Custom Built computer=Not able to play Wow?

[Toohey]

First a little background. Had played Wow for a while, then my wife started school for her Doctorate, so we stopped playing, and once she graduated, we started back up again. My old home built system consisted on a AMD 2600+ and a ASUS Radeon 9600XT 128mb vid card. The system I built for my wife was similar. We played well with few complaints. When she went to school I bought her a new premade system (Requirement for her program). Once she graduated, I put in a PCI-E card for graphics and maxed out the RAM. It is an Acer T180 (Came with Vista, but I ganked that off and put XP Pro on it first thing) The card in it is a BFG 8500GT. By no means a gaming card, but comparing her computer to mine was like night and day in playability. It made me thirsty to upgrade mine. Here is what I went with:

AMD 64x2 6400+ (3.20ghz)
Ultra Chilltec for Socket 939/775/AM2 CPU Cooler (cools below room temp...good stuff!)
ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe Mobo
OCZ Game XStream 850w Powersupply
EVGA GeForce 8600 GTS 512MB PCIe w/Dual DVI
OCZ 1024MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz Gold XTC (3 sticks)
2x320gb WD SATA Hard Drives
XP Professional (32 bit)

And reused from previous PC build:

Montego DDL Sound Card
Viewsonic VA2226w Widescreen Monitor
Logitech Z-5500 THX-Certified 505-Watt 5.1 Digital Surround Sound Speaker System
Razer Diamondback 3G Gaming Mouse
Razer Lycosa Gaming Keyboard

The computer runs great all the time, except for when I try to play WoW. Plays for anywhere from 30 seconds, to 2 minutes, then "hiccups", audio skips (like a scratched CD) and then resumes, but with serious video issues, then will hiccup again and lock requiring a reboot via the reset button.

I have updated drivers until I am blue in the face, tried with no sound card, tried my wife's Video card (Uses the same driver set as my 8600GTS, but none the less the drivers were uninstalled, registry cleaned and reinstalled) The next thing on my list to try is switching out the memory. When I bought the Mobo, I was told the OCZ Memory would be sufficient. Did some more research AFTER my build, and it turns out that ASUS does not list them as a qualified vendor. So to take that out of the equation, tomorrow Twin2x4096-6400C5 Corsair memory will be on my doorstep courtesy of my Visa card, and the Fed-Ex guy... The Corsair forums have been pretty helpful (mostly except for the fact I mentioned OCZ on there as the RAM I presently had..got bashed pretty hard and told to go to their forums for help ) and I will have some good bios settings to put in at that time as well from the corsair guys as far as timings and voltages go...

I have almost $900 wrapped up in this so far, and if the memory doesn't fix the problem, then the wife has instructed me to go out and buy the same PC she has so I can play... I would so much rather get my rig going! I guess in the end I could have spent 400 bucks less and got the same thing as her, but then she would be right, and we just can't have that..lol

So I posted my question over on the WoW tech support forums, and have had 0, zero, zilch, nada Blue replies. I have had some from other gamers saying that they have similar issues and no answer from Blizz. It seems that to get a response from them, you need to make your question as vauge as possible, and not sound like you know what you are talking about... I think it is because I posted up my DxDiag, as well as system specs, and screenshots that I get ignored..

I will post up my DxDiag here too if needed and if someone thinks they can help me out.. If I can go out tomorrow and buy a video card that fixes this, than I will, but swapping out PC parts is a costly venture, as most and not returnable except for the same thing. sucks..

Anyways here are some shots:

First right after logging in, SW near the bank. My wife's Latency is NEVER that high either. Usually mid double digits-150 or so. We have a FiOS 15down 2 up connection):

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i221/A1cntrler/6.jpg

First Hiccup:

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i221/A1cntrler/7.jpg

Second:

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i221/A1cntrler/4.jpg

Third:

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i221/A1cntrler/5.jpg

And Out....:

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i221/A1cntrler/2-1.jpg

Those were from a couple of days ago. I don't even make it that far anymore it seems. Now it just locks/audio skips at first hiccup requiring a reboot.

Tried another Vid card with same result. The system is flawless except for that problem. Any suggestions?? Playing WoW on my laptop just isn't any fun, not to mention uncomfortable for long periods...

Thanks in advance for at least reading/offering condolences/support/anything??!:undecided:

EDIT: This is WoW BC I am playing BTW and I run game and desktop at 1600x1050 res...

[Kalos]

First thing, overstuffing the ram will make things worse, not better. A 32 bit OS can only see so much memory due to limitations in its ability to memory address not being infinite. Anything more than three gig of ram only makes performance worse, as the PC starts to ignore portions of other memory caches in order to address the great bulk of ram, such as the HDD memory or the onboard graphics card memory, they all come under the same memory addressing table. Overstuffing is bad, it lessens performance, not just wasteful. I'd recommend only using one of those new ram sticks at a time for this reason.

My first reaction to your problem is the list of exotic parts you have used. Did you run any stability tests to check certain components for errors and manufacturing flaws, such as those listed on the Recommended Hardware thread? There's nothing inherantly bad about your components as it is, but low level testing is something I do as routine with new components.

