Game Freeezes and Audio robotic when freezing

BrandonR188 · 23 Aug 2015

Hello,

recently I've been on Windows 10 Pro x64 bit, I did a clean install after the free upgrade and loving 10 so far..
I've been playing tons of my regular games.. Battlefield 4, ArmA 3/ ArmA 2 DayZ Mod ( OverPoch ) , Insurgency, etc.. mostly FPS and survival games.. lately in ArmA 2 I've been getting this lag/freezing and the audio will be like robotic till the freeze stops and the game runs like normal again..

this happens throughout play sessions in ArmA 2 DayZ mod and has happened like once or twice in Battlefield 4 but hasn't really happened again in awhile.. I'm trying to see if there is a fix to this or if it's just an ArmA issue or Windows 10 and ArmA compatibility issue..

My Specs:
Windows 10 Pro x64 bit - Clean install
MSI GTX 970 4gb OC
i7 4770k 3.50GHz
MSI B85-G41 PC Mate(MS-7850)
111GB ADATA SSD S510 120GB (SSD) - for My OS
465GB Western Digital WDC WD5000AAKS-00UU3A0 (SATA) - Programs
1863GB Seagate ST2000DM001-1CH164 (SATA) - Games
16gb DDR3 ram
1000w PSU

I have updated my onboard sound drivers ( Realtek) to the very latest along with my chipset.. not for sure if this is the problem or not but when i went to download them from the website for my motherboard, it was selected for Windows 10 so it had to be compatible.

AnonVendetta · 26 Aug 2015

My specs are far less than yours (Alienware M14X R1 that I've had for 3 yrs), and I can play Arma 2, Arma 3, DayZ Standalone, and DayZ mod with relative dmoothness, no lag, stuttering, etc. I had your issue a few months ago and resolved it by updating Nvidia drivers. This kind of thing is really hard to accurately diagnose.

BrandonR188 · 27 Aug 2015

Thank you for the response.. I found a hotfix geforce driver for Windows 10 64 bit and it appeared to fix the problem.. will come back in a bit to just make sure and give my results and will mark solved if it's solved.

EDIT:

issue has returned and the hotfix didn't fix it.. thought it did but the issue has returned.. just experienced it while watching a youtube video.. not in-game yet.

Petey7 · 27 Aug 2015

If you have second monitor or a small flatscreen tv, hook it up. On the second screen, have task manager open to the performance tab, and Speccy or a similar program open to monitor temperatures. One possibility is that something is acting as a bottleneck. Such as a hard drive seeing 100% usage, or thermal throttling of the GPU, etc.

Are you overclocking? I assume so based on CPU and MOBO choice. By how much? What cooler are you using for the CPU? Have you tried restoring BIOS/UEFI defaults?

What you described could be caused by any number of things really. I've seen it as a symptom of overheating, dying HDD, faulty RAM, and any number of other things. Only thing you can do is look at each thing one at a time.

BrandonR188 · 27 Aug 2015

@Petey7
I don't have a second monitor(Yet..) , I do not overclock but when I purchased my GPU from Tigerdirect, it came overclocked..
My temps seem normal but my cpu is really catching my eye even tho i do not think it's overheating.. it remains around 38c when I'm just on the internet browsing and watching videos but when gaming.. it goes up to around 60-65c ..

Yes I actually restored my bios settings to default and I've been messing around( watching videos, gaming.. etc.. ) basically i am doing where it normally occurs.. I'm using the default CPU cooler ( air cooling/fan )

my GPU is currently sitting at 27c while just browsing and watching youtube but it does go up a bit while gaming.. i would say 58-60c at most.. everything else never goes up that high according to speccy.

any recommendation how i can check for faulty ram and a dying HDD?.. like the best way?

Petey7 · 27 Aug 2015

The GPU temps are pretty normal. Even with all my cooling my GPU gets up to 70c when gaming. The stock overclock is fine, because its been testing by MSI to be stable. The CPU temps are kinda high. General rule of thumb is the CPU needs to be under 80c at max load. But as far as I know, Haswell processors usually don't get that hot unless you're overclocking. To be honest I'm not sure if it would throttle at the temperature or not. Best bet is to do whatever to get the CPU hot, then look at the CPU clock speed in task manager. If its low despite it being under load, then its probably being throttled. Best bet would be to replace the stock cooler with a Cooler Master 212 Evo.

