AMD X2 4200+ AM2 .... ack!

J

Joker057

Spaceman
Hey guys! I just bought a new computer last week! I thought I would be totally happy but this thing is giving me major headaches! I got an AM2 socket X2 4200+
Thats a dual core processor for you lamens. Wow! this thing has some major teething problems. I get random system lockups in games and even the desktop. The AMD forums geeks are at odds at what is causing the problem. My advice to any of you guys who are looking at getting a new PC is wait till Vista comes out before you look into a dual-core system. Once I get this baby working right, I'm gonna load up the hi-res prophecy patch and crank all the settings to the max! Woohoo! Isn't new tech sooooo much fun??? BTW I work as a computer tech and this system is kick MY ass...watchout!
 
Joker057 said:
Hey guys! I just bought a new computer last week! I thought I would be totally happy but this thing is giving me major headaches! I got an AM2 socket X2 4200+
Thats a dual core processor for you lamens. Wow! this thing has some major teething problems. I get random system lockups in games and even the desktop. The AMD forums geeks are at odds at what is causing the problem. My advice to any of you guys who are looking at getting a new PC is wait till Vista comes out before you look into a dual-core system. Once I get this baby working right, I'm gonna load up the hi-res prophecy patch and crank all the settings to the max! Woohoo! Isn't new tech sooooo much fun??? BTW I work as a computer tech and this system is kick MY ass...watchout!
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Did you buy it from a retailer? Did you make it yourself? Are you sure you are not having overheating problems?
 
1) Check for overheating. (See how hot the air is coming out the back of the power supply and the CPU). Use the motherboard monitor if one is available.

2) Check your power supply. Tell us what brand it is. You may need to buy a new one if you built it yourself and it came with the case, or you bought it from a whitebox place.

3) What kind of RAM do you have? Is it economy unknown brand, or brand name?

4) If you built it yourself, have you tried the "failsafe" setting in the BIOS?

The power supply is the likely culprit, especially if it's a whitebox or you built it yourself and used the "case with power supply" option. If it's a $30 case, there's no way that power supply is adequate, no matter how big that number is on the side. You may need to invest in a good power supply, which can run you around $100 or so (yes, you should spend the money - the power supply is the least respected part of a computer, and a very large source of wierd random errors like crashes and data corruption - bad power is bad for the computer. A good power supply will also have protective circuits should it go south to avoid taking the rest of your computer with it (it's been known where a power supply blew up and took out the motherboard, CPU, RAM, hard drives, video card...).
 
EDIT:

Worf beat me to it.

I had to upgrade my power supply from the 350 that came with my cheap case to a 500 watt. Airflow is the cheapest to fix so definetely check that first.
 
Also make sure that your processor is not overheating--it should have an adequate heat sink with a fan, and the box should be adequately ventilated with a decently powerful fan--AMD processors are known for putting out a lot of heat--my box puts out so much that I didn't need to use heaters in my bedroom last winter.

What OS are you running? WinXP or Linux? What version?
 
Worf said:
1) 3) What kind of RAM do you have? Is it economy unknown brand, or brand name?
Click to expand...
I almost forgot that one. Just a few months ago my ram cooked. with both dimms in (2x512MB PC3200) it wouldnt even boot. I put them in one at a time and one of them wouldnt boot and the other worked but the PC would crash all the time, even half way through booting sometimes. I put in new ram (2x1GB) and my PC hasn't crashed since.
 
Ijuin said:
AMD processors are known for putting out a lot of heat
Click to expand...

Actually, AMD desktop processors have been running cooler than their Intel counterparts for years (up until a couple months ago when Intel released the Core 2 Duo). There was one AMD processor (the Thoroughbred A) which was quite a blast furnace, but that's about it.
 
The Athlon64X2's are great CPU's, i have had some problems running games such as WC3 and prophecy, but also unreal tournament with lockups. Alt-tabbing out of the game and setting the application to only use one of your CPU's used to help.

However, the most recent version of the Athlon64 driver from the AMD site fixed this this so i do not need to correct in manual anymore. (Please be aware; older versions of this tool required me to repair the XP installation, since i could not boot anymore after installing it.

Hope this feedback helps you.
 
Hey thanks for the quick response! I have checked most of those things already. One thing that has helped my stability was a registry fix I found on the AMD forums. BTW, the memory I bought for the system is Corsair DDR2 5400 @ 675MHz. I have an MSI Neo-V Platinum MBD and I use arctic silver thermal paste for the heatsink. Last night the machine ran well and i was getting about 90 FPS in Battlefield Vietnam with the settings on medium. When this puppy works, it screams. The stability issue is its only problem. Overheating doesn't seem to ba a problem either. To answer the question of how fast it is, with the multiplier set to 11x each core is pushing around 2.6 Ghz. I love this machine but as with many young thoroughbreds, it is having pimadonna syndrome. I think the new Vista operating system will improve dual core stability issues so I may end up buying it sooner than later as I had previously thought.
 
TBH, the x2's have a bit of an issue with XP and the like that most dual cored/processor systems will have, in that many games have serious problems running on them. the best bet is to go into the properties for the shortcut and disable "use dual core" mode, its not a good fix mind as it effectively halves the power of your CPU.

other than this, look into the cooling as stated above and also the ram. the PSU is a surprisingly serious factor in this kind of thing actually - as well as (if using an AMD chipset board, and especially an ASUS one) the bios battery (i know, its ludicrous but asus ship with rubbish ones and they can not only cause issues with remembering bios settings but also with random reboots and instability - dont ask me why its just true!)

frankly though, any dual-cored/processored system is not great for gaming until vista comes. the only OS guaranteed to run em properly is 2k with all the patches and even that is a little temperamental (and not so good on the gaming)

Final comment, the Tbred was indeed a ridiculously hot chip, i changed from a 2500 Tbred to a 3200 Barton and ran about 30 degrees cooler and the barton is hardly a cool number
 
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