MW2 lagging/freezing/BSOD

the_syco

Hi all,
Currently having machine problems Whilst playing ModernWarfare2, it suffers machine lag (on and offline), jumps around, and then the screen goes black, after playing that game for 5 to 10 minutes. The sound starts to go "juh-juh-juh..." and the monitor then looses signal, and goes to standby. Only got one bluescreen so far, that had "ATIKMDAG.sys" being mentioned. Did a search, some people mentioned it could be heat, so I got ATI Tray Tools, and put the fan running at 90%. Loud, but not noticale when gaming. Still had the same freeze.

The machine is a self build, with the specs in my sig. I'm running a beta of Windows 7 (Evaluation copy. Build 7100), to which I swapped over from XP just before christmas. Most of the machine (cpu, ram, mobo, gfx card) were bought around christmas last year.

I've included the DxDiag output report in case it's helpful.

/edit
Also, I notice a slight freeze when watching some 360MB videos with VLC. This and the problem with the game tells me that the card may not be handling decompression of textures, or something? Not sure.

lmimmfn

you probably have something running which is chewing the cpu, check task manager for cpu processes which are fluctuating on how much cpu they are using, it could be a virus checker or similar.

Cuddlesworth

Hi syco, could you get me the dump file for the blue screen? Its located in C:\Windows\minidump.

the_syco

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Hi syco, could you get me the dump file for the blue screen? Its located in C:\Windows\minidump.

Yup. Will do later. In work now.

roberthurley14

hmmm sounds like a GPU or CPU problem to me...ild run OCCT tests (google it) to check ur graphics card and ram memory just to be sure memtest86 might help too in cancelling out those as perps

the_syco

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Hi syco, could you get me the dump file for the blue screen? Its located in C:\Windows\minidump.

Attached.

the_syco

roberthurley14 wrote: »

ram memory just to be sure memtest86 might help too in cancelling out those as perps

Ran memtest86 and no errors were found. Seems my card doesn't support CUDA (it's an ATI card), so although it'll do the "GPU:OCCT" test, it won't do the "GPU:MEMTEST". Will post back on that when I test it. Will probably do it over the weekend.

Cuddlesworth

I'll have to have a look at it tomorrow when I get back to my work machine.

the_syco

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

I'll have to have a look at it tomorrow when I get back to my work machine.

Cool, cheers.

=-=

Just before I started to play, had some anomoly that caused all icon on my taskbar bar the AV to close. I then ran MW2 with a res of 1024*768, and all graphics either off or on low. Same thing happened, after about 3 to minutes.

/edit
The back of the GFX card is warm to touch, and it's fan is on.

zilog_jones

the_syco wrote: »

Did a search, some people mentioned it could be heat, so I got ATI Tray Tools, and put the fan running at 90%. Loud, but not noticale when gaming.

Well you'll need to actually find out if heat is an issue here. SpeedFan may be able to monitor GPU temperature (not certain if does ATI cards, prob does, it does CPU and other sensors too), and there are probably other apps that can log temperatures (again I don't have ATI stuff so don't know).

Sounds like it's a graphics card problem, but it's hard to know if it's dodgy hardware or dodgy drivers. I take it you installed over Windows XP so can't try that again?

Look in the Event Viewer for errors too.

marco_polo

zilog_jones wrote: »

Well you'll need to actually find out if heat is an issue here. SpeedFan may be able to monitor GPU temperature (not certain if does ATI cards, prob does, it does CPU and other sensors too), and there are probably other apps that can log temperatures (again I don't have ATI stuff so don't know).

Sounds like it's a graphics card problem, but it's hard to know if it's dodgy hardware or dodgy drivers. I take it you installed over Windows XP so can't try that again?

Look in the Event Viewer for errors too.

Catalyst controls center (CCC) will give you the running temps (Essentially the control center for ATI drivers.) What driver number are you at OP?

I see the card is factory overclocked, perhaps you could try downclocking the GPU / memory clocks to the reference speeds and see if it still occurs? (750MHz / 900 MHz according to CCC on my Saphire HD4870)

zilog_jones

marco_polo wrote: »

Catalyst controls center (CCC) will give you the running temps (Essentially the control center for ATI drivers.)

But can it make a log? Kinda hard to see the temps while playing a game otherwise, they cool down quickly enough once they go idle.

game4it70

zilog_jones wrote: »

But can it make a log? Kinda hard to see the temps while playing a game otherwise, they cool down quickly enough once they go idle.

HwMonitor will show min/max temp of GPU core if you leave it running.
or
Gpuz has logging and more info on the card.

marco_polo

zilog_jones wrote: »

But can it make a log? Kinda hard to see the temps while playing a game otherwise, they cool down quickly enough once they go idle.

Good point

Cuddlesworth

the_syco wrote: »

Attached.

100% your graphics driver. Have your tried reinstalling or reverting to a older Catalist version?

cherryghost

Modern Warfare 2 isnt balanced for graphics.

the_syco

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

100% your graphics driver. Have your tried reinstalling or reverting to a older Catalist version?

Haven't, no. Will try an older graphics driver. Will root out the one I had for XP.64, and see if that does the trick for Win7.64.

cherryghost

very much doubt it would. xp x64 had terrible support

the_syco

cherryghost wrote: »

very much doubt it would. xp x64 had terrible support

I keep getting told that, but I hat a pretty much glitch free experience with the previous rig (4 years) and about 9 months with the currect rig.

So far, I've tried 9-12, 9-10, 9-9, and 9-8 Catalyst Suites. Have down to 9-5, so will do them tomorrow. If I get no joy from that, I'll load XP and see if that works.

I'm doing what it says below:

If anyone is interested in doing a fresh ATI driver install on Windows 7 follow these steps:

Uninstall the ATI Driver Suite from Programs and Features, if it's not there move onto #3.
[LIST=5]
[*]Do not restart.
[*]Go to Device Manager and Uninstall the ATI driver.
[*]Do not restart.
[*]Go to C:\Windows\inf, make a new folder called ATI and move atiilhag.PNF, atiilhag, atiriol6.PNF and atiriol6 to that folder. After that clear the Prefetch folder located in C:\Windows\Prefetch.
[*]Restart and install the newest version of ATI's driver.
[/LIST]
You only have to do #5 once, step #5 is done so Windows doesn't keep re-installing the original drivers that came with the OS after a restart.

the_syco

Just reinstalled XP, and no problems so far (touch wood). Now my only problem with MW2 is a hill with motars on my back, and an RPG crew to my front

PogMoThoin

Have You tried not using the Catalyst suite? I stopped using it ages ago, Crossfire runs better and my games run smoother. I just get the driver only package from Ati and now use Ati Tray Tools. It does everything the CCC does and more and is much leaner. If You overclock You can even update Your Ati driver and not have to reset Your overclock. You're gonna need this to digitally sign the driver Yourself

the_syco

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Have You tried not using the Catalyst suite?

No. May try it later. Would prefer Win7 to work, as otherwise I'll have to reboot into XP to run MW2, and I'm assuming any other game I have. Does the CCC cause these problems, and if so, how? I think I have run MW2 after existing the CCC, but still it crashed.

the_syco

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Have You tried not using the Catalyst suite?

Cool. That works nicely now, touch wood. Now I just have to find a way to get rid of Fraps.