Thankyou for the link, Ceekay, that's quite the interesting read. Got me thinking about my next set of upgrades, which I'd already been thinking about lately.

Sandy Bridge E coming soon. AMD gpu's coming soon. Decisions, decisions.

Atomic

PS: It would seem the trick to avoiding microstuttering, is to make sure your settings keep your minimum framerate as far north of 30fps as you can stand, visually. Since 30fps seems to be the zone where it becomes noticeable enough to be a problem. The bigger your cards, the higher those settings can be, naturally.

No, there's only one place to install them, and that's to the system drive. They end up in places like /windows/system and elsewhere.

Atomic

Interesting. UDP connections were causing the wifi card to have issues... *googles for a bit*

You're quite welcome, btw. And no, I skip quite a few, actually. I just pitch in where I feel like I can contribute.

Gellar, any idea WHY udp transfers would crater it?

Atomic

edit: *ponders* I wonder if the card is trying to do UDP offloading and getting overwhelmed...

Given that you're out of warranty either way, and sitting with known good hardware in hand, just with a fritzing fan... yep, I know what I would do

Atomic

Interesting solution, Gellar. And yes, torrents do use UDP, but the really big difference is the number of connections made. A simple file transfer only makes... one? I think? A torrent makes hundreds of connections. That's why some routers buckle under the load... but Dante's is not, because I have that router, and the dlink, it holds its own.

The wi-fi card is another story, as demonstrated by the fact that your girlfriends laptop, and your desktop, both torrent fine behind your router, yet your laptop crumbles.

Checking error rates can be done router side by logging into the router, and going to the status tab (should default), and choosing the wireless selection on the left. It should give you a readout of wireless clients, and signal strength. After that drop down to the Statistics selection on the left, and at the bottom of that page you should see a readout of the wireless stats, including error rates. This is what your router sees on the link.

For the card, you need to pull up your laptops wireless client software, which I'm not familiar with. It will probably run via the system tray, near the clock. That will tell you what your laptop sees, regarding the wireless link.

Tbh, the card works under normal circumstances, yes? I have the feeling it's not the error rate spiking, and the card not recovering. It could be, but I doubt it. It is more likely, that the card doesn't like the hundreds upon hundreds of connections that are made when the torrent software is running.

A simple test. Hook the laptop up to the network via wired connection, and run your torrent software. This will tell you for certain whether or not it's related to your wireless link, or some other, seperate, software issue on your laptop. It won't tell you what that issue is, but obviously that's proving a little difficult to track down.

If you happen to have a usb wireless lan adapter, you could temporarily hook that to your laptop, shut down the internal wi-fi, and run torrents through that, to see what happens. But whatever adapter you use, might not hold up well, either. So it's an iffy test.

Atomic

PS: To be honest, all of these tests are at least marginally iffy. For instance, the hardwire network adapter built into your laptop, might not like torrent software either. That will cause it to fail the relevant test I mentioned, making it look like you might actually have a software issue on the laptop.

A workaround to your problem would to download torrents on your desktop, and just share the volume the files are on, via the network, and pull what you need to the laptop.

The 5870 is still a surprisingly strong contender for gaming performance. You would be well served by trying to extend the life, either via factory replacement (you have to trust them to get it right), or by doing it yourself (you have to trust yourself to get it right... but you're right there if you need to blame someone )

On the other hand, 28nm parts are 'around the corner'. Which 28nm parts is still up in the air... could be low end, and low/mid range, could be mobile parts. Nobody's talking.

Have you tried cleaning the card?

Here's a relevant question. How comfortable are you with assembling your own systems? If you can do that, you can replace a gpu cooler.

Atomic

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/

Atomic

I'd say this is unlikely, but it's possible that your app isn't gracefully shutting down the connection and filling up your TCP tables.  There's almost certainly some hard coded amount within your router FW and anything above that amount will cause it to fall over.

Unfortunately I'm not sure how to troubleshoot that on your particular router, but in the Linux world you're looking for the TCP Conntrack tool if that somehow helps your googling.

