Since Monday (I didn't get to play any on Sunday, really) I've been getting system resets ranging anywhere from 10 minutes to 50 minutes or so apart. Sometimes, merely trying to login to STO will cause a reset.
I sent in a ticket with the dxdiag, but the darn thing is too long to post here as well. Any idea what part of the dxdiag would be pertinent to the restarting. This is on my fancy new computer that worked perfectly up until the weekend patch. So any help at all would be welcomw.
Check your system temperatures, thats usually the culprit when a system restarts with no warning.
Sorry, not the temperature, The whole reason I bought the fancy new system was for the liquid cooling of the CPU and GPUs. Thing runs cool to the touch at all times, and until yesterday, I could play for several hours at a time and not even be warm. Now, I can't even always launch the game before it resets.
What exactly is it's behavior? Does it give an error before it restarts? Does it exit the game/ game crash before shuts down, or does it go straight from the game to rebooting?
Can you do other graphics-intensive tasks without the computer rebooting? When was your last hardware change or Windows update?
What is your operating system? 32 bit or 64 bit? What motherboard and brand of video card and RAM do you have? Do you have any definitive proof that the system is cool, or are you just basing that on your faith in your cooling system?
Sorry for all the questions, but I'm a computer technician. I can't help it.
If it's heat related, you can try setting an upper framerate render limit at the launcher (in beta some people were reporting that the engine was rendering as many frames as possible regardless of the monitor vertical trefresh rate. Try
-maxfps 60
Which will limit the renderer to 60 FPS max. They did add a setting for this in video options, but it always defaults to 120 FPS, and again, wil;l generate more heat than 60 FPS -and if you are having a cooliing issue this could help alliviate without sacrificing much. This in't an FPS, and (I have an older 21" HP FP monitor with a max refresh of 60 Hz) any FPS over your monitors refresh rate is essentially wasted (or you may see 'tearing, etc.).
Liquid cooling, heat isn't an issue... but it means he probably bought it overclocked (or tried himself)?
OP -- do you overclock? If so, post your platform and OC specs (vcore, fsb, etc). I'm sure one of us can help you find the problem
Have you tried running prime95 or any other stress tests?
It came overclocked, and I've just spent a fair amount of time on the phone with their customer service folks. One of the first things we did was set it back to defaults. Still no love.
I'm going to try and update to the new drivers now. If that fails, well they're emailing me an return label so they can check the problem physically.
Though I first noticed it with STO and Champions, I think this is very much a "really fancy system is easy to break thing," and not an "STO patch broke me," thing.
I'll keep you posted, folks.
If it is any consolation, I do love the very fast support from Staff. And, when it was working right, STO was a beautiful thing on maxed graphics.
What exactly is it's behavior? Does it give an error before it restarts? Does it exit the game/ game crash before shuts down, or does it go straight from the game to rebooting?
Can you do other graphics-intensive tasks without the computer rebooting? When was your last hardware change or Windows update?
What is your operating system? 32 bit or 64 bit? What motherboard and brand of video card and RAM do you have? Do you have any definitive proof that the system is cool, or are you just basing that on your faith in your cooling system?
Sorry for all the questions, but I'm a computer technician. I can't help it.
64 bit OS. Goes straight to reboot, no crash. And, though it was first STO only, then STO and Champions, now its just totally random restarting.
Test of the cooling yielded 47 degrees Celcius. Pretty darned cool.
A screenie from CPU-Z should cover most of what I'd want to know.
It's important to monitor your vitals. From my experience, random restarts that aren't heat related are almost always unstable OC if you are OCing. If you're positive your settings are default now (and not a stored profile, or OC defaults), then you may simply have a hardware issue. That's unlikely, unless it's gotten progressively worse... in which case, you may have had a condition (bad oc or otherwise) that simply led to damage (unlikely, but not impossible).
That was in regards to the 400 series only. If you are running a 200 series the current driver is 4/13 V.197.45
Running two 470gtx cards SLI'd and liquid cooled made by EVGA. the new driver is 8.17.11.9775 (4/28/10)
and sadly, it didn't work any better.