I suppose you've tryed the Wipe-and-basics-only method of operation, so I'll move on to suggest something else; perticularly as this isn't a true custom machine. It's a OEM manufacturered machine that's had bells attatched to it post-purchase; so put it back to factory conditions. Back to default OS, back to default components ect, get back to the simplistic core of a machine that it was. This is an OEM machine at heart, designed to work with OEM drivers not standard edition gear. Speaking loosely, it might be pretty bent out of shape by all the customisation that has been done to it, and be having a rather unhappy time operating. It wouldn't be the first time I've seen an OEM box act strange on things routine with pure custom builds. In the line of thinking as "Too many cooks spoil the broth" it is a good but time consuming move.

It may be better to take it back as your wife says, and built something purely custom. OEM computers and mix and match custom don't always make for happy bed friends.

Out of curiousity, are you operating some form of RAID array?

[Toohey]

I'm sorry... I just read over the post I made earlier, and I see where you misunderstood.. My wife's machine is the Acer T180... Mine is purely built from individual components. All them components listed in the prior post were put into a ThermalTake XaserIII case. Teh corsair RAM was listed in the approved by ASUS section, and also recommended to me by Corsair EVEN AFTER I told them I was running a 32bit OS. They said the extra RAM would simply be ignored/not seen by windows. As for stability testing, I ran Memtest 3 full passes after I started having the WoW problems, and then ran a program called OCCT to stress test the Processor, and both passed with no errors.

I did try the wipe and basics only method as well. No change. The only difference
I can see between my Wife's machine (T180 with 8500GT) and my machine when I swapped her card in place of my 8600GTS to try it, was that I have the BC installed, where she just has Pre BC installed. I know there were some issues with the 2.xx patches and that is where a lot of people seemed to start having problems from searching the WoW forums.
As for RAID: I started out with a RAID 0 config (First time I have ever done RAID) and took it off when I started having WoW problems troubleshooting it. I wasn't real sure how it would affect the game if any, so to be safe, I just have two huge separate drives on my system right now.

The wife wants me to ditch this system I just built and buy an OEM one.. I have never been much for OEM in whatever I buy..

EDIT: Was just reading about 64bit OS, and the MS site has this to say: Currently, 32-bit editions of Windows are capable of supporting up to 4 gigabytes (GB) of system memory, with up to 2 GB of dedicated memory per process. Windows Professional XP Edition x64 currently supports up to 128 GB of RAM, with the potential to support up to 16 terabytes of virtual memory as hardware capabilities and memory sizes improve.

So I will likely just do like you say anyways and run with the 2 gigs for now, and when Vista gets thier crap together I'll try out 64 bit Vista FTW....


Thank you so much for your reply. Is there anything else you think I should try? I have been trying disabling things in the video card control panel, and I played for 5 whole minutes earlier. Was kind of exciting! But then things went south again, and I can't stay on more than a minute again...

[Clavina]

Do other games work ok? What exactly is 'everything else?' What versions of video and motherboard drivers are you using? Have you only tried the latest drivers from the web or older versions found on the Cd's you got? Did you confirm that your graphics card was working ok in your wifes machine?

[Tunga]

Might be worth checking if anything shows in the the Windows System Log when this happens.

[Artad]

Definitely run with just 2gb, one thing I would be worried about is that you weren't running the RAM in banks.

One other question for you to consider, what's the cooling like inside the case, the pictures I see look like it's either a corruption with the cached files (unlikely) but more that likely would be poor cooling for the video card. One way to test this would be to remove the side panel of the case, direct a fan into the case and try playing the game then and seeing what happens.

As for latency issues, are you running any downloaders in the background? AV updates? Windows Updates etc? Also is your NIC (Network Interface Card) set to half duplex rather than full duplex?

[infernoxrocks]

Did you mind your static when putting it all together? Remember the slightest bit of electric discharge can seem to do no damage or nor even be noticed but in all reality it has blown small components. Try the fan in the case - i have seen this help on many occasions (hinting at a cooling issue) All of the 8 series draw alot of power, are you sure it has adequate power? How is the air flow in the case? Do you have fans pulling in air and pulling out air? Try to contact Nvidia - not blizzard - about your issue, remember they made the chipset. Nvidia forums are usualy helpful and EVGA has decent tech support as well. Blizzard can not test each individual card with every rig nore can they evaluate based on specs - also they mostly dont care... Have you updated Direct X? Torrents/P2P kill latency in WoW so stop any DLs of any kind. Most DSL services are sower than Cable providers and can make the ping rather high - try somewhere other than SW to get a proper gague on this.

BTW nice pics - never know NEs tripped on acid in SW.

My opinion is:
1. Cooling
2. Power
3. Start kicking off some ingame settings and see if it helps (triple bufferinf for example)
4. Someone Zapped the mobo/video card :O
5. Huge incompatiblity issue - seek manufacturers help

Try that copy of vista you got rid of on your wifes PC maybe your XP has a bug - this can happen on pirate versions very easily and non pirate versions as well seeing as Microsoft sucks.