I use Utorrent with that particular router/firewall every day, with no issues. I'm thinking it's the wifi card itself. I did mention previously to check the error rates between the router and the wifi card, but he hasn't mentioned it yet.

In particular it can't be a router issue, otherwise you'd have problems with your desktop, and her laptop when it was hooked to your network.

Atomic

edit: also try this. the next time it stops working, instead of resetting the wi-fi card... reset the router, and see what happens. I'm betting nothing.

So, tell us about the 'new' computer, the 'new' gpu, and the 'new' power supply.

edit: (e8400 noted, 4gb ram noted, gtx 460 'enthusiast edition' noted) (vista noted)

edit: (this your card? http://www.pureoverclock.com/review.php?id=1065&page=5 )

Also tell us how hot said gpu is getting during the problem moments. Use software. There are many ways to get the temps.

Need actual make/model, etc. PNY card? But which generation, etc.

Have you ever purged the drivers using Driver Sweeper, and then reinstalled them?

Don't ignore the memtest advice previous, either. I wouldn't try to manually check the temp though... stuff cools off too quickly once you remove the heat source, and it's just easier to use software.

In particular, is it just the driver locking up and resetting, or are you getting actual video corruption? From what you posted, I'm betting lockup/reset, but no corruption this time. green and/or white 'streaks', pixels, etc.

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html
http://www.piriform.com/speccy
http://www.memtest.org/

Atomic

That's the bad thing about SSD's... once you go flash, everything else, with few exceptions, feels broken

note: a _well_ tuned dual drive setup (not raid 0) comes close, for gaming, or any program specifically setup on the secondary drive... but it's only close, not the same.

Atomic

No, it was not a poltergeist...

/dated

Atomic

I wouldn't do it in preference to skipping two generations of gpu's, and bout to be three. New AMD cards in november timeframe. Hold man, HOLD!

http://www.techpowerup.com/153681/AMD-s-First-28-nm-GPUs-in-December.html

Atomic

See also my recent post about how you never ever ever, no matter what, no matter never. NEVER click through an email link to a website. If you no clickie link, phisher no catch phish. If you feel the email is legit, manually surf and check your accounts. Not through the email.

The best phisher in the world cannot succeed if you don't take the bait.

Atomic

It's not your hash table filling up then.

*ponders some more*

Oh, suggestion on settings for your torrents... I use a 20k/sec upload cap, 192 max connected peers, up to 128 in a single torrent. Up to 6 upload slots per torrent, up to 3 active torrents, and of those, 2 active downloads. It's a slightly different scheme than you'll get from the handy calculator here... http://infinite-source.de/az/az-calc.html ... but it works really well for me. 192 total global connections (64x3 natch), with 2/3rds of that total available to any one torrent. 6 upload slots per torrent for three torrents, is 18 upload slots max, at a little over 1k per second each if all of them are active. (it will shuffle bandwidth, of course). The basic idea is not to overload it, but allow it enough flexibility to shuffle connections and bandwidth back and forth as needed, so if one torrent is extremely available, more resources will tend to be allocated towards that, and once it finishes up, they're freed up for whatever is next. Etc. Allow utorrent to use additional upload slots if below 90%, etc etc etc.

The big one is not to overload your upload, as often your download will be ratio limited... use 100% upload, and no download will be available (restrictions set by many service providers, nothing to do with torrent at all).

Have you checked the error rate on your wireless link? the radio in the dlink isn't the strongest. It may be that the wireless in the laptop is 'giving up' after a while, and not recovering. Thus the needed reset.

Btw, how hot is your wall-wart? Mine always ran hot to the touch, and it finally burned out the other day. Radio Shack has the 5V 2.5A (!!!) generic replacement available. They use modular tips, so take yours in with you for comparison if you decide you want a backup or need a replacement. Fortunately, the wart was the ONLY thing that burned out when it went. I got lucky.