The tech support gut and I had hoped it was a short in the cyborg keyboard, but switching that out didn't help. We tried the memory sticks one at a time, no joy there either.
I'm almost convinced that one of the video cards went bad. Being liquid cooled, though, I'm not gonna even try and remove them to see.
A screenie from CPU-Z should cover most of what I'd want to know.
It's important to monitor your vitals. From my experience, random restarts that aren't heat related are almost always unstable OC if you are OCing. If you're positive your settings are default now (and not a stored profile, or OC defaults), then you may simply have a hardware issue. That's unlikely, unless it's gotten progressively worse... in which case, you may have had a condition (bad oc or otherwise) that simply led to damage (unlikely, but not impossible).
The dxdiag is so long it would take 4 posts, according to the character limit thing that came up when I tried to post it, which is why I sent it in as a ticket.
This is what I ordered. And the OC is likely what damaged something, but they supposedly tested it before it got shipped.:
CD: LG 22X DVD±/±RW + CD-R/RW Dual Layer Drive (BLACK COLOR)
CD2: None
CAS: * CoolerMaster Storm Sniper Mid-Tower Gaming Case (Original Color)
CASUPGRADE: None
CS_FAN: Default case fans
CPU: Intel® Core i7-975 Extreme Edition 3.33 GHz 8M Intel Smart Cache LGA1366
FREEBIE_CU: FREE Game: Just Cause 2
FAN: CyberPower Xtreme Hydro Liquid Cooling Kit 240MM w/ Dual Fan(CPU & GPU Liquid Cool Capable, Extreme Overclcking Performance + Extreme Slient at 18dBA)
FREEBIE_RM: None
FREEBIE_MB: None
FA_HDD: None
FLASHMEDIA: INTERNAL 12in1 Flash Media Reader/Writer (BLACK COLOR)
FLOPPY: None
HDD: 1TB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD (Single Hard Drive)
HDD2: None
IEEE_CARD: None
KEYBOARD: Saitek PK17U Cyborg Gaming Keyboard
MOUSE: XtremeGear Optical USB 3 Buttons Gaming Mouse
MONITOR: None
MONITOR2: None
MB_ADDON: None
MEMORY: 6GB (2GBx3) DDR3/1600MHz Triple Channel Memory Module (Kingston HyperX)
MULTIVIEW: Xtreme Performance in SLI/CrossFireX Gaming Mode Supports Single Monitor
MOTHERBOARD: * (3-Way SLI Support) GigaByte GA-X58A-UD3R Intel X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX Ultra Durable3 Mainboard Triple-Channel DDR3/1600 ATX Mainboard w/ 7.1 Dobly Audio, eSATA, GbLAN, USB3.0, 2 x SATA-III RAID, IEEE1394a, 4 Gen2 PCIe, 2 PCIe X1 & 1 PCI
MODEM: None
NETWORK: Onboard Gigabit LAN Network
OS: Microsoft® Windows® 7 Home Premium (64-bit Edition)
OVERCLOCK: Extreme OC (Extreme Overclock 20% or more)
POWERSUPPLY: 1200 Watts Power Supplies (* Thermaltake TR2 RX Modular PSU - PN: TRX-1200M)
PRINTER: None
PRINTER_CABLE: None
RUSH: NO; READY TO SHIP IN 5~10 BUSINESS DAYS
SOFT1: Free 60 Days Microsoft® Office® 2007 (Words, Excel, Access, Power Point, Outlook + More) - Microsoft Windows OS Required
SERVICE: STANDARD WARRANTY: 3-YEAR LIMITED WARRANTY PLUS LIFE-TIME TECHNICAL SUPPORT
SPEAKERS: None
SOUND: HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO
TEMP: None
TVRC: None
USB: Built-in USB 2.0 Ports
USBHD: None
USBFLASH: None
USBX: None
VIDEO: Liquid Cooling NVIDIA GTX Series PCIe Video (Liquid Cooling NVIDIA GTX 470 1.28GB GDDR5 VRAM [DirectX 11 Support])
VIDEO2: Liquid Cooling NVIDIA GTX Series PCIe Video (Liquid Cooling NVIDIA GTX 470 1.28GB GDDR5 VRAM [DirectX 11 Support])
On the plus side, if it was the OC, it means they have to replace the PC, since they did the OC and not me. Maybe I'll get them to send a new one not OCed and see if they'll exchange a SSD for a boot drive instead.
