Source
r/buildapc•
Soulbow

New build, experiencing choppy video/lag. Help?

Hi, I just built my first PC and have everything installed correctly, I believe. It's an ASRock P67 Extreme6 motherboard with an Asus HD 6950 graphics card, 8GB DDR3 RAM. If anyone needs the rest of the list of parts, I can offer that.

I finished the computer yesterday and was able to play Battlefield Bad Company 2 on the highest settings. Then I noticed problems.

My video seems to be freezing up every half a second or so. It doesn't freeze up for long, but it seriously impacts my ability to use this system. To explain it better: imagine an online game with lag, but across my entire system (Steam, Youtube, Games, anything). Both the video and sound lag, but my sound is not coming from the monitor, I have little USB speakers (for now) plugged in.

I have all the latest drivers installed. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thank you

Posted Jun 4, 2011, 5:00 PM UTC

2236
mojo_rex•

Just took a quick peek at your manual (page 70). It says under the northbridge settings that the default graphics adapter is pci, try changing it to PCI express (in the bios) and see if it fixes the problem.

5
SoulbowOP•

Thanks for the quick reply, it's on PCI express, no luck so far on fixing the lag.

1
mojo_rex•

Did you look in windows event viewer to see if any errors are occurring, given the frequency they should be the errors with the largest number.

3
SoulbowOP•

I'm looking through this now. One note, if this is of any importance: the lag isn't constant. It will work fine one minute, then the next it is lagging every half a second. The switch between lag/no lag does not seem to be related to any of my own actions.

For example, when I started this post, there had been no lag for about one minute. When I started this paragraph, it was lagging.

EDIT: Nothing seems to be standing out in the event viewer, not anything with the frequency of the lag anyway.

1
mojo_rex•

Could be a bogey component. I'd suggest trying to benchmark your system to see if any particular component is under performing I'd also try a run of mem test or windows memory diagnostic to see if your memory is producing errors.

Also what kind of drive is your OS on.

3
Shadow703793•

  1. Uninstall the drivers. Use this to completely remove any trace of the drivers.

  2. Re-download and re-install the drivers.

  3. What are the temps?

4
SoulbowOP•

The temps on everything seem fine. The i5 2500K is staying around 30 degrees C in normal use, and the 6950 is staying around 34 degrees.

I ran that program, uninstalled the drivers and reinstalled them just now, but the problem is still there.

1
goderickspiegel•

Have you run memtest86?

3
SoulbowOP•

It's running now, I'll post here with the results.

EDIT: Completed with no errors.

2
VMX•

You placed your two RAM sticks wrong. Place them both in the blue slots and the stutter will be gone.

3
SoulbowOP•

This is very possible, as they are in the white slots. With this motherboard, my CPU cooler would only fit in one certain way, which blocks the blue slots. In the manual, it says it should work fine, but now I can't upgrade my ram any further. I don't really want to have to buy and install a different CPU cooler, but I will if I have to.

1
VMX•

Well, in theory, if they're in the white slots they should work fine. But I thought you had missed the Dual Channel setup and had placed one stick in a blue slot and the other one in a white one. Since this mobo has them in alternate order (blue-white-blue-white) it's a typical mistake to place both sticks in the first two slots.

And the reason I thought this was the problem, is that I had the EXACT same issue in a new build for a friend some months ago. We couldn't figure out what was wrong until I used AIDA64 to do stress tests. We quickly realized it was the RAM, and when I opened I realized my mistake. So, even if they're in the white ones, I still wouldn't discard this given the similarity of the problem (random moments in which the computer has micro-freezes every second or so).

Easy ways to make sure of this:

  1. Get AIDA64 and do the stress test, choosing different parts of your PC to stress (CPU, RAM, HD...). If it's the RAM, the stutter should only be there when you stress the RAM.

  2. Remove one of the RAM sticks and start your PC (try placing the remaining one in different slots if the problem persists, and see if there's a difference). There's also the possibility of having a faulty RAM stick, so try switching them and see if the problem stays or goes away.

3
Captain_Midnight•

I'd grab something like HWMonitor to check temps and fan speeds (many of which you can also access in the BIOS, but certain settings in the BIOS won't be applied until your OS is loaded, which will have an effect on... temps and fan speeds).

Also take a look at the voltages coming from the power supply. The output should be within a few percentage points of the rating. So, for example, if your 12-volt rail is producing 12.5 or 11.5 volts, then something's probably wrong with the unit.

It could also be a glitch with the USB-based speakers. Try switching to some standard headphones to see if it has any effect on performance.

2
SoulbowOP•

Thanks for this program, I've tried just about everything so I'm going to move on to a new power supply now, even though I didn't expect to have any problems with my current one.

EDIT: This is the power supply I'm using. Is that enough power?

1
Captain_Midnight•

Oh yeah, that's plenty of power.

1
SoulbowOP•

Thanks. I hoped it wasn't actually since that would have at least identified a source of my problem. I was able to play crisis on the highest settings in 1080p, but the lag persisted at the same rate as when I'm on google chrome or just the desktop, no worse or better when gaming.

1
whiplash000•

Are you running the latest bios in your Extreme6/6950? If not, fix that. And if that doesn't work, you can't go wrong RMAing the motherboard if you can convince either Asrock or Newegg to waive the fees.

1
[deleted]•

[deleted]

1
SoulbowOP•

I am running the latest bios, I just checked.

1
shocksim•

Uninstall the drivers using this and then install the windows ones through Win Update then install the latest ones and see if that works.

Could be memory. Memtest 86+ and SuperPi/HyperPi to see if it fails or crashes.

1
SoulbowOP•

Multiple memory tests including Memtest 86+ returned no problems for memory. Uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers did not help, but thanks for the suggestion.

1
dallen•

I had the same problem recently. I ended up having to update my bios.

1
SoulbowOP•

My bios is updated as much as possible.

1
darkpriest•

Hi, did you overclock your system recently prior playing bf? If you did, please check the voltages to your ram and graphic card. The quickest way is to reset your bios to defaults and try running the game again.

1
SoulbowOP•

I did not overclock prior to playing bf. I would like to make sure my system can run stable now before I attempt anything like that.

1
BraveSirRobin•

My board came with EasyTune6 and sometimes after a wake from suspend it does exactly what you describe. Killing the process nails it, I think it's called gui.exe.

Here's how I figured out what it was: when it's stuttering, fire up task manager, hit "Show all processes" and see if something is showing CPU usage along with the stutters. Kill processes until it goes away.

1
SoulbowOP•

I looked but didn't see anything unwanted processes running, including after hitting "Show all processes."

1
quintios•

Any updates? Get it fixed?

1
SoulbowOP•

I wish, I tried everything in this thread but it didn't help. I ran Ubuntu from a CD without lag, so it's possibly a hard drive problem. The benchmarking tests seem to indicate my HDD is slower than other systems, but I don't know for sure. It was rated a 5.6 in the windows experience index. I'm going to perform a Samsung check for the HDD whenever I can actually get that working..

1
quintios•

Do you have another drive you could pull from a working system that you could try?

I started having some severe problems recently, turns out it was a hard drive beginning to fail. SeaTools says the drive is fine, but I was able to swap it out with another to see.

1
SoulbowOP•

I'm running a Samsung HDD check now, it's going to take hours, but maybe it will find a problem. If it doesn't, I may try a different hard drive, but I don't want to buy windows again just to test a hard drive.

1
quintios•

Buy windows again? You shouldn't have to do that. You could re-install but not activate the OS to see what's going on.

1
quintios•

Power supply

0