Periodic freezing in games: 9800 pro overheating?

[Wblane]

I've got the following system specs

I've got an NF7-s v2.0 (heatsink attached to southbridge), 98SE, 1 gig PC3200,
Barton (running overclocked at 11.5 * 202 = 2323), WD 250GB drive + 20GB
Seagate running on an Promise TX100 EIDE controller, logitech optical wheel
mouse on USB, Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro (running at stock speeds).

Periodically, games will freeze up for a second after running the games for
some time. The Far Cry demo is the worst offender here. This is the only
problem I experience w/this rig. I'm thinking the 9800 Pro might be overheating
because even though I removed the dried-out, crusty stock heatsink "paste" and
replaced it w/Arctic Silver III (and a better, ball-bearing Pentium fan) the
heatsink is at best loosely attached w/the stock mounting hardware (I can
easily twist and turn the heatsink).

Could I epoxy the heatsink directly to the GPU core w/Arctic Silver adhesive?
I'm thinking this way I would get better contact betwixt the heatsink and GPU
core. I only ask because the directions for Arctic Silver adhesive suggest NOT
to use it to attach heatsinks to CPU cores.
-Bill (remove "botizer" to reply via email)

 

[johns]

Kind of doesn't make sense. Either the game freezes up,
or it doesn't. A 1 sec "freeze up" sounds more like
a drive access problem. I notice you have a Western
Digital drive. My years of experience has convinced
me to never get another WD drive for any reason at
all. I do believe I have seen WD drives just quit and
have to do another head seek to the zero track to get
going again. Another problem could be that your drive
is badly fragmented, esp if the C-drive is the 20 gig.
I don't really understand why you left that drive in
your machine at all when you have a 250 gig .. unless
your OS is there. By now, a 20 gig is getting a little
worn out, and it could be losing its track position
.... especially if it is fragmented.

johns

 

[patrickp]

I've got the following system specs

I've got an NF7-s v2.0 (heatsink attached to southbridge), 98SE, 1 gig PC3200,
Barton (running overclocked at 11.5 * 202 = 2323), WD 250GB drive + 20GB
Seagate running on an Promise TX100 EIDE controller, logitech optical wheel
mouse on USB, Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro (running at stock speeds).

Periodically, games will freeze up for a second after running the games for
some time. The Far Cry demo is the worst offender here. This is the only
problem I experience w/this rig. I'm thinking the 9800 Pro might be overheating
because even though I removed the dried-out, crusty stock heatsink "paste" and
replaced it w/Arctic Silver III (and a better, ball-bearing Pentium fan) the
heatsink is at best loosely attached w/the stock mounting hardware (I can
easily twist and turn the heatsink).

Could I epoxy the heatsink directly to the GPU core w/Arctic Silver adhesive?
I'm thinking this way I would get better contact betwixt the heatsink and GPU
core. I only ask because the directions for Arctic Silver adhesive suggest NOT
to use it to attach heatsinks to CPU cores.
-Bill (remove "botizer" to reply via email)

Bill, although the heatsink may appear loose, it should make better
thermal contact with Arctic Silver 3 or 5 than with the adhesive, as
long as it's sitting properly. You may notice that the heatsink on
your CPU also moves a little - are you going to epoxy that?

And the other reason is the same as for your CPU: you may want to
replace the heatsink at some point, and it's quite possible you could
damage the chip or board trying to get it off. Better to leave your
options open.

The 'periodic freeze' you experience in your game is more likely to be
due to something running in the background. Try turning off all
non-necessary apps when you run the game.

patrickp

(e-mail address removed) - take five to email me

 

[borolad]

I've got the following system specs

I've got an NF7-s v2.0 (heatsink attached to southbridge), 98SE, 1 gig PC3200,
Barton (running overclocked at 11.5 * 202 = 2323), WD 250GB drive + 20GB
Seagate running on an Promise TX100 EIDE controller, logitech optical wheel
mouse on USB, Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro (running at stock speeds).

Fastwrites are switched off are they ?
What happens to Far Cry if you run the CPU at 11x200 ?
Virus checker in the background ?
Memory Leaking ?

