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xc1024

Member

Registered: 2009-11-10

Posts: 51

Problem - computer freezes every time a 3D game / Wine game is run

Hello. My brother's computer is a quite powerful machine. He would be very satisfied with it if it wasn't for one thing: it freezes every time he runs any 3D game or any game using Wine.

I have tried to do some troubleshooting, but after long time I still cannot find the cause. The problem persists. No update has fixed it yet.
Some 3D games seem to run, some don't. I have tried AssaultCube and it worked, but when I tried Sauerbraten it froze.

Wine games seem not to work at all, or at least that's my general impression. As a test, I tried a freeware DirectX 7 game. Froze straightaway. More complex games of course also froze.

The problem seems to be related either to hardware or to some NVidia-specific stuff. I tried a test run of XP on this computer. It ran when it was a clean install, but when I installed NVidia drivers, it didn't boot again correctly. There was no error description as far as I remember.

I have swapped a power supply to a higher wattage thinking that it maybe was energy starvation that took the system down. No luck.

Output of different commands:
"hwinfo --short": http://pastebin.com/Sj8SbvZy
"lsmod": http://pastebin.com/dtchwqAF
"pacman -Qi nvidia": http://pastebin.com/rhKcLUpH
"uname -a": "Linux 2.6.35-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Sat Aug 21 07:23:08 UTC 2010 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3500+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux"

One more thing. Even though it's a 64-bit CPU, I'm running a 32-bit system. Would that create a problem? From what I've read online, it doesn't really seem to make that much of a difference.

Please help me with this. I really don't know what to do.

fplolz

Member

Registered: 2009-08-15

Posts: 47

Re: Problem - computer freezes every time a 3D game / Wine game is run

Hello ..Nice PC you got there...

lsmod output looks fine...

May i have your glxinfo  output ?  It should show direct rendering enabled..
It would be nice to have ur dmesg output too

The troubles you are having on Windows XP  with the nvidia driver ..leads me to think..there could possibly be soeething wrong with your video card..

You could also try using
pacman -S nvidia-173xx nvidia-173xx-utils

Have a good day ..Hope you do get this sorted out... I am also having problems on my end too ohwells ...

xc1024

Member

Registered: 2009-11-10

Posts: 51

Re: Problem - computer freezes every time a 3D game / Wine game is run

"glxinfo": http://pastebin.com/3r6udmqt
"dmesg": http://pastebin.com/qtsXJc5C

As for the 173xx driver - tried this already. No improvement at all.
By the way, once the system crashes, not even SysRq+REISUB can do anything.

Please, help me. I don't have any idea of what to do anymore.

fplolz

Member

Registered: 2009-08-15

Posts: 47

Re: Problem - computer freezes every time a 3D game / Wine game is run

hello again.
glxinfo looks good and normal

Right.. i have been reading bout similiar issues ..like that of your system freezing..
a reported fix would be to
  echo 1 | tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/sched_mc_power_savings
as root
and add it to the /etc/rc.local for it to be applied every boot up..

Link of where i have gotten the info from
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour … bug/151382

Apart from that ,  i have noticed your kernel isnot up to date.. Please run your updates.. the latest kernel in the core repo at the time of writing is 2.6.36.

Hope it works out for you

and if the above doesnt work out..
i would need to see your
/var/log/Xorg.0.log

Have a good day

xc1024

Member

Registered: 2009-11-10

Posts: 51

Re: Problem - computer freezes every time a 3D game / Wine game is run

File not found:

-bash: /sys/devices/system/cpu/sched_mc_power_savings: No such file or directory

Kernel 2.6.36.

fplolz

Member

Registered: 2009-08-15

Posts: 47

Re: Problem - computer freezes every time a 3D game / Wine game is run

oops forgot that our kernel is different from theirs..

right it will be here
/sys/devices/system/cpu/sched_smt_power_savings

btw , is there any difference after applying updates ?

xc1024

Member

Registered: 2009-11-10

Posts: 51

Re: Problem - computer freezes every time a 3D game / Wine game is run

There isn't a file with that name there.

# ls /sys/devices/system/cpu/
cpu0     cpuidle     offline  perf_events  present  release
cpufreq  kernel_max  online   possible       probe

Shall I downgrade the kernel? The oldest I have is .34.

fplolz

Member

Registered: 2009-08-15

Posts: 47

Re: Problem - computer freezes every time a 3D game / Wine game is run

i dont think you should downgrade...
Instead , use the latest kernel in the core repo

Another thing that could be the issue ...could be the powermizer and clock speed options when running 3D graphics ..( not too sure bout it..)

make /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf and add

options nvidia NVreg_RegistryDwords="PerfLevelSrc=0x2222"

perms=644
own: root:root

xc1024

Member

Registered: 2009-11-10

Posts: 51

Re: Problem - computer freezes every time a 3D game / Wine game is run

Still doesn't work. I also tried to set the clock frequency in the NVidia graphical configuration tool, but it didn't seem to actually change anything.