Lagspike.exe?!

Serephucus

I can't seem to nail this down.

Got new rig assembled fine, OS installed, etc. Once I got everything up and running, I got to installing Steam and playing a few games, that was all fine too. It's now about a week later, and I'm having pretty serious issues.

I'll go to play a game (let's take Borderlands 2 as an example. Got gifted it recently, so it's what I've mostly been playing) and for a certain amount of time at first (anywhere from 5 seconds to a half hour) the game will play fine, but then out of nowhere it'll crash. Well, that's not the right description, it will hang, as if the driver has to crash in the background, and then eventually I'll get dumped back to the desktop. If I try and re-enter the game at that point, the whole machine will lock up (stationary screen, repeating audio, etc.) but, when I close the game, I'll get spikes of CPU usage to 100% - to the point where the mouse won't move - and everything halts for a few seconds, then a half second of use, then a few seconds of 100% again, etc. until I force a shutdown and restart.

What I've noticed is that the spikes in CPU usage correspond to my speakers being re-detected by the OS (at least that's what it looks like, from the lights on the control box) so I tried reinstalling audio drivers, as well as moving slots to resolve any potential IRQ conflicts (none were listed, but they were sharing the same queue) and that hasn't helped. I've also obviously tried reinstalling video drivers, different versions, etc.

I'd really rather not have to reinstall, I just got this up and running... Anyone any ideas? (Thanks if you've read this far; wall of texts do suck).

cherryghost

Does RAM usage/VRAM usage spike/crap itself also? Or is it just singled out to be CPU

magick

anytime i had this problem in the past its either the graphics card overheating or a gpu driver issue

Tea_Bag

any OC on the CPU or GPU? temps?

I had similar problems with BF3 in the past, and I found out it was punkbuster nuking my PC. the version that auto installed with BF was ****ed. a manual install and link to BF solved it. any chance you've got anti cheat software running at the same time?

or maybe windows indexing a faulty sector on a hdd?

Serephucus

Temps are reported to be fine on both CPU and CPU, and it's only the CPU spiking; RAM and VRAM are both normal. Don't have any anti-cheat software installed, and everything is stock for the moment. Haven't checked for bad sectors on my hard drive in a while. I'll see what HD Tune says and report back.

Serephucus

Pulled my other rig apart and put my 580 in the new rig. Everything's working fine so far, no crashes no nothing. Will update if there's problems, but I've already put in for an Advanced RMA from EVGA. Unfortunately this means the watercooling is on hold (again) for another week or two.

(Yeah, I could just do the CPU, but I'm really not bothered draining my loop just to add a block in. I've debated positioning the block in the top slot, and running my 580 in the next PCI-E slot, then installing the card into the block when it arrives, thereby not having drain anything)

cherryghost

Was the 580 on different clock/voltage settings on the other build?

Serephucus

In my old build you mean? It was overclocked for a while, but a couple of months ago I started running it stock as I wasn't really using the extra performance anyway. It then went into the new rig also at stock.

spix

what graphics card is it?

Serephucus

Guess I should have mentioned that... GTX 670.

spix

Serephucus wrote: »

Guess I should have mentioned that... GTX 670.

Is it the ftw one by any chance? Heard of a few people having issues with them.

Serephucus

Nope, standard. Need it to fit a 670 waterblock.