Sorry, this is a bit of a mess, but I'm not sure how to re-organize it for better reading :/

Atomic

Still seriously hoping for a Boga Lizard myself. (from the biological mounts side of things... )

edit: damned thing was fast. probably level 60+

Atomic

Smells like a hash table filling up.

What's your router?

Atomic

PS: What's your connection speed to the internet both ways?

[each]

Get a good quality unit somewhere around 7-800 watts, with at least the number of connectors you'll need for all planned card upgrades. (for instance, a normal pair of 6950's will have two 6 pin pci-e connectors, each, so you'd need four total. And pay attention, because some cards actually want a 6 pin,  and a 6+2 pin or an 8 pin (which are interchangeable, both fit an 8 pin pci-e connector... the 6+2 config also allows fitting to a 6pin, the extra 2 pins sit idle)

For the record, the difference in the connectors. 6 pin connectors carry a rated max of 75 watts of power, and 8 pin carry 150 watts rated max. Your pci-e slot is capable of supplying 75 watts as well, if it's up to spec.

So a card with two 6 pin connectors can draw a theoretical max of 225 watts. I say theoretical because it can draw or demand more, it would just put the connectors over their spec, which may or may not be ok, depending on your gear. Please note that 6xxx series cards have power draw limiting circuitry on them to help prevent pulling more juice than the card can handle. It's also adjustable via software.

For instance, I use an antec signature 850 psu, which would be perfectly suited to what you're planning on. 850 watts is more than a dual gpu system will normally draw, even with a little overclocking, and it comes with 4 pci-e connectors. Dual 6's, and dual 6+2's.

For what you're looking at in here, you really don't need any more than that.

www.jonnyguru.com

Atomic

Possibly they're unmoveable for some reason or another. Windows being active means some stuff can't be defragged... you have a boot time option with the windows defragger for stuff like that. Defraggler has some options in the menus. (just checked mine, and it's an older version, so you _should_ have them as well, unless yours is even older than mine)

Atomic

What do you have now?

Atomic

Scary thought for the day. My Q6600 based rig on a P45 motherboard with DDR2/800 ram, and a GTX 260, scores 7.1/7.1/7.3/7.3/7.9 <-- SSD Raid-0 (basically, nothing scores higher than 7.9 at this point)

You think it installs fast now? Try making a USB installation for your windows, and install it from that.

Atomic

Lol. How to assemble in about 18 relatively easy steps. I remember that. It's a pretty rough outline, but I'm glad it was accurate enough to help get you through the process.

Oh btw, there's an ssd optimizer floating around... *pokes a bit* here we go...

http://elpamsoft.com/Default.aspx

Handy little bugger. Win 7 is pretty smart about some stuff if you install to an SSD and it realizes it's doing it, but this will help.

Atomic

Update?

Atomic

One of the cardinal rules of the internetz:

Ask for help, get help, then come back and tell us how it went...

In particular, I'm curious about your opinion of that SSD. They're quite popular through Newegg, in terms of ratings.

Atomic

what happens, or what used to happen, is the stronger card downshifts to match the weaker card. So a 6970 and a 6950 would perform like a pair of 6950's if you teamed them up.

Atomic

An easier solution might be to put it on its own powerstrip... then just turn it off at the strip. It's marginally safer from electric surges that way anyways. Nothing beats unplugging it though, (mentioned), which is free, though more troublesome.

Atomic

For general performance, yes. Makes your desktop quite 'snappy'.

If you want your games to load fast, etc... anyone remember 'loading, please wait...' ? You actually want your game installation on the ssd. (which can, of course, be one and the same)

My current setup is a system/games 'ssd' (it's actually a raid-0, but that's irrelevant), and a secondary drive for data. (mostly anime). No need to store all that on the SSD.. not cost effective.

If you have to choose? Go with the system drive. As long as you keep the games defragged, you'll do fine.

All SSD's not created equal, for the record. But there are several worthy contenders at this point.

