I recently added an extra 8gb of ram to my system (CS5 was hitting the limits of my initial 4gb) and have since had problems running CoD 2 + 4 and Bad Company 2. Cod 2 crashes when I click join game. MW and BC2 have similar issues, the screen will go black for a few seconds and then come back. In MW once I join a server I can't do anything until the screen goes black, at which point the mouse will move etc, but when the screen comes back I can no longer do anything. It seems to only be when I have the game full screened, when I alt-tabbed out (during a blackout) the game seemed to be running fine (judging by the audio). Bringing it back up started the problem again. In BC2 after the black screen it might go back to normal, or it might go to a pure white screen, with everything working just I can't see it. I upgraded in 2 lots of 4gb, it started but wasn't too bad after the first stick, now I've put the second in I can't play any of these three games. System as follows: Phenom II x4 3.1 12gb XMS3 (2x2gb + 2x4gb) ATI 4890 Any ideas? I really can't be arsed puling out sticks of ram every time I want to game...
To answer your question: No. Your problem is probably due to a faulty memory. Several (many?) gamers here have systems with 16GB or even some with 24GB, no one reported problems. Fun fact: Dell sales a system (server) with 192GB of RAM even (17 390$ extra). http://www.dell.com/ca/business/p/precision-r5500/pd
No, it is not because too much RAM, it is probably because your CPU can't handle the 4 sticks with the settings you have. Either you clocked them too high, have one bad stick (MemTest it) or memory controller doesn't have enough voltage. In my case on Sandy Bridge i had to increase the memory controller voltage, or the computer wouldn't even boot with 4x4GB.
Well, maybe, it can mess about with overclocking can't it if you start having to thread more juice to the ram channels?
Ran memtest overnight there, no errors. How does one go about giving them more juice? I'm not overclocking at all at the moment. @mucgoo I considered that myself and it will probably happen at some point, if ram stays this cheap I'll just fire another two 4gb sticks in but for the time being I'd have to take off my Fenrir to get at the first two slots and I'd rather not if it's at all avoidable!
Well for starters you may have to relax the timings and/or just balance out the motherboard voltages in the bios as the memory controller will have to deal with more when you have, say 4 sticks as opposed to 2. Mixing values (ie 2 and 4gb) will also require some tinkering, it all depends on your motherboard really.
Indeed! It's an MSI 770-C45, not exactly top of the line. Also, it seems to be an intermittant problem, started CoD4 there and it started freaking out when I went to the server browser, all flickery and static-esque. Eventually it went to a black screen like before but after this one it ran fine, joined a couple of servers and played like normal. Very bizarre...
If i did read the articles around the net correctly (sorry, no AMD system here to test it out), the memory controller voltage is set by "CPU-NB voltage". So maybe you could try to bump it a bit above the stock voltage, and see if it helps. As i said before, i had to bump the Sandy Bridge memory controller voltage from 1.05V up to 1.15V for working system, and you could be hitting the same problem. What i experienced was no boot from 1.05V up to 1.12V, then up to 1.15V i had random BSOD, and finally at 1.15V everything is stable. Of course in case of AMD the voltages will be different, but i leave this task up to you to find out what value should you use.
This. Sounds like your computer is crapping out when you stress your GPU. Re seat the GPU and check it's power connectors.
So that worked, completely and utterly! Mucho thanks, as obvious as that now seems I probably never would have thought of it. Literally just gave the card a whack on the edge (it has one of those big xfx bars) and was completely dubious of the whole thing cos it didn't seem to move at all but lo and behold, perfect sessions on both previously afflicted games. This place is awesome
Easy thing to do. It's a lesson I learned long ago 'check the obvious', not that I always do that though. Glad it's sorted.
Haha there needs to be a name for this phenomenon where lots of people come up with lots of great but very technical advice, but the actual solution is just give it a whack!
It was always my dad's method 'if in doubt, boot it'. That was with everything, other than my mum of course.
a la Scrapheap challenege, "If its broke, it hit with a big hammer", "If that doesn't work, hit it with a bigger hammer".
