Frankidor

I think this info might be relevant, so I'll mention it right here in the beginning. My Windows was installed as Windows 10 Pro using a cheap activation key and right after installation I upgraded to Windows 11. I installed Windows without internet connection. Windows has been working flawlessy for a year up to the point, which I'm about to explain below.

I wanted to experiment with having the ability to allow a window to become active by hovering over with the mouse. However, I didn't really like the default 0.5 seconds Windows offers, so I went to the registry to adjust it manually. I really didn't think at the time that this would create issues, but it's no wonder people warn about going into the registry  (especially since I've dealt with it previously and didn't have issues arise). I created a backup file of the registry before making any changes. After changing the hover over time, every time I would boot my computer, my mouse icon would become like the old Windows 95 mouse. I was able to change it back to look like normal, but it would default back every time I rebooted. I believe I still had some issue with the hover time, but at this point I don't really remember anymore. This was almost a month ago.

I tried to import the previous registry file, but I couldn't get it to import. After trying multiple things and none of them allowing me to import the previous registry, I decided to do a system restore.

And the system restore fixed the issue. But it also created another issue which I am still currently struggling with. Windows keeps deactivating itself roughly every 2 or 3 days. I don't always notice it, because sometimes the watermark won't show up, even if in the settings it is telling me to activate Windows. What's strange is that every time I hit the activation troubleshoot button, my Windows gets activated every single time.

I've tried multiple things including updating Windows, updating all motherboard drivers and BIOS and using scannow in command prompt (which did find issues and fixed them, but that didn't help either). I even got a new Windows key for free through customer service from the online store where I purchased my cheap Windows key previously, but even this new key didn't resolve the issue. 

So here are the questions lingering on my mind. Are there any other troubleshooting methods I should try? Should I even bother fixing this if it causes no issues and keep on activating it manually every other day or so? Should I try resetting the PC or should I instead do a clean Windows install, is it worth it?

Definitely not one of my proudest moments, all because I wanted to change some mouse settings 

Specs:

i7-12700K

RTX 2060 Super

32GB DDR5 5200MHz

Z690-P WIFI

Windows 11 Pro, 22H2 OS build: 22621.1265

Hi, I am looking for a new laptop that is mostly meant for content creation. I mainly use Lightroom, Photoshop for photo editing, Blender for 3D rendering, Unity for game development and After Effects for motion graphics. I will do all my extremely heavy work on my PC, but I still want a laptop that can potentially handle more modest tasks if I'm on the go. 

Laptop NEEDS to have these:

- At least 6 core i7 (Don't care for i9)

- At least 100% sRGB screen. It has to be color accurate and bright.

- Excellent 1080p IPS is fine (4k and OLED is not a must)

- A decent enough GPU that can provide juice for Blender rendering, After Effects (CUDA) and modest gaming (I am not a serious gamer )

- 16GB RAM and at least 512GB SSD

- Good battery life (5-6 hours browsing web for example)

- Relatively lightweight, somewhere around 2-2.2kg is good (2.5kg is too much)

And then preferably I would want these, but are not a must:

- SD card reader

- 16:10 aspect ratio

- 15,6" screen, 17" too big

- Has numpad

- The more and varied I/O, the better

And like title says, maximum budget is preferably 2300€. Anyone got any suggestions? 

Thank you!

6 minutes ago, Slottr said:

I don't have much video editing experience, but I primarily use Lr, Ps, Ai, Id and between my home system (3600) and a work computer (8700) the apps are just snappier. Previews process faster and images are able to render more efficiently with the 8700

 

Granted, I don't have an issue with this between the ryzen chips and intel chips. I give no damns as it doesn't change my workflow up much. Just thought the information would help

This is really good to know! All reviews tend to focus only on rendering, but not the actual workflow inside other apps like the ones you've listed. Lightroom can be a pain if it starts to slow down when creating previews, I've experienced that before. This has given me more food for thought. I will do more research. Thanks for the info!

18 hours ago, Slottr said:

Adobe CC performs better on intel chips too, so thats a plus

 

EDIT: had it in us

All the videos I've seen comparing Intel and AMD cpus show significantly better render times with AMD. Basically everyone is saying avoid Intel when doing anything else other than gaming. Am I missing something? 