Periodically, games will freeze up for a second after running the games for
some time. The Far Cry demo is the worst offender here. This is the only
problem I experience w/this rig. I'm thinking the 9800 Pro might be overheating
because even though I removed the dried-out, crusty stock heatsink "paste" and
replaced it w/Arctic Silver III (and a better, ball-bearing Pentium fan) the
heatsink is at best loosely attached w/the stock mounting hardware (I can
easily twist and turn the heatsink).

Blow a ' house fan ' into the side of the case - still happening ?

Could I epoxy the heatsink directly to the GPU core w/Arctic Silver adhesive?
I'm thinking this way I would get better contact betwixt the heatsink and GPU
core. I only ask because the directions for Arctic Silver adhesive suggest NOT
to use it to attach heatsinks to CPU cores.

1/2 & 1/2 Epoxy & Paste mix will do a ' removable ' job !

-Bill (remove "botizer" to reply via email)

Sounds more like ' memory leak '

 

[Kent_Diego]

...., 98SE, 1 gig PC3200,I seem to remember reading of a problem with running Win98 and more than 512
MB RAM. Try searching Google groups to find fix.

I have read of background programs like firewall causing problem you
describe.

-Kent

 

[Wblane]

Fastwrites are on, but i thought they were supposed to be on for 9800
vid-cards? If the CPU were overheating wouldn't the system just completely hard
lock? I've run the C&C Generals: Zero Hour for hours on end (at max details and
1600x1200 resolution) and the system didn't crash (and yes it's pegged at 100%
CPU utilization according to MBM).

Even stranger is the fact that the periodic freezes are really bad when I first
start the Far Cry demo then steadily decrease to zero as I play the game longer
and longer until they nearly completely disappear.

I'm beginning to think 98SE and the Catalyst 4.3 drivers I'm using are the
problem and there's no fix except going to XP.

Fastwrites are switched off are they ?
What happens to Far Cry if you run the CPU at 11x200 ?
Virus checker in the background ?
Memory Leaking ?

-Bill (remove "botizer" to reply via email)

 

[John Hall]

Interesting. I have a somewhat similar problem in Far Cry running on an
A7N8X deluxe with a 9800 pro and 1 gig of ram on Windows XP. The game will
freeze for about a minute at some point, usually only once in the hour that
I play, and then continue. I'm using the latest ATI drivers. I thought it
might be heat, but since this is a game on the cutting edge of 3D technology
I decided to turn off fast writes in my mobo bios. It seems that that is
alway recommend for ATI Radeon video cards for some reason but I never
bothered to turn it off since I had no problems. I really don't know if
that will work or not because I haven't tested the change enough. But so
far, so good.

JK

 

[borolad]

Fastwrites are on, but i thought they were supposed to be on for 9800
vid-cards? If the CPU were overheating wouldn't the system just completely hard
lock? I've run the C&C Generals: Zero Hour for hours on end (at max details and
1600x1200 resolution) and the system didn't crash (and yes it's pegged at 100%
CPU utilization according to MBM).

Even stranger is the fact that the periodic freezes are really bad when I first
start the Far Cry demo then steadily decrease to zero as I play the game longer
and longer until they nearly completely disappear.

I'm beginning to think 98SE and the Catalyst 4.3 drivers I'm using are the
problem and there's no fix except going to XP.

-Bill (remove "botizer" to reply via email)

Well the famous ' memory leak ' was fixed in the SE edition and the
later ME but at the end of the day these now very old O/S's will never
stack up against WinXP. Ati amongst others are withdrawing support for
both '98 & ME.

Whilst some MOBO's can run with ' fastwrites ' others can not and
suffer instabilities, regardless of this fact the Radeon range do
support FastWrites and there is no speed gain from having them
switched on, so turn them off.

From here then (1) try the Omega v4.5 Catalyst drivers, and read his
Radeon FAQ before installing his driver set ; and,
Get upto speed (2) and with a clean install of a slipstreamed WinXP
prepare to be astonished at the improvement in you gaming, again use
the Omega's.

BoroLad

http://omegacorner.com/