your video card, you need to go into BIOS and disable your onboard VGA. Then, you can use your video card without any problem.

 

[roy69]

I have an ide drive in my system which is used as data backup. My main drive is sata though. I have no speed problems, however I am going to buy a second drive which is sata as my data backup. As to ram, the system will use as much as possible, and preload as much as the ram will allow.

 

[scissormetimbers]

If using the onboard video got it to stop freezing and you want to use your video card, you need to go into BIOS and disable your onboard VGA. Then, you can use your video card without any problem.

and how exactly do i do that?