Oh wow, I didn't even know PCPartPicker supports other countries too. 

Hi!

I am planning to build a new PC, since my 5-year-old current build is not up for the job anymore. I mainly use Adobe software (AE, PS, Pr, Lr etc.) and I frequently do mid-heavy 3D rendering with Blender. Gaming every now and then. I would like to go for an mATX build. Budget is around 2000€. Below is a list of the parts I've considered. 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3800X 3.9 GHz 8-Core Processor  ($339.00 @ Amazon) 
CPU Cooler: *Corsair H115i PRO 55.4 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  ($136.99 @ Amazon) 
Motherboard: ASRock X570M Pro4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($159.99 @ Newegg) 
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z Neo 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory  ($169.99 @ Amazon) 
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  ($99.99 @ Amazon) 
Storage: Intel 660p Series 2.048 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  ($184.99 @ B&H) 
Video Card: EVGA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER 8 GB XC GAMING Video Card  ($443.47 @ Amazon) 
Case: Fractal Design Define Mini C TG MicroATX Mid Tower Case  ($89.99 @ Newegg) 
Power Supply: Corsair RMx (2018) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  ($119.89 @ Amazon) 
Total: $1744.30
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-12-18 18:17 EST-0500

I've been doing a lot of research during the past few days, and oh boy has the PC tech advanced so much in the past 5 years. I have a couple of questions regarding some components:

1. Currently in Finland, ASRock is the only brand selling X570 AM4 mATX motherboards. Does anyone know if there are other similar boards coming soon from big brands or does Finland just suck on this regard? Is the ASRock board good enough or should I wait a bit longer and hope other ones arrive here? 

2. I am planning to use the Samsung M.2 SSD as the main drive for OS and programs, but I need another drive for all the raw images and video files, so what would people suggest as the 2nd drive? The 2TB Intel 660p will fill up quickly (I have roughly around 1 TB of data on my current HDD and I will transfer those). What would be the most optimal way of storing raw images and video files these days?

3. Water cooling is a completely new thing to me. Is the Corsair one good for heavy workloads or could the AMD stock cooler do the job?

Thanks in advance!

On 12/20/2018 at 7:07 PM, Tristerin said:

Have you tried the drive on a different SATA port?  Do you have another mechanical drive to load the game on and test against?  If you move to SSD does this clear the issue up?  Id try those things in that order - at least with my limited knowledge.

Sorry for not replying, I've done a lot of testing and things have changed quite a bit.

I freshly installed F1 2018 on to the HDD, the game started freezing even more than GTA V. I then managed to migrate F1 2018 to the SSD, and it turns out the freezing occurs there as well. The micro / mini freezes behave in the exact same way as they do in GTA V. They last around 1 second, and they appear repeatedly from 1-5 times at seemingly random point in the games. So it is not in fact an HDD related issue.

Some new things I've tried to fix this:

• Disable WLAN power saving
• Update all drivers through Device Manager
• Disable full screen optimisation for games
• Changed NVIDIA PhysX from auto to GPU

I'm starting to believe some kind of software is preventing games to render graphics properly. The only component that I've added to my computer is a dual-band wireless adapter around 3 months ago. I haven't replaced any other component since 2014. And up until I believe 2016, GTA V was still running smoothly. This might also be a Windows related problem.

As you can tell, I haven't been playing that much on PC, but I was planning to start playing more, but this issue is preventing frrom doing so. Any new suggestions?

11 hours ago, Tristerin said:

Can you run MEMTEST86?  Or the windows based one typically located at:

Windows -> Control Panel -> System and Security -> Administrative Tools -> Windows Memory Diagnostic is the easiest choice and rarely fails to detect error when a module is bad.

Ah yes, I already did that as well. Nothing wrong  on the memory side either.

42 minutes ago, Tristerin said:

Im not informed enough to comment on the software side of things.

 

Can you try Online play and see what happens with the freezes?

I played online, and the freezing started immediately. After that I was able to play story mode for a good 10 minutes without freezing while in 720p before quitting, but then again, I also managed to play yesterday a full 20 minutes after I encountered the first freeze in 1080p, so maybe another coincidence. 

