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rusty · Tue Oct 15, 2002 2:20 pm

I notice the problem in most games, but the most major hit is in Counter-Strike. Especially after quitting to the menus and coming back in, the game will freeze so that the sound repeats itself over and over for about 4-5 seconds. This will continue and occur every 15-30 seconds.

This is not internet lag related, as it happens in other single-player games as well, such as NOLF 2, Medal of Honor, etc. It usually happens when something in the game happens (character comes into view, shooting the gun).
Also when I play No One Lives Forever 2, the longer I play straight (20 minutes or so) the more it happens. The load times also become excruciatingly long.

I'm running Intel P4 2.53 ghz 533mhz FSB, Geforce4 ti-4600, and 256mb DDR 333mhz ram. I have AOpen AX4B-533 motherboard, 20GB 5400 rpm Western Digital HD, o/b sound, 300W power (AOpen HQ45-P4 case), and a SMC Ethernet card. Nothing is overclocked.
I have the newest nVidia Det40 drivers, WinXP Home, DirectX 9 Beta (It happened in 8.1 too).

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

eric · Tue Oct 15, 2002 2:44 pm

Sounds to me like its a sound problem, try disableing the onboard sound in the bios and see if the problem occurs then.

rusty · Tue Oct 15, 2002 3:05 pm

no its not a sound problem, the video freezes (the whole computer), the sound just repeats too.

satchmobob · Tue Oct 15, 2002 3:07 pm

Hey there Matie, have u checked that u r running the correct drivers for your sound card or the most recent and r they XP compatible ? I'm just gonna check the MS knowledge base 4 yaz an see if i can find anythin there....

rusty · Tue Oct 15, 2002 3:23 pm

i seriously don't think its a sound problem i have onboard AC97 that came with the motherboard which is brand spankin new, but hey ill have a look thanks. but do u really think the sound drivers could make the whole system pause for a couple secs? im more inclined to think its cpu or ram related... but any suggestions are good suggestions

eric · Tue Oct 15, 2002 3:31 pm

If not try the 30.82 det drivers for the GF4 the 40 series have been glitchy for some ppl.

highlandr · Tue Oct 15, 2002 4:37 pm

Could be a RAM problem. Right now, with direct connect, winamp, mozilla, and FAH running, XP is using 263 megs of ram. Trying quitting background programs, or buy some more ram.

The new games love the extra RAM - SOF2 put me up to about 360, last time I played. Just when I thought 256 was a good start...

mascot · Tue Oct 15, 2002 6:39 pm

i was just about to suggest that.....

its your ram m8 i get it with most games unless i have the bare min running and my rig aint much worse than yours.. but mt m8 has an identical one as mine but with 2x the ram and it runs sweet....

rusty · Tue Oct 15, 2002 8:21 pm

thanks for the ram tips but i think 256mb ram is plenty for counter strike

lol. I didn't have the problem when I had 128mb pc133 sdram in any games, its only a recent problem with my upgraded system. I'll try the old drivers tho, thanks.

Any other ideas?

rusty · Tue Oct 15, 2002 8:46 pm

well i installed the newer sound drivers released last week and the old video drivers, well that made the problem worse, or at least didn't fix it. Playing CS for 3 mins by myself and it crashed. I'm going to put the 40.71 drivers back in. Any more ideas?

Tue Oct 15, 2002 9:53 pm

Do you have the newest Intel inf files for your board? Are you running Intel application accelerator? Do you have any probe software running? I had a problem with Asus probe messing up my games.

rusty · Wed Oct 16, 2002 6:30 am

uh i remember seeing application accelerator when i installed the drivers a few weeks ago but i don't remember if i installed it. how do i tell if its running, and is it good or bad?

Wed Oct 16, 2002 10:17 am

The app accelerator is the new name for intel's DMA enabling software. If you do not install it, your chipselt will run like a pig. You should be able to see it in your installed programs list. If you dont have it installed, that may be your problem.

rusty · Wed Oct 16, 2002 1:12 pm

thanks star, i didn't have that installed. im not sure if it fixed the problem yet tho.

A question about my bios: i have my HD in primary master and my CD in secondary master. I set them both at Mode 4 in the bios, but I notice that the accelerator report says the HD is capable of Mode 5 UDMA, but Mode 5 is not available in the bios. Should I set them back to Auto? or is that PIO mode? what does all this mean?

rusty · Wed Oct 16, 2002 2:49 pm

now its really weird, after installing that intel program, my HDD score in pcmark2002 went from 769 to 374 - three times. I tried having the PIO mode at both Auto and Mode4 with the same results.

In 3dmark2001 there is no lag problem at all, it seems only in about 1/2 of my 3d programs.

satchmobob · Wed Oct 16, 2002 3:29 pm

hi Rusty, it aint a RAM prob for definite. I suspect its the way your software/firmware is set up. Dont use PIO mode coz that'll slow things down. u have ur HD and CD setup right (master on each Channel) May i suggest u back up ur current bios config and try loading optimum defaults. Also check what progs are running in background (use msconfig.exe and start up tab) this shows u whats running. Uncheck what u dont need and reboot. (but make a note of what is running b4 hand so if anything goes wrong u can always restore) I should tell u im not running XP, but i'm 100% sure your probs are software related so just experiment with ur settings and drivers and have patients m8. Ooh one last tid-bit in your bios set all drives to auto and run auto detect from the main menu of your bios setup (assuming u r running Award bios)
BACKUP AND EXPERIMENT!!!!

rusty · Wed Oct 16, 2002 4:34 pm

i think i found the problem - my HDD score in pcmark2002 is half what it always was. I'll post a new topic and see what ppl say. thanks for your answers, guys.

raven69david · Mon Oct 21, 2002 11:53 pm

Hi rusty, please let me know how it turns out for you. I'm running a new Dell 4500 series computer with a 2.4 gig 533fsb. My system seems to be running slow. I called Dell Technical support and they helped me disable some items relating to XP and it helped a little bit, but my system still seems very slow. My celeron 600 VAIO seems faster than the DELL :-?

All my games, especially Flight Simulator 2002 run like a pig at about 10 to 14 fps.

I've tried some suggestions from technical support and have downloaded SP1, however nothing really seems to solve the problem. From a numbers standpoint, my system should be really fast at whatever game i play, however that is not the case albeit i only have 128mb ddr and a 32mb ATI Rage 128.

If anybody else can chime in on this i'd appreciate it very much.

Thanks,
David

Tue Oct 22, 2002 12:32 pm

That ATI rage 128 is a really old obsolete card. That card came out in the early days of the geforce 2, so you are not going to get monster performance out of it. If you want performance, I would recommend another 128M ram and a newer video card. The current geforce Ti-4200 is very reasonable right now, so you might want to check into getting it. It will really help speed up your framerate on games.

rusty · Tue Oct 29, 2002 11:35 pm

hey, i'm still working on the problem. if you check out the storage section ull see my huge topic...

Just as a line of best fit - a system with Duron 1.2, 128mb pc133, and ati rage 128 32mb gets about 45fps in max payne at 1024x768x32, with almost full detail. In my opinion this is really good, but check what you get in normal games at a medium detail settings and tell me the fps.

Go download 3dmark2001 from madonion.com, with that system you should get around 2000 3dmarks. To see if its your cpu, ram, hd, get pcmark2002 from the same site. You should get 6000 cpu, 5000 ram, and 700 hd. If any of those are way off tell me and we can try to fix it.

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4-5 sec game freeze/pause on high-end system! Help!

4-5 sec game freeze/pause on high-end system! Help!

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