Also, if you get crashing in games and you can successful run many passes of prime95 on the desktop, you could consider it graphics related. If prime bombs out prior to at least 5-10 tests, it's probably not a graphics card.
Hm, I'm heading out now so I won't be able to follow up with you, but hopefully I've at least pointed out some things to try to help resolve it
Interesting. I got no amber light, but also no video when I turned off the SLI, removed the bridge and tried the second video card.
Not that I do this often, but that's probably expected. You may have a BIOS setting for default graphics slot. You can't physically remove the top card and put the bottom card in the top slot though right? Likely it defaults to that port for single card mode (may be an override in bios for this, depends).
I'll try mine when I get home to see if it's the same behavior (pretty sure it is, actually). I don't get SLI at work. Not that I'd need it
Actually... I could. But the card is in another computer and I have to go home now. I'll post back later-ish.
Not that I do this often, but that's probably expected. You may have a BIOS setting for default graphics slot. You can't physically remove the top card and put the bottom card in the top slot though right? Likely it defaults to that port for single card mode (may be an override in bios for this, depends).
I'll try mine when I get home to see if it's the same behavior (pretty sure it is, actually). I don't get SLI at work. Not that I'd need it
Actually... I could. But the card is in another computer and I have to go home now. I'll post back later-ish.
okay, i have 260s in SLI so I'm one gen behind but this should work for you.
Put things back as they were (SLI Bridge, enable it on drivers, etc), and if you just move your monitor plug from the top card to the bottom card, you should maintain video. I'm on win7 64-bit and I'm able to bounce back and forth between with no issues.
It's probably just a bypass, but if that bottom card was toasty, I wouldn't think it would work at all.
The most surefire way to test is to just use one discrete card in the default slot and try both separately. Which isn't an option since you don't want to mess with the water connections. Hrm...
Any luck running prime95 or furmark? Furmark can test in SLI mode and it'll overlay temps for you.
Are your cards overclocked too, btw? That could cause issues as well. You'd need rivatuner or something for nvidia (unless the 400 series has built in OCing, which is probably not likely but I haven't gotten my paws on a 400 yet)
GPU-Z would be a quick way to tell if they are or aren't.
okay, i have 260s in SLI so I'm one gen behind but this should work for you.
Put things back as they were (SLI Bridge, enable it on drivers, etc), and if you just move your monitor plug from the top card to the bottom card, you should maintain video. I'm on win7 64-bit and I'm able to bounce back and forth between with no issues.
It's probably just a bypass, but if that bottom card was toasty, I wouldn't think it would work at all.
The most surefire way to test is to just use one discrete card in the default slot and try both separately. Which isn't an option since you don't want to mess with the water connections. Hrm...
Any luck running prime95 or furmark? Furmark can test in SLI mode and it'll overlay temps for you.
Are your cards overclocked too, btw? That could cause issues as well. You'd need rivatuner or something for nvidia (unless the 400 series has built in OCing, which is probably not likely but I haven't gotten my paws on a 400 yet)
GPU-Z would be a quick way to tell if they are or aren't.
The video cards aren't OCed, but then, with twin 470s, I can't imagine needing them OCed.
I've given up and am sending it back for a replacement, given the support tech offered it and is sending me an RML so I won't have to pay for it. I might even spring for a faster HD and maybe a SSD for a boot drive. So I end up waiting a couple of weeks, I can muddle through on this machine. (This is a i7 920 with a 260gtx video card and 9 gigs ram.)
I do, however, truly appreciate all the folks that helped. One thing that came very clear is no matter what the problem turns out to be, the darn thing is under warranty, so they can fix it.
EDIT: I tried what you suggested and the monitor worked, so who knows?
Overclocking a CPU beyond 3.1 or 3.2ghz yields virtually nothing in most games. However, OCing the graphics card really does bump performance a bit.
My dual 260s are running at 650mhz. The gains are worth it!