Atomic

PS: Make sure you have enough memory. Nothing slows down a system more than not having enough ram. (forcing the OS to continually swap out)... combine that with a slow hard drive, or a very fragmented hard drive, or both, and you have the typical computer after it has been in a home for a while. 4 gigs is generally 'enough', 6 gigs is about as much as most people would normally see usage of, and 8 gigs is more than most people need, on average. Specific usage will vary.

[BENCH]

http://www.anandtech.com

Home:About:Forums:News:BENCH

It will default on the left side to cpu benchmarks, and sysmark will be selected by default. Flip it to 'games'.

Select game of choice, and leave righthand side at defaults. Click on 'view benchmark results'.

Etc etc etc.

The real answer is 'it's going to vary by game'

edit: I am also very fond of the comparitive charts available at http://www.techpowerup.com in their reviews.

In my opinion, there's a performance 'sweet spot' at the moment, for both cpu's and gpu's. You can spend money to get past it, but unless you're a cyberathlete competing for actual money, I wouldn't personally say it's worth it. Far better to spend that extra cash on a good SSD to use as a system drive, rather than spending 500+ on a cpu or gpu for meager gains.

A pair of 6870's or better from AMD, running in crossfire, or a pair of gtx560's from the nvidia side, with at least a gigabyte of ram on each card (less is no good, and more is generally unnecessary except in certain extreme situations) will kick ass on pretty much any game available today, at any resolution short of 2560x1600 (or more, with multiple monitors, etc). If you have a single monitor at 1920x1200, or less, you do NOT need any more gpu than this, for 'casual' gaming. Aka anything non-competitive. It will be fast, it will be smooth, and frankly, you have to spend a fortune to get meager returns on your investment, past this point.

Atomic

* TheAtomicKid sobs and whimpers some more...

Atomic

125$ Here's the Rosewill Thor... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147053 I specifically see metal screws for the cards in the screenshots. It's also cavernously huge for future hardware.

(rosewill is newegg's house brand, btw)

50$ A local friend has the destroyer... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147144 and is perfectly happy with it. I _think_ it uses screws, though the photo isn't clear. perhaps a review somewhere can enlighten...

75$ 8 gigs of ram should be plenty for the next couple of years... and these are ddr3/1600 cas8 to boot... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233147

plus s1155 is a dual channel setup.. you need two or four sticks of ram, your kit has three for an x58 based setup.

220$ cpu: skip... pricing is pretty much the same everywhere you go unless you find a sale. the 2500k is a perfectly solid choice.

125$ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157271 alternate mobo (pci-e 3.0 capable for future upgrades, one dollar surcharge over your board)

no comment on your psu: can't find a review I trust for it. (basically, jonnyguru.com is my go-to for psu reviews.. he really tears them apart and puts them through the ringer)

lookin at roughly 600 with windoze and optical, and the destroyer case. add in psu of your choice *insert traditional warning about crappy psu's vs modern graphics cards here*, 250 or so for a quality unit, leaving 150 for drive(s).

Which will get you a 300 gig velociraptor , http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136929, single platter for speed, natch,  or you can stretch a bit and get http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220599, which is above your stated goal of a grand at this point, although it's within 10% or so, and it will eat that velociraptor for breaksfast, spit out the chunks, and pee on them.

edit: barring that, you could at least get a black series drive, which will be noticeably snappier than the green drive, due to the increased spindle speed. Right now you're looking at building a tricked out ricer with the cpu, ram, mobo, etc... and then you're gonna use some spare donuts for the tires... :/

Atomic

Don't even THINK about that green series 2TB drive for a gaming system

Poking around, I'll try to update in a bit.

How much do you _really_ want to spend on the case? Hint: I'd put my system in a cardboard box if it meant I could use an SSD for the system drive.

Atomic

*whimpers a little bit*

Atomic

Plan formulated and implemented. Site works fine on mom's comp. At this point, I think I've narrowed it down to my flash player, which at this point has been fully uninstalled via the control panel twice, including registry cleanup, reboot, and whatnot. Nothing makes a difference, and the flash controls are still missing some items like local storage.