Checking for a faulty hard drive is pretty straight forward. Download Seatools. Even though its made by Seagate, it will work with non-Seagate drives as well. Start with the short drive self test, followed by the short generic, and then the long generic. They aren't 100% thorough, but if it passes, the drive shouldn't be noticeably failing. I wouldn't use it with the SSD. I am not sure if ADATA has their own diagnostic software, but I would google search it. Testing RAM is a bit more complicated.

You're best bet is MemTest86. The complicated part is you have to either burn the ISO to a CD (using imgburn), or use the USB version, which includes software for making a bootable USB. USB might be your best bet since most people tend to have plenty of USB flash drives, but not a disc drive these days. You would then restart your PC, go to the boot menu, and then choose to boot from USB. Click on start test, and everything else should be automatic. Some times RAM has a temperature dependent fault, meaning it won't start throwing errors until it gets warm. For this reason it usually recommended to let it run for multiple passes. An option I usually recommend is to leave it running over night. If there are no errors by the time you get up, the RAM is fine.

Can you give more details on the PSU? Some brands of PSUs are known to not provide consistent power, which can lead to instability.

BrandonR188 · 28 Aug 2015

Petey7 said:

The GPU temps are pretty normal. Even with all my cooling my GPU gets up to 70c when gaming. The stock overclock is fine, because its been testing by MSI to be stable. The CPU temps are kinda high. General rule of thumb is the CPU needs to be under 80c at max load. But as far as I know, Haswell processors usually don't get that hot unless you're overclocking. To be honest I'm not sure if it would throttle at the temperature or not. Best bet is to do whatever to get the CPU hot, then look at the CPU clock speed in task manager. If its low despite it being under load, then its probably being throttled. Best bet would be to replace the stock cooler with a Cooler Master 212 Evo.

Checking for a faulty hard drive is pretty straight forward. Download Seatools. Even though its made by Seagate, it will work with non-Seagate drives as well. Start with the short drive self test, followed by the short generic, and then the long generic. They aren't 100% thorough, but if it passes, the drive shouldn't be noticeably failing. I wouldn't use it with the SSD. I am not sure if ADATA has their own diagnostic software, but I would google search it. Testing RAM is a bit more complicated.

You're best bet is MemTest86. The complicated part is you have to either burn the ISO to a CD (using imgburn), or use the USB version, which includes software for making a bootable USB. USB might be your best bet since most people tend to have plenty of USB flash drives, but not a disc drive these days. You would then restart your PC, go to the boot menu, and then choose to boot from USB. Click on start test, and everything else should be automatic. Some times RAM has a temperature dependent fault, meaning it won't start throwing errors until it gets warm. For this reason it usually recommended to let it run for multiple passes. An option I usually recommend is to leave it running over night. If there are no errors by the time you get up, the RAM is fine.

Can you give more details on the PSU? Some brands of PSUs are known to not provide consistent power, which can lead to instability.

I'll work on giving you the rest of the info you need soon.. thought it would be worth mentioning that this only occurs on Windows 10 and not 8.1? could this be due to some windows 10 glitches or incompatible drivers?

Petey7 · 28 Aug 2015

That is something important to consider, yes. You mentioned updating your Realtek, Nvidia, and chipset drivers. Have you tried updating other drivers, like Ethernet, wifi, etc? Another thing you could try is verifying the integrity of the Windows 10 install. Go to Start>All Apps>Windows System and right click Command Prompt, and choose Run As Administrator. In the command window, type "sfc /scannow". It might take a little bit to finish. If it returns a message saying it found errors that it could not fix, restart and do it again. If after 3 restarts it still says the same thing, then its time for another clean install unfortunately.

BrandonR188 · 28 Aug 2015

I've done the sfc/scannow twice, no errors. :) I've also done some clean installs of Windows 10 Pro x64 and I tried going without the realtek audio drivers and it still occurred and i went to the realtek drivers and it still occurred.. just did it a few mins ago while gaming.. and once or twice during a YouTube video.. I will have to try the Ethernet suggestion as i do not use WiFi at all for my PC.. even tho my realtek network drivers i did update so if that is the same thing?

I'm just really more on it just being a Windows 10 glitch than my hardware.. it only occurred on 10 and never on 8.1.

BrandonR188 · 02 Sep 2015

I'll mark this as solved for now as it's not really an issue since I've updated to the very latest drivers that came out.. even if it does occur, it's not so serious and doesn't bother me as much anymore.. thanks for the help.