Gaming GFX Problems i THINK

[Stevetry]

Yea so it all started while playing minecraft i began to get random freezes sometimes really short sometimes really long that made the pc unresponsive i have to get task manager to end minecraft but is not just minecraft while playing battlefield get sometimes random white flashes and lag the only way to fix this is to quit the game and restart it and in anno 1701 i get missing sprites and stuff sometimes.

my GFX card is a NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS

 

[doyama]

You might want to look at a couple of things.

Temporary stuttering of a system can come from a few things.

1) Hard disk thrashing. Try to see if your hard disk is going bonkers during those 'small' freezes. It could be your AV software causing it.
2) Bad memory modules. I had a similar issue as yourself and I fixed it by replacing the memory. You can test this by either popping out one module at a time if possible, or replacing it all and testing. For me since I have access to the IT department, it was easy to find 'extra' memory lying around to borrow. But it's still worth trying. As an FYI Memtest86+ which I ran overnight never found anything wrong with the RAM, so take that test with a grain of salt if it comes back clean. If it claims it's bad though then definitely replace it.
3) Bad vid card. This is possible. You might want to see if you can get some diagnostics off the GPU like how hot it is and such. See if the fan on it is working as a broken fan can cause total havoc on a GPU. the best test is of course to swap it out with a known good one, but this kind of thing is hard unless you buy a new one, or have an older card lying around you can test with.

 

[Originality]

It could also be an effect of bad graphics drivers. Updating to the latest is always recommended before playing any game.

 

[Stevetry]

You might want to look at a couple of things.

Temporary stuttering of a system can come from a few things.

1) Hard disk thrashing. Try to see if your hard disk is going bonkers during those 'small' freezes. It could be your AV software causing it.
2) Bad memory modules. I had a similar issue as yourself and I fixed it by replacing the memory. You can test this by either popping out one module at a time if possible, or replacing it all and testing. For me since I have access to the IT department, it was easy to find 'extra' memory lying around to borrow. But it's still worth trying. As an FYI Memtest86+ which I ran overnight never found anything wrong with the RAM, so take that test with a grain of salt if it comes back clean. If it claims it's bad though then definitely replace it.
3) Bad vid card. This is possible. You might want to see if you can get some diagnostics off the GPU like how hot it is and such. See if the fan on it is working as a broken fan can cause total havoc on a GPU. the best test is of course to swap it out with a known good one, but this kind of thing is hard unless you buy a new one, or have an older card lying around you can test with.

ok here it goes


1) is not that

2) i pop out the 2GB ram module that i got lat month leaving my pc with just 1 Gb of ram i boot it up play minecraft and i dint notice any errors or freezing i play for more that 10 minutes them i turn it off and pop back in the 2GB ram modues i start Windows up and play minecraft and like 3 minutes into the game i get a flash and lag

could the 2 GB ram really be the culprit ? how can i be sure

3)the card is not even a year old and dont have another one to test with

 

[Stevetry]

Update i try the 2gb ram by itself and it seem to be running fine minecraft havent flash or freeze yet

could it be the two rams cant be use together ?

 

[doyama]

You might want to look at a couple of things.

Temporary stuttering of a system can come from a few things.

1) Hard disk thrashing. Try to see if your hard disk is going bonkers during those 'small' freezes. It could be your AV software causing it.
2) Bad memory modules. I had a similar issue as yourself and I fixed it by replacing the memory. You can test this by either popping out one module at a time if possible, or replacing it all and testing. For me since I have access to the IT department, it was easy to find 'extra' memory lying around to borrow. But it's still worth trying. As an FYI Memtest86+ which I ran overnight never found anything wrong with the RAM, so take that test with a grain of salt if it comes back clean. If it claims it's bad though then definitely replace it.
3) Bad vid card. This is possible. You might want to see if you can get some diagnostics off the GPU like how hot it is and such. See if the fan on it is working as a broken fan can cause total havoc on a GPU. the best test is of course to swap it out with a known good one, but this kind of thing is hard unless you buy a new one, or have an older card lying around you can test with.

ok here it goes


1) is not that

2) i pop out the 2GB ram module that i got lat month leaving my pc with just 1 Gb of ram i boot it up play minecraft and i dint notice any errors or freezing i play for more that 10 minutes them i turn it off and pop back in the 2GB ram modues i start Windows up and play minecraft and like 3 minutes into the game i get a flash and lag

could the 2 GB ram really be the culprit ? how can i be sure

3)the card is not even a year old and dont have another one to test with

Your tests definitely seem to indicate that one of the modules is bad. Here's another test you can do to really determine it's the memory

Take out the 1GB module and put the 2GB module in and re-run the test. It could do one of two things

1) Crash - This means that definitely your 2GB module is the culprit, remove it and replace
2) No crash - This is also possible. It could be the two modules are somehow interferring with each other. They could have different timing or such. Also you might want to try different slot combinations too. it could be that slot B is bad but slot A is ok. So the crash won't happen if you put in the 2GB module to slot A but it does crash if you put it into slot B. Try putting the 1GB module into where the 2GB one was and see if it crashes to rule this possibility out.

 

[Berthenk]

It's generally a bad idea to use two different modules at the same time in dual channel. Buy a kit of two and see if that works. If you buy a kit, you can be sure that they're exactly the same so dual channel will work.

 

[Stevetry]

well here what happen at first the 2gb module alone work ok it seem i play minecraft for a while and nothing but them it began to lag and flash after that i took it out and installed my old 1gb and 512 mb ram modules i been playing for a while ad i haven't have one single flash or lag yet so it seem the 2gb ram modules was the problem ?

 

[Deleted User]

well here what happen at first the 2gb module alone work ok it seem i play minecraft for a while and nothing but them it began to lag and flash after that i took it out and installed my old 1gb and 512 mb ram modules i been playing for a while ad i haven't have one single flash or lag yet so it seem the 2gb ram modules was the problem ?

Yeah. Probably, if you want sure confirmation just run a memory-diagnostic with those faulty sticks in. I mean, best case scenario you can RMA it for being faulty.

 

[trumpet-205]

Run memtest86+ on 2GB module. Let it run at least 3 test cycles. It'll take a while.