Glad you got everything figured out... it's really hard to nail down issues over a forum... but a machine like that is certainly more interesting than what I deal with at work (well, usually... I did upgrade our VM server to 224gb of memory yesterday, that was kind of cool).
Yeah, this machine is an ASUS system bought at Best Buy. Sad as it sounds, I just don't have time to make my own systems or keep up on the tech for tweaking them anymore. It came with nine gigs, upgradeable to 12, but who really needs 12 gigs of RAM for most games? It served me great, but can't run STO at max settings, so I upgraded.
The fancy system I had custom made at Cyberpowerpc.com. I'm wondering if, despite all the care they took in packing, maybe something had wiggled loose in shipping? Or if a part were simply bad (or close to failing) and somehow just didn't show up when they tested it, perhaps. Regardless, they were pretty darned friendly and helpful by both phone and email, so I'm going to shout their praises to anyone who will listen. You just don't find service like that very often anymore.
So, if you got $1500 to $15,000 to spend on a system, I'd say check them out. Yeah, I specced out a custom built system costing 15 grand on their site. Now all I got to do is win the lottery.
Update on this. It turns out the power supply was supposedly bad and somehow harmed the main board and CPU. It took them over a month to get the parts and fix it, but I got it back yesterday (finally!!)
I've been having no problem on most things, but crashing while doing any type of mission in STO. Sometimes it takes a while, but I eventually crash. I'm fairly certain it isn't an ISP issue or even STO issue, since my other system plays STO just fine.
I was wondering, however, what drivers people were getting the best results from for the Nvidia 470 GTX cards? While I have the latest drivers on this rig, it could be the latest aren't the best.
Comments
Already sent one via a support ticket, since it was too long to post.
I'm starting to suspect there is something completely wrong with my fancy new $2600 system, and not STO.
Can you do other graphics-intensive tasks without the computer rebooting? When was your last hardware change or Windows update?
What is your operating system? 32 bit or 64 bit? What motherboard and brand of video card and RAM do you have? Do you have any definitive proof that the system is cool, or are you just basing that on your faith in your cooling system?
Sorry for all the questions, but I'm a computer technician. I can't help it.
-maxfps 60
Which will limit the renderer to 60 FPS max. They did add a setting for this in video options, but it always defaults to 120 FPS, and again, wil;l generate more heat than 60 FPS -and if you are having a cooliing issue this could help alliviate without sacrificing much. This in't an FPS, and (I have an older 21" HP FP monitor with a max refresh of 60 Hz) any FPS over your monitors refresh rate is essentially wasted (or you may see 'tearing, etc.).
Liquid cooling, heat isn't an issue... but it means he probably bought it overclocked (or tried himself)?
OP -- do you overclock? If so, post your platform and OC specs (vcore, fsb, etc). I'm sure one of us can help you find the problem
Have you tried running prime95 or any other stress tests?
It came overclocked, and I've just spent a fair amount of time on the phone with their customer service folks. One of the first things we did was set it back to defaults. Still no love.
I'm going to try and update to the new drivers now. If that fails, well they're emailing me an return label so they can check the problem physically.
Though I first noticed it with STO and Champions, I think this is very much a "really fancy system is easy to break thing," and not an "STO patch broke me," thing.
I'll keep you posted, folks.
If it is any consolation, I do love the very fast support from Staff. And, when it was working right, STO was a beautiful thing on maxed graphics.
64 bit OS. Goes straight to reboot, no crash. And, though it was first STO only, then STO and Champions, now its just totally random restarting.
Test of the cooling yielded 47 degrees Celcius. Pretty darned cool.
Trying new drivers next.
I just tried them and installed them, but they show up on the dxdiag as 4/28/10 instead of 5/10.
Or is there a newer, beta, driver out there?
That was in regards to the 400 series only. If you are running a 200 series the current driver is 4/13 V.197.45
For future reference, you should get a few utilities if you're going to have OCing present.
cpu-z
hw monitor
prime95 (stress test)
furmark (stress test)
A screenie from CPU-Z should cover most of what I'd want to know.