38 minutes ago, Tristerin said:

Fresh download...HDD basically empty...defragged...What resolution are you playing at?  Is your HDD hooked to a Sata III port for full data bandwidth?  (taking guesses here to try to figure this out lol)

I always play in 1080p, although I did see the mini freezes in 720p as well. I checked and yes, the HDD is hooked to SATA III. 

I did find this Profiles folder under Users -> Documents -> Rockstar Games -> GTA V -> Profiles -> C80F0614 on the SSD, and it has some files from way back 2015. I assume these are the save files for the story mode? Should I delete the old ones? Would it make any difference?

7 minutes ago, Tristerin said:

Yeah - the only reason its 720p and not 1080p (and I know it wouldn't have issues on low) is that the GPU in my HTPC is only 1gb and GTA5 wont let you run the resolution higher if your VRAM cant support (and its downloaded onto a 7200rpm WD 1tb HDD).  Looking at your specs that cant be the issue. 

 

Have you tried another game on the same HDD?  Did you re-download onto that HDD or did you migrate the game from the SSD to HDD?  Has the HDD got a ton if info on it and has it been defragged in a while?

I've tried playing a couple of games, but I haven't noticed anything similar of the sort. Although at the moment I don't have any games that are as heavy as GTA V. It's been a while and I can't remember for certain, but I believe I migrated the game from the SSD to the HDD. I did re-download it on to the HDD this morning however. I also performed a defragmentation this morning. I can still try playing more games to see if the mini freezing occurs on other games. The HDD is around 30% full. 

2 minutes ago, Tristerin said:

So this is still happening at lowest settings...hmmm cause even I can run GTA5 lowest settings in 720p no problem on an i5 3470 + HD 7750 1gb GPU with zero spikes in frames that matter.

Is this happening in Online play only or in single player mode as well?

This is why I'm still thinking there must be something wrong with the HDD. I've only tried single player mode so far.

18 minutes ago, Lukyp said:

Have you tried disabling the file paging on that HDD? 

I've been looking in to that as well, but from what I gathered, disabling the pagefile is not recommended? I did see a post somewhere telling to try setting minimum and maximum to 1024mb. 

14 minutes ago, Tristerin said:

Use Task Manager to monitor CPU/GPU/HDD utilization (easiest on second monitor to watch it live) and see whats working/not working.  If the HDD is being accessed (though it shouldn't once things are loaded however, as new things come into view or online it has to access the HDD to bring up the "sprites" to load them on the screen if they aren't available on the RAM or VRAM yet)

 

Is your GPU spiking to 100%, CPU, HDD?

I've been monitoring them as well, I just played for a couple of minutes to get a screenshot. You can see two big drop spikes in CPU (Suoritin) and especially in GPU, that's where I encountered a mini freeze. I just noticed that the GPU is not running at 100% like it was yesterday, that's a bit odd. The HDD is always running at around 0-40%. 

Hello,

I recently had to move GTA V to my HDD (F:) from my SSD (C:), due to not having enough space for the giant game. The game ran perfectly fine on the SSD, but now I'm experiencing constant around 1 second mini freezes (1-5 right after another) at seemingly random times. Though, it seems to happen most often in crowded city areas, but it does also happen in remote places. Computer specs below:

CPU: i7-4770K

GPU: GTX 750 Ti

RAM: HyperX 2 x 8GB DDR3

SSD: Samsung 850 EVO 2.5" SATA III 250GB

HDD: WD Black 2TB Internal 7200RPM 3.5"

MB: Asus Z97-A

Changing all of the graphic settings to the lowest doesn't seem to make any difference. Disabling V-Sync and all AA doesn't help either. Here are some things I've tried to fix this:

• Re-installing the game
• Using WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic Software to do a Quick (SMART) and Extended Test, both passed.
• Defragging the drive
• Disabling Windows' Balanced Power Plan
• Updated GPU drives

Below is a screenshot from a GTA V becnhamrk test, notice the minimun fps in Pass 3 & 4:

The fact that the game is having these freezes on a WD Black makes this even more perplexing for me. With my limited knowledge, I have no idea what to try next. Suggestions?