Computer Talk - Random Thought Thread

[Bucks]

OK since some are guessing I may as well also.

It seems like the ram doesn't clear during the crash somehow

Do you wait more than 15 seconds before re-powering ???

.

[CWolf]

Gross assumption. Older programs where more processor intensive than newer stuff. Games these days are programmed to offload more onto a GPU when available. Don't believe this? Run an old DOS program. 100% usage when running dos.

Not an assumption. And yes, I was aware. All games used to operate on while loops, which just ate up the cpu, busy or not. The trouble is, most major games still do this.
It's true that they're simply being wasteful. There's no good reason not to Sleep(1) after each peek loop. If nothing needs processing now, it won't in less than %.1 of a second, but I digress.
Things haven't changed much since Dos for most big label games.
It has nothing to do with off loading to a GPU. It has to do with allowing the cpu to rest. GPU offloading only helps with processing data. Most games aren't processing data all of the time. They're just actively waiting for new data.
You can probably find a few multi-threaded games too. But they're a rarity.

Also, "nearly all games" are not high intensity. I can find plenty of games that don't use much power.

Yes, like windowed freeware games.
I meant commercial games.
And yes, most of them still droll endlessly on the cpu. I'm not talking about ancient games, I'm talking about current games. Commercial, not something on BigFish.

[Maylar]

Not an assumption. And yes, I was aware. All games used to operate on while loops, which just ate up the cpu, busy or not. The trouble is, most major games still do this.
It's true that they're simply being wasteful. There's no good reason not to Sleep(1) after each peek loop. If nothing needs processing now, it won't in less than %.1 of a second, but I digress.
Things haven't changed much since Dos for most big label games.
It has nothing to do with off loading to a GPU. It has to do with allowing the cpu to rest. GPU offloading only helps with processing data. Most games aren't processing data all of the time. They're just actively waiting for new data.
You can probably find a few multi-threaded games too. But they're a rarity.

Yes, like windowed freeware games.
I meant commercial games.
And yes, most of them still droll endlessly on the cpu. I'm not talking about ancient games, I'm talking about current games. Commercial, not something on BigFish.

No offense mate... but your starting to sound like those beginning programmers that talk as if they know everything. You don't. Most games still operate on while loops? Seriously? Game programming is much more complex than that, and while a game loop is needed, you are way oversimplifying things to the point of gross inaccuracy.

With that said...

Nearly *all* games are high intensisty. They usually sit on the CPU hogging %100 resources no matter what. Go kick up a game from the 90s and run a cpu monitor, and you'll find it uses as many processor cycles as WoW(maybe more).

Boy, that 100% usage... I mean WoW! HARDCORE!

[CWolf]

No offense mate... but your starting to sound like those beginning programmers that talk as if they know everything. You don't. Most games still operate on while loops? Seriously? Game programming is much more complex than that, and while a game loop is needed, you are way oversimplifying things to the point of gross inaccuracy.

With that said...

I didn't say that. I said, the way they use peek(this is how you check message loops in windows, yes you can use GetMessage, but not for games). I said the way *most* read *most* games, continue to operate.

There's no good reason not to Sleep(1) after each peek loop. If nothing needs processing now, it won't in less than %.1 of a second, but I digress.

I've been coding for 9 years, so yes I do know what I'm talking about.
To clarify a peek loop looks like this
if(PeekMessage(&msg,NULL,0,0,PM_REMOVE))
{
//code here
}
Now, if you don't sleep outside the brackets, the game will use %100 of the cpu.
A few games do sleep outside the loop. Most do not.
If you don't sleep outside the main loop, it is about the same as a while loop.

Boy, that 100% usage... I mean WoW! HARDCORE!

You didn't read what I said. I said most games, not WoW. I don't have WoW installed. Further, you have WoW minimized. Most games don't sit on the cpu while out of focus.

[Bullseyed]

Alright so I've been tinkering on and off all weekend (had 3 parties at my place this weekend as well *catches breath*)


I put the other 2 gig stick back in, but put it in the non-paired slot. Computer recognizes it, ran the DOS based memory test, it sees all 4 gig error free. Windows XP sees 3.25 gig.

Changed the settings so it won't autoboot when it errors. So far, I cant get it to blue screen. *sigh* I loaded up WoW and flew around doing random crap on my paladin so that I would hopefully use up enough memory to cause the usual crash, no dice. Ram usage never went over 60-66% or so. Without WoW running I'm using about 29% with winamp up, excel up, aim, gnotifier, etc plus this web page in chrome. When WoW was running it pushed a gig or so into the virtual memory though.

With the ram in this configuration it seems like WoW won't use the ram... it hits 2 gig (60%) and then rolls into virtual memory. Have my cousins coming over shortly for a BBQ, I'm wondering how safe/stable it is to leave the computer be in case it does roll the blue screen.




Ran into an entirely different problem as well though. I had never bothered hooking up my front side audio ports. Don't remember why, I think I might have at one time and had issue with it. Well, I plugged the frontside HD audio cables into the right spot on the motherboard at the same time I placed the ram and dusted the inside of the case. Booted fine and all. Once I plugged my headset in, hard crash. Power failure light on the PSU. I used to have that problem with my old PSU with the normal onboard sound card and that PSU ended up dying and getting RMA'd back. So my frontside audio is unhooked again, pending figuring out how to handle fixing that. *sigh*

I don't mind the troubleshooting and I like the experience because I like building computers, but at the same time, I don't want to break something permanently and end up having to spend unnecessary money fixing it.


