Strange Issues during/after Gaming

[virtualTune]

Let me start of by saying my temps are all fine!!

 

Now to the problem. A week ago I had my first BSOD with Win8.1 (aside from when OCing). Although they shouldn't happen, I didn't think too much of it. Now I am thinking it might be related to a bigger problem. 

Every time I am in game, only played CS:S tonight, and I alt+tab to a different application the following happens (my game also crashed to this once after ~1hour of gameplay):

1. all screens turn black for about 15 seconds

2. one of the screens (random) will go to desktop the other two stay black

3. the same happens with another screen

4. finally the same with the last one (all in roughly 20 second intervals)

5. My desktop will be visible just fine, but frozen. I cannot click anything, keyboard input still works though (tried mute speaker/mic in TS with hotkeys. ctrl+alt+del does not work )

6. after another 30 seconds or so I can finally use my PC normally again. The whole process takes about 2-3 minutes. 4770k/32GB RAM/780 ... hardware shouldn't be an issue unless faulty. 

 

Naturally I thought my GPU was overheating, but the temps are fine at sub 60. Strange is that the clockspeed is only at 860MHz as opposed to 1200. CPU temps are also fine. 

I figured it might be the RAM but I can render RAM intensive scenes just fine. 

 

Recent Hardware changes have only been that I swapped 2 500GB drives for a 3TB one. There were several programs on the old drives that I partially had to re-install. However Windows is installed on an SSD. 

I'll try to test this with some other games, but for now, any ideas? ^^

 

-vT

[UselessBread]

A temporary fix, if you didn't do this already, in which case the symptoms you described are even weirder would be to add

-borderless -w [w] -h [h]

Or whatever it was to the launch options of CS:S This will essentially run the game in a borderless window of width [w] and height of [h], causing less problems when using Alt+Tab. I will give you the exact syntax when I am home again.

 

I would also be interested to see what happens in different games and if you have enough spare parts around to eliminate possible hardware faults (like a second GPU somewhere, or some different RAM to see if the GPU or RAM is at fault.).

[xTrekStorex]

Let me start of by saying my temps are all fine!!

 

Now to the problem. A week ago I had my first BSOD with Win8.1 (aside from when OCing). Although they shouldn't happen, I didn't think too much of it. Now I am thinking it might be related to a bigger problem. 

Every time I am in game, only played CS:S tonight, and I alt+tab to a different application the following happens (my game also crashed to this once after ~1hour of gameplay):

1. all screens turn black for about 15 seconds

2. one of the screens (random) will go to desktop the other two stay black

3. the same happens with another screen

4. finally the same with the last one (all in roughly 20 second intervals)

5. My desktop will be visible just fine, but frozen. I cannot click anything, keyboard input still works though (tried mute speaker/mic in TS with hotkeys. ctrl+alt+del does not work )

6. after another 30 seconds or so I can finally use my PC normally again. The whole process takes about 2-3 minutes. 4770k/32GB RAM/780 ... hardware shouldn't be an issue unless faulty. 

 

Naturally I thought my GPU was overheating, but the temps are fine at sub 60. Strange is that the clockspeed is only at 860MHz as opposed to 1200. CPU temps are also fine. 

I figured it might be the RAM but I can render RAM intensive scenes just fine. 

 

Recent Hardware changes have only been that I swapped 2 500GB drives for a 3TB one. There were several programs on the old drives that I partially had to re-install. However Windows is installed on an SSD. 

I'll try to test this with some other games, but for now, any ideas? ^^

 

-vT

Sounds like the classic graphics driver crash I get every now and then when I click on FlashPlayer-videos after I tabbed out of a DirectX game and YES I also got that on my Nvidia cards so NO this is not AMD only

 

Could also be VRM temps on your card. With lifetime the solder joints of some parts on your GPU can alter and cause some shortages and so voltage spikes. In that case the GPUs BIOS will throttle voltage etc to a small degree to stabilize the core

So try different driver versions or even check the PCB if possible

[virtualTune]

A temporary fix, if you didn't do this already, in which case the symptoms you described are even weirder would be to add

-borderless -w [w] -h [h]

Or whatever it was to the launch options of CS:S This will essentially run the game in a borderless window of width [w] and height of [h], causing less problems when using Alt+Tab. I will give you the exact syntax when I am home again.

 

I would also be interested to see what happens in different games and if you have enough spare parts around to eliminate possible hardware faults (like a second GPU somewhere, or some different RAM to see if the GPU or RAM is at fault.).

tried -borderless -w 2560 h- 1440  didn't do anything. game starts normally but the problem remains. I'll try uninstalling the old driver with driver fusion now and reinstalling the newest driver. 

[virtualTune]

It was indeed the driver. I had trouble last time I tried and use the in-program clean install where it crashed half way through a couple times. seems like it only deleted some of the old driver. I am a bit disappointed that I didn't have that idea myself. Seems the next logical step -.-

[UselessBread]

tried -borderless -w 2560 h- 1440  didn't do anything. game starts normally but the problem remains. I'll try uninstalling the old driver with driver fusion now and reinstalling the newest driver.

Sorry, I got that wrong. In that case it probably was -noborder instead of -borderless

[virtualTune]

Sorry, I got that wrong. In that case it probably was -noborder instead of -borderless

its also -resx and -resy