Computer freezing in games...

Whats the deal here...  I have an Abit KT7A, Athlon 1.4GHz, GF2 GTS, and 256M RAM, my computer will lockup for a few seconds in games.  It gets real annoying when the game keeps going too, and I end up dieing or somthing!

I don't think it's the video card becasue it did the same thing before I got this new card.  I also had this same problem with my KT7E and Duron 850.  So, what is the problem.  Could I have slow ram(I have the same ram +128M from my Duron system) or maybe just somthing with Abit motherboards...

[Uranium-235]

What does the 850 and 1.4 have in common? did you put any parts from the 850 into the 1.4?

But the big question is, how much ram does the video card have ?
For games, the more, the better.

OK, the 850 was in a KT7E, and my Athlon is in a KT7A.  If I'm not mistaken, the MB's are identical, except for the chipset.  I took everything from my old 850 except the MB and processor, and added 128M of ram, a DVD and CD-RW.

The videocard is a GF2 GTS with 32M DDR ram.

Oh, somthing odd I just found out(maybe it is the video card...)  I was playing Insane Offroad.  The game and the sound locked up, but the music kept going...  The reason I didn't think it's the video card is that I had the exact same problem with my Voodoo.  This is the main reason I got this card, to try and fix this lock up problem...

[Uranium-235]

Take the sound card out and see how many lock up's you get

If your talking about a two second freeze and then the game continues it may be to much Video Ram.  I know it sounds stupid but Arcanum has a patch out because the game is wrote for computers with 32M of video Ram.  Without the patch the engine hunts through all ot the RAM for textures and data and it takes it longer to find it because it's not wrote for such large vide cards.  See if your game has a patch and if it only happens in certain games or all of them.

I disabled my soundcard...(it's a pain to get my computer out.  I'll take it out sometime if I can't fix it)...and it didn't lock up in Insane Offroad with the resolution at 1600x900.  However, I had just finished playing it with the soundcard enabled, and it never locked up either...

And about too much video ram, that sounds exactly like my problem, but it did the same thing with 16M on my Voodoo in Unreal Tourn., and I don't think 16M is too much for Unreal...  But I guess it could be another problem with some other games....

If all this happens during one specific game, it is as simple as uncompatibility with VGA card.  It's impossible for developers to test all of existing hardware, especially if the game was written before the VGA card existed. Try benchmark like MadOnion, I think it's usually shipped with nvidia HW.

If all this because of one game, I've got ~10 that I never could run on my Voodoo, so ...

Cheers
Chef

It's not one game, it's about 10 games, or any 3D game I've tried(Alice, Halflife, Unreal, Insane Offroad, and 4x4 Evo)  There may be more, but thats all I can think of...

I've tried 3D Mark, got an over 3000 score, never locked up.

I took out my old ram, and it still locked up, so I'll try to put the old ram back in, but I don't think it'll make a dfference...

Oh, I was given a soundcard to test in it, so I'll see if it still locks up without my cheap sound card in it...

I think you'll have to install patches for older games.
Now, if the problem existed before upgrade, maybe your OS is the reason; cause I don't see anythig unusual in your system configuration


Good luck
Chef