Edit: Update.

I ran around in WoW trying to use as much memory as possible. I ran Adaware and Spybot full system scans and ran around in the parts of Dalaran that use the most animations to try to stress the system. I got it to freeze up, but it didn't blue screen. I had music playing and the music did the repeat last sound error thing where it spams a fraction of a second of music, etc etc. I tried clicking around and the screen went black. I instinctively went to hit the power button, but it didn't really do anything when I did it. When I let go of the power button, a box (that looked like the same formatting as my pre-boot manager) which said "exit ai sleep menu?" with yes and no options. I hit yes, and the game unfroze and everything continued as usual. I tried walking father into the high animation area, it happened again with the frozen audio, I hit escape, and it went back to normal. Since then, it hasn't repeated.



I notice though that it seems like the computer refuses to use the additonal ram. Total is 3406824 and available is 1400000 or so. That is around 3.33 Gig and 1.33 gig not being used... so it is only using the 2 gig stick? The rest seems to be being dumped into virtual memory.


Edit Again:
When I kill WoW, this happens:

[CWolf]

I don't know why I didn't think to suggest trying Prime 95It's an overclocking stress tester.
It may be helpful. Use the "Torture Test".

[Maylar]

I don't know why I didn't think to suggest trying Prime 95It's an overclocking stress tester.
It may be helpful. Use the "Torture Test".

Cwolf, you should drop the warning that Prime95 causes a CPU to get VERY hot and if the board/cpu is unstable, Prime95 has been known to push the system over the edge. Plus, it needs a good 20 hours to fully declare the system stable.

btw, another good tester is: 7Byte : Hot CPU Tester Pro I find it a bit more... detailed in what it does.

[samspade]

Since we've been hijacking the random though thread, I figured I'd try to start one over here. Random tech questions, comments, epeen waving, etc.


I'll start with an issue I've been having, that I think I might have a solution for, but haven't tried yet. (Haven't had time).

I have 4 gig of OCZ platinum ram, but have only been using 2 gig because of my 32 bit OS. When I throw the other stick in, windows recognizes 3.25gig as it should, and running memtest on the ram shows all systems go even at full load on the ram and my quad core processor.

...but... as soon as I load into WoW with it, I get problems. Once I have played long enough for WoW to take up a large enough portion of the ram, the computer just powers off. Sometimes blue screen, sometimes not. When it boots back up, if I load WoW it will shut down very quickly again. (It seems like the ram doesn't clear during the crash somehow) If I reboot after the crash, it will be fine again until I play WoW long enough to fill the ram again. I can't for the life of me figure out why. It seems that WoW tried to go beyond the 3.25 gig and use the unaddressable ram and then causes the crash.

The theory I have worked up in my head it that it might be because I have the ram seated in the primary paired slots on my motherboard. They are both 2 gig sticks, but since 1.25 gig is all that is being recognized on the second stick, does the computer consider them to be different sizes? Should I then off-seat them into non-paired slots? I've been tossing the idea around in my head for a while, but haven't gotten around to trying it out.

I don't think it is an issue of a bad ram dim either. I've tried running with either stick as a 2 gig system with no problems. I'm considering calling up OCZ and seeing what they think about it. They do 3 year warranties on all their stuff AFAIK.


Feel free to jack the thread to talk about whatever though. (Wants to learn more about water cooling, from a firsthand experience POV)

Thoughts on this?

Guide: Optimizing WoW Performace :: World of Warcraft :: Allakhazam.com

Optimizing wow

[Misty]

Bullseyed,

I'm finding that a lot of people are having the same exact problem as you. It's not your RAM. XP will use 4gigs of RAM, but it appears that at least one gig is reserved for the kernel, whether it needs it or not.

Memory Support and Windows Operating Systems

Here's an excerpt:

Operating systems based on Microsoft Windows NT technologies have always provided applications with a flat 32-bit virtual address space that describes 4 gigabytes (GB) of virtual memory. The address space is usually split so that 2 GB of address space is directly accessible to the application and the other 2 GB is only accessible to the Windows executive software.

The 32-bit versions of the Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Windows NT Server 4.0, Enterprise Edition, operating systems were the first versions of Windows to provide applications with a 3-GB flat virtual address space, with the kernel and executive components using only 1 GB. In response to customer requests, Microsoft has expanded the availability of this support to the 32-bit version of Windows XP Professional and all 32-bit versions of Windows Server 2003.

[Bullseyed]

Bullseyed,

I'm finding that a lot of people are having the same exact problem as you. It's not your RAM. XP will use 4gigs of RAM, but it appears that at least one gig is reserved for the kernel, whether it needs it or not.

Memory Support and Windows Operating Systems

Here's an excerpt:

I'm still having issues with hard crashes though. It had seemed to be running fine other than the two hiccups in WoW, so I had been away from my computer for a while hosting a cookout at my apartment. When I got back, my computer was off and power faulted. (Again). Red light was on on the power supply. Tried powering down the PSU and letting it sit then reboot, faulted again. Opened the case and removed the second stick, hooked it back up and it booted fine. It's getting to the point where I don't even care about improving it anymore because any time I make changes it just results in hardware problems and I don't want to damage the stuff that IS working.