The good news is I've discovered that if I uninstall flash, I can spot the video streams with my download helper plugin and pull them that way :/

Anyways, not wasting any more space on it here, this thread is about D3, not my broken flash player

Atomic

UPDATE: Resolved. Technical note: When reinstalling/updating flash, if it gets borked somehow and reinstalling doesn't fix it, re-remove it, and then manually go to the user account section, and delete the macromedia/adobe/flash related stuff there, which will force it to regenerate all settings. (don't delete your adobe reader etc by mistake if you use that stuff). This should fix it.

Can we include some download links somewhere? For some reason the best I can get from the website is black boxes with no video. Compatibility problem with either firefox, noscript, or something else on my rig. (also doesn't appear to like chrome on my system... maybe it's the flash player?)

Anyways, I got the demonhunter vid from youtube... (ten minutes of it? only one part vs multiple parts here? dunno what's up with that)...

but the simple inclusion of some download links would be extremely helpful. or just put everything up on youtube, or whatnot.

Thanks for the vids

Atomic

Lookit that, it doesn't seem to like internet exploder either. I'm guessing it's my flash player, or something. Works for everything else though.

Yeah, sounds like your Flash player. We weren't planning on simultaneously posting all of these on Youtube (looks like one snuck by) and no longer do download links for vids now that we have a CDN for our video.

I'd say your best bet would be to check your flash player.

fwiw, I had to enable something called "playwire.com" in NoScript's list of scripts on that page in order to get the movies to display and function.

Also, I pulled up GamingTrend and viewed a couple of the videos on a Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet at a Best Buy tonight. It played them without a hitch at a good speed. 

Yeah, playwire doesn't seem to be the problem. I have a local friend in the area, with nearly exactly the same hardware setup as I. Different brand gtx260, and I use a q6600, vs his e8400 cpu. (plus different hard drive setup). That's it. His setup plays the videos, mine doesn't.

I even updated video drivers last night, and to the latest flash video version, to fully match his. Same problem. Black boxes let me access the flash controls, and that's it. No amount of fiddling with the settings helps, either.
Something very very mysterious has gone awry with my box, somehow. *formulates a plan to borrow his mom's comp.....*

Atomic

In before forum switch!

* TheAtomicKid ducks...

Wouldn't that be more like bread and soup???

Thread now COMPLETELY off the tracks..

Got my 'correctional' from SWTOR email today. *cry*

Atomic

Can we include some download links somewhere? For some reason the best I can get from the website is black boxes with no video. Compatibility problem with either firefox, noscript, or something else on my rig. (also doesn't appear to like chrome on my system... maybe it's the flash player?)

Anyways, I got the demonhunter vid from youtube... (ten minutes of it? only one part vs multiple parts here? dunno what's up with that)...

but the simple inclusion of some download links would be extremely helpful. or just put everything up on youtube, or whatnot.

Thanks for the vids

Atomic

Lookit that, it doesn't seem to like internet exploder either. I'm guessing it's my flash player, or something. Works for everything else though.

If I'm reading you correctly, sometimes when you boot the system, it works properly, and sometimes it fails right away with the disk boot failure. Aka it's never partially booting and THEN failing.

Narrows it down quite a bit. The failure I just indicated is caused by the system not spotting the disk properly at boot time.

It can be caused by... disk not finishing its internal boot process properly in time for the system boot, so the system doesn't spot it.

Bad cables (you'd probably have more than just the symptoms you mentioned though, even with just an intermittent cabling problem. note: key symptom for this would be drives dropping out of the chain while the OS is running... if it was the system disk, your system would lock up at this point)

Disk controller starting to go on the fritz (built into the chipset... how old is your motherboard? see also notes for cabling)

Ram problems. Yes, believe it or not. The good news is, easy as pie to test. And free.

Disk corruption. (less likely... you'd be exhibiting more problems than just what you mentioned)

Probably some other stuff goes here. I'm tired.

