17 replies to this topic

[zelgadissan]

Howdy guys, haven't been on GW2G since its inception.  It's been a long time.  Anyway, my game keeps crashing during WvW or big crowded places like Lion's Arch during events and honestly I can't begin to care to deal with changing GPU clock speeds anymore, so I'm looking to upgrade my PC. The techs over at the original GWG were always good to me (and I know some of you are over here now), so hello again!

So here's my current super-important specs, and if I bought them on Newegg I included its link (they're almost all discontinued now):

CPU - i5-760
GPU - GTX 560 Ti, 1GB GDDR5
PSU - 700W, single 12v rail
RAM - 4GB, DDR3 1600

I believe my biggest holdup is probably CPU, followed by RAM, then finally GPU.  I believe I can afford to get CPU, mobo, and RAM - if I understand correctly PCIe 2.0 cards are compatible in 3.0 slots so that won't be an immediate need, correct?  Next up, I believe the main debate between the i5-3570 and the i7-3770 more or less boils down to excessive continuous load such as video processing - what about streaming games online? For example, if I wanted to stream GW2, Starcraft, Street Fighter, etc. would the i7 be a worthwhile investment over the i5?

Side-question: I know nothing about solid-state drives other than they're expensive and apparently awesome.  If I got a small one, to have the best performance would I use it for Windows 7, GW2, both, etc.?

Thanks in advance!

Edited by zelgadissan, 09 January 2013 - 12:39 PM.

[Quaker]

While your current build isn't the best, it should play GW2 reasonably well. If you are happy with GW2's performance when it's not crashed, you might be better off to fix the crashing. (The first thing to do would be to set all the clocks etc, back to stock by resetting your BIOS.)

But if you intend to upgrade anyway, the i5-3570K is the best overall gaming CPU you can get. As far as I know, the HyperThreading of the 3770 would only help if you had some highly threaded (and expensive) apps. Most mainstream apps (for what you want to do) don't benefit from HT.

You definitely could use more RAM. The power supply is fine as is.

The 'sweet spot' these days is an i5-3570(K) with 8/16 Gigs of DDR3-1600 RAM and a GTX-660 Ti or HD7870.

Edited by Quaker, 09 January 2013 - 05:34 PM.

[dhatcher1]

The only thing I would do with your system is get a decent aftermarket cooler and overclock the CPU to about 3.5GHz.  At that speed you wont be see much of an upgrade with a 3570 at stock 3.4GHz.  My wife's system is an i5 760 oc'ed to 3.5GHz with a GTX 460 (1GB), 4GB DDR3-1600 RAM and runs GW2 really well at very high settings.

Make sure you have updated the Nvidia graphics drivers

[Straegen]

What OS? Most crashing problems I have seen from friends have been related to the graphics card drivers. The latest ones have really reduced the overall crashes.

[zelgadissan]

I use Windows 7.  I'm not at my desktop to check drivers, but the last time I specifically downloaded GPU drivers was back around Halloweenish (maybe before, maybe after, but around then) so if there's newer ones I haven't used them.  This has been an issue for me though since BWE's and no GPU clock/driver that I've tried has done anything towards fixing it; I assumed initially it was because it was beta but I've just been dealing with it for months since release.  I'll try to describe what happens I guess, even though this isn't really the right subforum.

I can usually play for around ~1 hour or so in low population/low action areas.  The game will always give me signs that it's about to go; for example if you open up the large map screen, it will look like the entire map is unexplored, or the market page will be a random color of yellow, pink, or cerulean.  Eventually, the game just straight up crashes out; I can immediately restart GW2 and it'll be back to normal again for another ~1 hour.

The more active a zone is, whether by lots of people (WvW, LA events, etc.) or by lots of crap on screen (I had to do Battle for Claw Island four times before finally getting through crashfree), the shorter my self-destruct timer.  I can usually last in an LA event for 5-10 minutes, roughly the same for a WvW zerg.  I've become pretty decent at running around solo and getting loners and dolyak teams in WvW because of it though, so hooray for positives?

