CoD 4 freezes up after 15 minutes of play?!?

[Tsakali_]

it all depends, on the level , some go for longer and some which i suspect put more strain on the v-card only take but a few minutes. it makes a murial of random colorations and it just freezes and i have to reboot.
my v-card is not oc'ed (7600gt) and I have 1gig of ram.

I think the general consensus here would be overheating, but just for shits and giggles I placed a 10" portable house fan right on tope of the open pc case, but it doesn't make any difference.
I know it's not a proper cooling solution but fuck! the volume of air being moved should have made some difference if the real problem was overheating right?

I have the latest geforce drivers and I am out of ideas as of now...help?

[creep]

Not all heat problems can be cured with airflow. You may not have good interface between heatsink and heat spreader. Without sinks on your video RAM, airflow won't make a lot of difference(for the RAM). Or you could just be completely overworking the card, but hey, like you said in the 8800GT thread.. "My 7600 does fine on everything so I don't need an upgrade"

[Tsakali_]

yeah so one game runs my vcard hot and I need to upgrade

not to mention it's all speculation

[Foo]

If your card is fine with every other game (and by fine, I mean never locks up, at all) then it looks like the game is just incompatable with your current drivers. Look for a driver update, game update, or try some older driver versions to see if the situation changes.

It's unlikely that a single game would show up an overheating issue if you're not also getting in with other games. Also the concept of 'overworking' a graphics card doesn't make any sense.

[creep]

Drivers that decide to become incompatible after a few minutes of play? Sure.

Considering COD4 is the newest and most graphically advanced game he's playing, it makes perfect sense that it would expose a new problem (or more likely a problem that's been developing for awhile and is becoming more apparent now that the card is under load frequently)

"Over"working may not be quite the right term... but I don't think you can argue with the facts: GPU is a processor, and a GPU that makes 1 million calcs generates more heat than a GPU that makes 10 calcs. New game, new graphics, more math on the gpu.

[Foo]

Where did you learn this?

The card does the same amount of work, it produces lower FPS.

[Tsakali_]

it diesn't do it on any other game, and as far as driver issue after a while it could mean something like a memory leak which could have somethign to do with the drivers, yes no?

[Tsakali_]

in any case I am going to spend 10$ at the local radioshack, and slap some heatsinks on the memory chips , creep had a good suggestion even though he's a cunt

ps

I have played the new UT3 I thought that was considered more advanced than the proprietary infinity ward engine

[Tormentius]

Where did you learn this?

The card does the same amount of work, it produces lower FPS.

Its possible though. Remember when Doom 3 came out it pushed a system harder than most and instabilities sometimes showed up as a result. Much like running Prime95 will sometimes stress a system to the point of showing instability.

[creep]

Foo... come on, you're not this daft. By your logic GPUs shouldn't heat up at all when playing games, generating a desktop would keep them just as hot. Feel free to fire up a 5 year old game and a current game, run each for an hour, and monitor GPU temps after each.

Besides, the "kaleidoscope" (colored mosaic, he called it) is classic video overheat. It can also break your monitor when your vid card locks up in this way. I'm not really clear on how, but I have a scorched gf2 and a dead viewsonic CRT to prove it

Tsakali, while you're there, get some Heatsink compound and remove your GPU cooler, clean the old gunk off, reapply and reseat it.

And to answer your other question... a memory leak would most likely show performance degradation until the system locks up. The only probably driver issue that would happen "after a time" would be incompatibility with an effect or some of the game code. This generally isn't random, will be more obvious on certain maps/certain situations, etc. It also almost always causes the game to crash, not a total system lockup, and I maintain that the "colored mosaic" you described is a dead giveaway that it's hardware related.

[Tsakali_]

while you're there, get some Heatsink compound and remove your GPU cooler, clean the old gunk off, reapply and reseat it.