Ok, easy way to start. Assuming a: you have a bootable optical drive in your computer, and b: that you you have an optical burner installed in at least one computer in the house. These are pretty reasonable assumptions.

Go here. http://memtest.org/

Download, and burn a copy to disk. Make sure you have a valid copy, etc.

Stick disk in bootable optical drive. Reboot to the cdrom. It's fully automated. Let it do its thing, preferably overnight, when you have the time. If it finds problems, then you get to have fun.

Also, keep the disk handy. Wait for your error, then when it asks for a system disk, stick the cd in the bootable cdrom, and see if it boots from it at that point. (if it does NOT, that lends more credence to the drive controller being an issue).

If the memory scan finds errors, at that point, you need to power down the system, pull all the memory dimms except one, mark them a, b, c, d, and test them one at a time until you find the one giving you problems. If you get to this point, and can't get one of them to 'give it up' so to speak, don't sweat. The simple process of unplugging and re-plugging memory dimms, sometimes fixes the cause of the problem.. aka dirty contacts.

Get back to us and update this thread

Atomic

PS: When you have the disk boot failure symptom, if you warm restart, aka without powering down, by hitting the reset button or cntrl-alt-delete if it's working at that point, does it then start up without issue? That makes me look more at the disk being the problem. (my comment earlier about the disk not finishing it's internal boot process in time would be relevant here)

[Personally, I'd spring the extra $10 for retail]

I'd agree with Newegg or Amazon. I'd disagree with OEM, however. For Windows 7, the OEM has a major disadvantage. The OEM edition ties to the motherboard, whereas the retail edition doesn't have this limitation. The upgrade copy will install and activate correctly on a blank drive (there's directions everywhere if you search for them). As a separate note, the upgrade edition includes both 32 bit and 64 bit editions just in case you find yourself needing the 32bit edition. Personally, I'd spring the extra $10 for retail so I didn't have to call MS when I replace the mainboard.

Caveat: This CNET article details why the upgrade might not be correctly licensed if you don't have a good copy of Vista/XP. So, if its for a business, the OEM edition would be a better plan.

You found a retail copy for 109$? Where?

Atomic

Personally I prefer Newegg and Amazon for a lot of my purchases.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116986

I also tend to get OEM copies anymore these days... retail is seldom worth it, since they end up putting out a new version every couple of years anyways. It does have it's uses though.

Note that if you catch it on sale, you can find it for about 20$ off usually.

Atomic

PS: If you know you're gonna be upgrading hardware sooner than later... don't give it a product number when you install. It'll run for... 30 days? Without activation while you get your new hardware kitted together. (or if you're gonna say, change the boot drive and the graphics card... OEM installs allow a few changes, but major changes will cause it to complain... so give it the product code AFTER you get your final hardware in order, so as to maximize on your ability to upgrade hardware later on without having to beg permission from daddy gates

For the record, I have this via Steam, and have absolutely zero issues with it. Mind you I'm not running an ATI video card, but tbh, I seriously doubt at this point that it's a driver issue. The game does run fantastically on my GTX 260, with nary a crash or even a blip.

I'm not saying you don't have a problem, or that the people on the Steam forums don't have a problem... but if the problem was with the game, then almost everyone (or at least half of them, ati vs nvidia), would have problems.

Random freezes and lockups are usually indicative of either a memory issue, or a power supply issue. The fact that you're only having it with this one game, is curious, and damning at the same time. But that's in the face of tons of satisfied customers as well.

From looking through your previous posts, it looks like you got quite a ways into it before you started having problems... could you take a guess at when the freezes and lockups started occurring?

And have you verified the local file integrity lately via steam?

I'm probably going to swap to an ATI card when the new ones pop a little more towards Christmas this year. I'll try to remember to update this thread when I do, as to whether or not I start having problems.

Atomic

PS: The game is loads of fun... if you get a chance to pick it up for 5$/10$, and like the style of game (3rd person action), by all means, pick it up. It's fun to drive War around demolishing stuff