I haven't ever messed with overclocking the CPU, so it should be running at the 2.8 base (this is my cooler); I can't imagine overclocking would improve it to the point of full stability, could it?  Chances are I'll end up upgrading anyway, at least another 4 GB of RAM, but if this could be fixed I could definitely use the money other places in the meantime.

Edited by zelgadissan, 10 January 2013 - 12:56 AM.

[Elder III]

What are your temperatures while playing GW2?  It sounds like you might be overheating, or your video card could be dying (hopefully not).  Download HW Monitor and let it run while playing GW2... go run around somewhere that will make it crash and after it does crash, check HWMonitor for the max temperature(s) that it hit while you were playing.  Report those digits here.

[zelgadissan]

Log time!

10:20 PM EST - GW2 started, loaded into Dredgehaunt Cliffs.
10:22 - went into Borderlands WvW.
10:24 - small group of 6 players found, joining up.  More coming as they see the fancy commander on the map.
10:29 - full on hot and steamy zerg on zerg action
10:33 - crash

Looks to me like my motherboard is going out, but I'll let you experts look it over since I would think my whole system would crash instead of just GW2.  Here's all my max temps:

Mobo
--------
SYSTIN - 52 C
CPUTIN - 173 C
AUXTIN - 173 C

CPU
--------
Core 0 - 53 C
Core 1 - 52 C
Core 2 - 53 C
Core 3 - 52 C

HDD - 34 C

GPU - 62 C

Edited by zelgadissan, 10 January 2013 - 03:38 AM.

[Quaker]

Question(s) - have you cleaned the dust out of the machine and are all fans running normally? (Including the power supply and case)

Or it may be that your case could use another fan - what cooling setup (what fans and where) are in it now?

Edited by Quaker, 10 January 2013 - 05:05 PM.

[zelgadissan]

My case has 5 fans on it (here it is); other than the CPU cooler and the fans on my GPU, that's all I have.  I admittedly had not dusted my machine in quite some time, probably ~6 months or so.  I went ahead and did that now.

Fans are quite a bit louder than they were upon initial install - I remember thinking at the time it was almost a silent machine - but they are all pushing out a good amount of air according to my super-scientific "hand by fan" test, except for one.  The fan on the front of the case (the blue LED one in the picture) is pushing out significantly less air than the others, although it is still working.

[dhatcher1]

I see a bunch of people reporting similar problems with that model of power supply.   The Rosewill Green 530 and 630 I know are pretty good power supplies, but the 700 I have not looked into before.  Rosewill has a bad reputation because in the past many of their power supplies were pretty much junk.  Its possible that it does not really produce 700W of power and is dying when you load it too high.

The fan/s on the front and left side of the case should be sucking air in.  The rear and top fans should be pushing air out.

The fans get louder because dust gets in the bearings and start creating friction and wear.  Regular dusting will reduce this effect.

Edited by dhatcher1, 10 January 2013 - 09:45 PM.

[zelgadissan]

Every fan except the front one is definitely pushing air out, including the side fans; I'll have to take a look again but I don't think it's even possible to install them the other direction.  My computer is somewhat near a floor vent so that might be why I thought it was pushing air out but I couldn't feel it as well.

I can play games like Starcraft on ultra settings for hours on end; I realize that GW2 is far heavier in loads for CPU, GPU, etc. but it really is only GW2 that causes this problem.  If the PSU were at fault, would my symptoms be the same though?  It seems weird to me that it would only crash GW2 and not anything else on the computer, plus I can instantly reload the game and it'll run fine again for X amount of time.

[Quaker]

You probably don't even need the side fans, but in any case they should be blowing in. It's simply a matter of turning them around. Lots of people use too many fans and/or fans blowing the wrong way.
(Front, side, bottom - in; rear, top - out)

Keep in mind two things:
1. You want good air flow - not just lots of fans.
2. If all the fans are trying to blow air out, the air has to get in somewhere. The resultant turbulence can cause havoc with your cooling. Also, what air is being drawn in is unfiltered and full of dust.

