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My computer just randomly freezes when playing certain games. It has happened to me in Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Call of Duty 4, and Blacklight: Retribution. It has not happened to me with other games like Tribes: Ascend yet, which leads me to believe it is a software-side issue related to maybe DirectX or PhysX?
Also, temperatures seem stable. I used RivaTuner combined with MSI Afterburner, and at the time of freezing with BF: BC2, it gives: 62C, 67% GPU usage and 78. 8FPS. During the session the max I have seen was 65C and 97% GPU usage.
On Blacklight: Retribution, I've heard other people complain about the problem too. This is why it is such a mystery to me, is this actually a driver problem, or more a game problem? I've been able to play these games for long until I re-installed Windows 7 (because it was growing too full and slow). Before I had a 32bit Ultimate version, and now 64bit.
Specs:
O/S: Windows 7 64bit Ultimate
CPU: Intel i5-750 @ Default 2.66 GHz
GPU: ASUS EAH5770 1GB
PSU: CoolerMaster Real Power M520 (520W)
MB: Gigabyte P55M-UD2
Catalyst Control Center version (in "About"): 2012.0214.2218.39913
No-one who knows what is going on? – Deniz Zoeteman – 2012-03-31T09:50:08.763
1DirectX 11 & Catalyst up-to-date, tried to repair .NET & PhysX, don't know if it did anything. Will report on reboot and trying to play. – Deniz Zoeteman – 2012-03-31T19:27:41.470
After trying to play again, it happened again 2 times, both with Vsync off and on. With Vsync on, the GPU was +- 5-10C cooler, but apparentely, it didn't make much difference. – Deniz Zoeteman – 2012-03-31T21:46:35.680
Vsync introduces synchronization which makes the GPU wait, a logical consequence is that it does less and thus is less hot than usual. But that intermezzo aside, there could be a lot causing the problem: Any hardware malfunctioning, OS driver conflicts / incompatibilities, power supply issues, ... It's usually a guessing game, here is a post I wrote on how to approach these kinds of situations.
– Tamara Wijsman – 2012-03-31T21:53:00.960I'm pretty sure it's an issue with software; I tried absolute lowest settings, still freeze. Logged CPU temps too, and found that it wasn't going above 70C. That this does not happen in all games, is something to consider too; not all games use the same drivers. – Deniz Zoeteman – 2012-04-01T09:40:47.390
Don't be co certain. Temps don't mean anything if the Graphics Card has bad memory, doesn't happen often but it's one of the possibilities. If you want to check whether it's hardware / software, install another Windows (32-bit, XP, Vista or 8) on another partition and see if it happens there. – Tamara Wijsman – 2012-04-01T09:53:04.863
1Well, since I had 32bit Win7 before this, and I could game on 32bit fine, but as soon as I turned to 64bit, this happened. Since I completely reformatted the partition, none of the software was actually installed, though all games I have are on a seperate partition so those did survive :) Which also makes me believe it is not a hardware problem. – Deniz Zoeteman – 2012-04-01T17:26:14.083
Any idea what the CPU Temp is when you get a freeze? Operating temp specification for the Intel i5-750 is 72.7C (source)
– Casey Kuball – 2012-04-04T18:29:19.0031What kind of freezes by the way; just up-to-a-second stuttering or hard freezes? – Jessidhia – 2012-04-04T18:42:08.727
@Darthfett the CPU temps are normal, around 60-65C when gaming. – Deniz Zoeteman – 2012-04-05T17:22:28.130