It's important to monitor your vitals. From my experience, random restarts that aren't heat related are almost always unstable OC if you are OCing. If you're positive your settings are default now (and not a stored profile, or OC defaults), then you may simply have a hardware issue. That's unlikely, unless it's gotten progressively worse... in which case, you may have had a condition (bad oc or otherwise) that simply led to damage (unlikely, but not impossible).
Running two 470gtx cards SLI'd and liquid cooled made by EVGA. the new driver is 8.17.11.9775 (4/28/10)
and sadly, it didn't work any better.
The tech support gut and I had hoped it was a short in the cyborg keyboard, but switching that out didn't help. We tried the memory sticks one at a time, no joy there either.
I'm almost convinced that one of the video cards went bad. Being liquid cooled, though, I'm not gonna even try and remove them to see.
If you get no signal on one of the video cards (amber light on monitor), that'd be a good indicator
EDIT: Turn the computer off before pulling the SLI bridge...
I don't feel real good about it being one of the graphics cards though... But strange things happen sometimes!
The dxdiag is so long it would take 4 posts, according to the character limit thing that came up when I tried to post it, which is why I sent it in as a ticket.
This is what I ordered. And the OC is likely what damaged something, but they supposedly tested it before it got shipped.:
CD: LG 22X DVD±/±RW + CD-R/RW Dual Layer Drive (BLACK COLOR)
CD2: None
CAS: * CoolerMaster Storm Sniper Mid-Tower Gaming Case (Original Color)
CASUPGRADE: None
CS_FAN: Default case fans
CPU: Intel® Core i7-975 Extreme Edition 3.33 GHz 8M Intel Smart Cache LGA1366
FREEBIE_CU: FREE Game: Just Cause 2
FAN: CyberPower Xtreme Hydro Liquid Cooling Kit 240MM w/ Dual Fan(CPU & GPU Liquid Cool Capable, Extreme Overclcking Performance + Extreme Slient at 18dBA)
FREEBIE_RM: None
FREEBIE_MB: None
FA_HDD: None
FLASHMEDIA: INTERNAL 12in1 Flash Media Reader/Writer (BLACK COLOR)
FLOPPY: None
HDD: 1TB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD (Single Hard Drive)
HDD2: None
IEEE_CARD: None
KEYBOARD: Saitek PK17U Cyborg Gaming Keyboard
MOUSE: XtremeGear Optical USB 3 Buttons Gaming Mouse
MONITOR: None
MONITOR2: None
MB_ADDON: None
MEMORY: 6GB (2GBx3) DDR3/1600MHz Triple Channel Memory Module (Kingston HyperX)
MULTIVIEW: Xtreme Performance in SLI/CrossFireX Gaming Mode Supports Single Monitor
MOTHERBOARD: * (3-Way SLI Support) GigaByte GA-X58A-UD3R Intel X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX Ultra Durable3 Mainboard Triple-Channel DDR3/1600 ATX Mainboard w/ 7.1 Dobly Audio, eSATA, GbLAN, USB3.0, 2 x SATA-III RAID, IEEE1394a, 4 Gen2 PCIe, 2 PCIe X1 & 1 PCI
MODEM: None
NETWORK: Onboard Gigabit LAN Network
OS: Microsoft® Windows® 7 Home Premium (64-bit Edition)
OVERCLOCK: Extreme OC (Extreme Overclock 20% or more)
POWERSUPPLY: 1200 Watts Power Supplies (* Thermaltake TR2 RX Modular PSU - PN: TRX-1200M)
PRINTER: None
PRINTER_CABLE: None
RUSH: NO; READY TO SHIP IN 5~10 BUSINESS DAYS
SOFT1: Free 60 Days Microsoft® Office® 2007 (Words, Excel, Access, Power Point, Outlook + More) - Microsoft Windows OS Required
SERVICE: STANDARD WARRANTY: 3-YEAR LIMITED WARRANTY PLUS LIFE-TIME TECHNICAL SUPPORT
SPEAKERS: None
SOUND: HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO
TEMP: None
TVRC: None
USB: Built-in USB 2.0 Ports
USBHD: None
USBFLASH: None
USBX: None
VIDEO: Liquid Cooling NVIDIA GTX Series PCIe Video (Liquid Cooling NVIDIA GTX 470 1.28GB GDDR5 VRAM [DirectX 11 Support])
VIDEO2: Liquid Cooling NVIDIA GTX Series PCIe Video (Liquid Cooling NVIDIA GTX 470 1.28GB GDDR5 VRAM [DirectX 11 Support])
On the plus side, if it was the OC, it means they have to replace the PC, since they did the OC and not me. Maybe I'll get them to send a new one not OCed and see if they'll exchange a SSD for a boot drive instead.