Have you cleaned the dust out of the computer?

Edited by Quaker, 11 January 2013 - 03:59 PM.

[typographie]

zelgadissan, on 10 January 2013 - 03:37 AM, said:

CPUTIN - 173 C
AUXTIN - 173 C

Anyone know what these are? As far as I know, they're impossibly high for anything I know of in a PC, and I suspect they're simply faulty sensors. Your GPU and individual CPU core temperatures look fine, assuming those readings are accurate and that they are truly max readings.

zelgadissan, on 10 January 2013 - 12:53 AM, said:

I'm not at my desktop to check drivers, but the last time I specifically downloaded GPU drivers was back around Halloweenish (maybe before, maybe after, but around then) so if there's newer ones I haven't used them.

Technically, "out of date" drivers aren't necessarily "faulty" drivers. We all used those drivers at some point. However, uninstalling/Driver Cleaner/reinstalling (more recent) drivers is a good first thing to try in cases like this, mostly out of the possibility of file corruption or errors in installation. I'd do that for at least your video and sound drivers.

To be clear, your system's specs are fine. You don't need an "upgrade" strictly speaking, even if you need to replace a faulty component. Your system is slightly ahead of mine, and I don't feel like I need to replace anything just for GW2's sake. Ultra shadows just aren't worth it.

[zelgadissan]

Yeah, I was trying to figure out what could possibly boil water almost twice over and not be doing instantly noticeable permanent damage.  I really have no idea what those readings are, but that's what it said.

I suppose I'll go through another complete driver overhaul, but this has been happening for GW2 and only GW2 for over half a year now.  I'm clueless as to what the main problem could be other than some sort of hardware issue, and I really don't know where the problem would be, so I'll probably end up doing a full overhaul.

I have cleaned the dust out of my system; haven't worked on switching the fans yet though.

[typographie]

zelgadissan, on 12 January 2013 - 12:48 AM, said:

and I really don't know where the problem would be, so I'll probably end up doing a full overhaul.

Well, don't jump to conclusions, the techs probably have more suggestions than I do. But last resort, it looks very much like a faulty video card. That's a lot cheaper to replace than a whole system.

[Zerk2012]

typographie, on 11 January 2013 - 11:51 PM, said:

Anyone know what these are?

AUXTIN is sensor 3 reading usally between the SATA ports and PCI-E slot on the motherboard with that high temp the sensor is stuck, or not even their so the monitoring program defaults it to the highest possible reading depending on the program being used.
CPUTIN monitors the input temp for the processor again probably stuck or not even their defaulting to the highest reading.

Edited by Zerk2012, 12 January 2013 - 07:46 PM.

[dhatcher1]

If the motherboard does not have sensors corresponding to what the software is asking for, you get ridiculous temps like that.  Like Zerk said...

Check task manager for CPU utilization and see if GW2 isnt pushing your CPU alot harder than the other games.  The proper thing to do would get PRIME95 and run an hour 100% CPU grind to see what happens.

Edited by dhatcher1, 12 January 2013 - 08:26 PM.

[Zerk2012]

zelgadissan, on 12 January 2013 - 12:48 AM, said:

Yeah, I was trying to figure out what could possibly boil water almost twice over and not be doing instantly noticeable permanent damage.  I really have no idea what those readings are, but that's what it said.

I suppose I'll go through another complete driver overhaul, but this has been happening for GW2 and only GW2 for over half a year now.  I'm clueless as to what the main problem could be other than some sort of hardware issue, and I really don't know where the problem would be, so I'll probably end up doing a full overhaul.

I have cleaned the dust out of my system; haven't worked on switching the fans yet though.

The fans can be turned around easy front and side fans intake top and back blowing out.
A crash log would help but since just the game is crashing and not your PC set the fans up right first. The video card crashing would affect everything on your monitor not just crash the game and your monitor is still at windows.

Edited by Zerk2012, 12 January 2013 - 09:36 PM.