Trouble with A7N8X and UT2003

[pelikan]

Hi.

UT2003 worked great on my A7V266-E with mostly high detail settings. Then I got an A7N8X and am having trouble.
UT2003 stutters occasionally. Maybe a few times per minute it stops for a split second and then continues.
I thought my hard drive was dying so I got a new one. Then UT2003 worked great for awhile.
But I was pushing my overclock one night and got some BSOD's and then UT2003 started stuttering again. So I reformatted and clean intalled XP. That didn't solve the problem. I've tried a few different drivers and endless UT2003.ini configurations. Nothing helps.
I just tried some other games and same problem with them too.
Any ideas?
Thanks.

[Phatpigeon_ii]

Maybe you have it overclocked too high. What settings are you using for your Samsung RAM? I know mine can't take too much overclocking. If you're looking for major overclocking, buy some Corsair. I'm beginning to wish I had....

[pelikan]

Thanks for your reply. It's actually stable where it is. I tried everything at stock, and then 10MHz increments back up to where it is now and nothing helps. It is just worse at slower speeds.

[Liquid3D]

What voltages, and timings are you running? I'd say the Samsung may be your your bottleneck as well, although many vendors used the Samsung PC2700 as PC3200 prior to IC's reaching default DDR400 speeds. I imagine you've locked the AGP at 66MHz, as well? It could be as simple as raising the DDR voltage. I woudln't go above 2.9V unless you want to fry the memory.

You may want to try going into Windows Performance and Maintenance, and get into System, Hardware, and finally Device Manager. Under the IDE properties change the Master, and Slave to PIO. Then exit Windows and do the same in your BIOS under Integrated Peripherals, change the IDE Master and Slave from Auto to PIO Mode 4, and change UDMA to Disable. It's possible at 200FSB your causing file, and/or HDD corruption on some level.

[Holst]

Disable EAX sound.

[osoz]

I actually have the same problem...sort of (8RDA+). I read (somewhere...maxiumPC mag) that the unreal engine is sensitive to overclocking...don't know if thats true or not. However, when I lower my FSB and play it, I get less error messages and shut downs. Can someone confirm if that's true or not?

[bradmax57]

Originally posted by osoz
I actually have the same problem...sort of (8RDA+). I read (somewhere...maxiumPC mag) that the unreal engine is sensitive to overclocking...don't know if thats true or not. However, when I lower my FSB and play it, I get less error messages and shut downs. Can someone confirm if that's true or not?

This could well be true but then again just about every program will become less stable when pc is oc'd

[pelikan]

Thanks a lot for all the replies. I sure appreciate the help.


UT2003 never shuts down on me or gives error messages.
I'm using software sound, no EAX.
DDR is at 2.7. I'll raise it to 2.8 and see if that helps.
AGP is locked at 66MHz.

Liquid3d- Interesting idea about the hard drive corruption. The thing is though, that after reformatting a week ago the first thing I did was play UT2003 at stock speeds and then at 10MHz fsb increments up to 200 fsb and nothing worked. It just got better as I raised the fsb. But it still stutters.

[pelikan]

Update: I raised the DDR voltage to 2.8 and it's a little better. So now I suspect its the ram. I'm going to buy some TwinMoss with Winbond chips and see if that solves the problem.