Hm, I'm heading out now so I won't be able to follow up with you, but hopefully I've at least pointed out some things to try to help resolve it
Interesting. I got no amber light, but also no video when I turned off the SLI, removed the bridge and tried the second video card.
Not that I do this often, but that's probably expected. You may have a BIOS setting for default graphics slot. You can't physically remove the top card and put the bottom card in the top slot though right? Likely it defaults to that port for single card mode (may be an override in bios for this, depends).
I'll try mine when I get home to see if it's the same behavior (pretty sure it is, actually). I don't get SLI at work. Not that I'd need it
Actually... I could. But the card is in another computer and I have to go home now. I'll post back later-ish.
Given the liquid cooling, that's not an option.
Put things back as they were (SLI Bridge, enable it on drivers, etc), and if you just move your monitor plug from the top card to the bottom card, you should maintain video. I'm on win7 64-bit and I'm able to bounce back and forth between with no issues.
It's probably just a bypass, but if that bottom card was toasty, I wouldn't think it would work at all.
The most surefire way to test is to just use one discrete card in the default slot and try both separately. Which isn't an option since you don't want to mess with the water connections. Hrm...
Any luck running prime95 or furmark? Furmark can test in SLI mode and it'll overlay temps for you.
Are your cards overclocked too, btw? That could cause issues as well. You'd need rivatuner or something for nvidia (unless the 400 series has built in OCing, which is probably not likely but I haven't gotten my paws on a 400 yet)
GPU-Z would be a quick way to tell if they are or aren't.
The video cards aren't OCed, but then, with twin 470s, I can't imagine needing them OCed.
I've given up and am sending it back for a replacement, given the support tech offered it and is sending me an RML so I won't have to pay for it. I might even spring for a faster HD and maybe a SSD for a boot drive. So I end up waiting a couple of weeks, I can muddle through on this machine. (This is a i7 920 with a 260gtx video card and 9 gigs ram.)
I do, however, truly appreciate all the folks that helped. One thing that came very clear is no matter what the problem turns out to be, the darn thing is under warranty, so they can fix it.
EDIT: I tried what you suggested and the monitor worked, so who knows?
As for needing to OC... you never NEED to OC.
Overclocking a CPU beyond 3.1 or 3.2ghz yields virtually nothing in most games. However, OCing the graphics card really does bump performance a bit.
My dual 260s are running at 650mhz. The gains are worth it!
Glad you got everything figured out... it's really hard to nail down issues over a forum... but a machine like that is certainly more interesting than what I deal with at work (well, usually... I did upgrade our VM server to 224gb of memory yesterday, that was kind of cool).
That's a crapload of RAM!
The fancy system I had custom made at Cyberpowerpc.com. I'm wondering if, despite all the care they took in packing, maybe something had wiggled loose in shipping? Or if a part were simply bad (or close to failing) and somehow just didn't show up when they tested it, perhaps. Regardless, they were pretty darned friendly and helpful by both phone and email, so I'm going to shout their praises to anyone who will listen. You just don't find service like that very often anymore.
So, if you got $1500 to $15,000 to spend on a system, I'd say check them out. Yeah, I specced out a custom built system costing 15 grand on their site. Now all I got to do is win the lottery.
I've been having no problem on most things, but crashing while doing any type of mission in STO. Sometimes it takes a while, but I eventually crash. I'm fairly certain it isn't an ISP issue or even STO issue, since my other system plays STO just fine.
I was wondering, however, what drivers people were getting the best results from for the Nvidia 470 GTX cards? While I have the latest drivers on this rig, it could be the latest aren't the best.