Hi there

 

My system specs are in my sig. I am running my i7 2600k at [email protected] vcore and memory is 8gb running at 1600. Now I have to be honest up front. I am a extremely proficient with FSX but from a hardware perspective I am a rookie. I bought my system used from someone who actually knew what they were doing. It was already overclocked and I merely picked it up, installed FSX and an insane amount of high quality payware and off I went. Now don't get me wrong, tweaking, be it the cfg. or inside fsx or graphic card settings, etc, I have done it all and bought the t-shirt. My problem is hardware, OS, CPU, motherboard, etc. I only know just enough to be dangerous.

 

My system has been running perfect for the last while. REX with ORBX PNW at Orcas Island with settings cranked in any Carenado at any time of day, in any weather. Eats it alive, smooth as butter, and no crashes whatsoever.

 

Lately though I have been using more commercial jets, specifically the PMDG ngx. I have been flying into places like FSDT LAX and Fly Tampa airports and as the title of my thread states, I have been getting the odd BSOD lately. I have been unable to recreate it though. It is strange because (while trying to figure this out) I can fire up the NGX, fly out of a Fly Tampa airport buzz around in Rex clouds above chicago, then land 20 minutes later and no problems. According to "realtemp" my CPU never goes over 50 degrees and my GPU never really breaks a sweat!? However, the BSOD's seem to have occurred when I stop using one aircraft and start a flight with another at another location. Ex. exiting the sim then switching from NGX to airbus X then loading another airport flying for 2 minutes, changing the view a view times and BOOM!!!! Blue Screen and complete crash. I have googled the "error report" and searched the forums and most seem to indicate a memory problem of some kind relating to voltage and possibly my overclock or ram, etc. This is where I get scared and start to feel out of my depth. Just say BIOS and I will run!! haha

 

Since I did not do my overclock, would you guys maybe suggest that it may be a place to start looking or do you think I am on the wrong track? My motherboard does have "touchbios" which is not as scary to me and I was thinking that maybe I should reset everything to default then use the included Turbo Boost preset to bring my clock back up a little? I do know that my GPU came overclocked as well and was causing some instability at first. I used MSI afterburner and reset it to default. That solved those problems at that time and I was thinking that doing something similar this time but with the CPU might help get rid of those blood Blue Screens!?

 

Any advice is very much appreciated. I am learning as I go but I have a long way to go in this area!

 

Thanks

Eric

You could test the idea that the overclock is unstable in a few ways. The simplest would be just to disable the overclock in the motherboard's BIOS by returning to default settings. You could do this from the "exit" menu in your BIOS, there should be something along the lines of "load BIOS defaults" or maybe "load optimized defaults" and then saving, and exiting. Of course if you do this you'll want to save a profile for the existing settings or you'll need to manually overclock the system once again. The other, non-potentially destructive manner would be to run a stress test in Windows. I recommend Prime 95 or Intel Burn Test. Since you're getting BSODs, you could download a neat little utility called Blue Screen Viewer from Nirsoft and post the results of your crashes here. With that info we might be able to discern the cause of the crashes and give advice on how to fix it, or at least what you can do next to test further.

Hi TechguyMaxC. Thanks for the reply.

 

I will download that Blue Screen Viewer and post the results. Also my next move would be to disable the Overclock. Since I do have "touchbios" and can do it in windows, it shouldn't be too hard. However, I think I may have found a SOLUTION!

 

On another thread at this site, "firehawk44" posted some advise to someone else with a similar problem and it may have solved it. His advise - ""My memory has a max frequency of 1600 MHz and I was trying to run my system at that frequency. But 1600 MHz only works when the BIOS profile is set from Manual to X.M.P. Manual profiles can only handle the lower frequencies as noted in the SPD Tab of the CPU-Z program""

 

I did the above and haven't had a BSOD since, no matter what the load or situation. Could be just luck but I will continue to watch. If I get another Blue Screen, I will begin the steps that you have suggested and report back.

 

Thanks again, its really appreciated.

 

Eric

Nice! I hope it continues to work for you. I've also had issues with instability due to RAM settings, definitely important to configure RAM correctly.

If it was incorrect RAM settings and you paid someone to overclock it, then it's their fault

If it was incorrect RAM settings and you paid someone to overclock it, then it's their fault

 

Sounds like the system was purchased used.

Oh yah it was used.

 

I did not pay anyone to OC it. I was actually going to get my friend to build me a rig specifically for FSX and then I found out he was selling his own personal system. That is what I bought. I got a great deal and it was only about 7 months old. Bought it 6 months ago. (paid $1500 with both monitors, win7, etc. and all receipts, pretty good I think!?) It has actually been fantastic. Now if I can just catch up in the knowledge department to match the equipment!! haha

Sounds like a good deal to me!

Just a follow up if anyone else was having the same problem. ie: BSOD with PMDG at high detail airports!

 

I believe I have solved the problem. As mentioned earlier in this thread, I thought setting the memory to XMP had helped but turns out it didn't. Problem persisted. After running Blue Screen View and determining that the problem was related to "ntoskrnl.exe". I reset my bios and disabled the overclock. Problem stopped but obviously I wanted to bring my cpu speed back up. I changed the multiplier to 44 instead of the previous 45 and set the v core back to 1.385, which it had been previous set at. So basically I just ended up downgrading the cpu clock a little. I did not change the memory (just set it back) which is running at 1600 - 9 9 9 24 @ 1.5v. I do NOT have XMP enabled and multistep LLC is disabled. So far it seems to have done the trick. I am now getting 4.4 very stable at that voltage after running Prime 95, etc. After a few test flights with the NGX at Fly Tampa and FSDT KLAX all is pretty good. No BSOD's so far. Fingers crossed.

 

Just a side note, I also looked into pagefiles being a possible cause but have since determined that my set up is good. 3072-3072 on the os drive (ssd) and NO pagefile on the fsx drive or my storage drive.

 

**One last thing, a big thank you to Word Not Allowed and his fantastic settings guide. Up until now (within the last few hours!) I have only had the highmexfix in my cfg. I bounced back and forth between Nickn and Bojotes tweaks over the last few years and ended up finding only mixed success. I had removed everything except the highmexfix. However, now that I am using the more demanding aircraft and scenery, Word Not Allowed's suggestion about the FFTF=0.1 and the affinitymask=84 (I have HT enabled!) have made a GIGANTIC difference in framerates. These 3 mentioned tweaks are the only ones I am using. Results -

 

Before - KSEA (with Orbx pnw) in the NGX with UT2 at 60% and REX clouds at 2048 I was only able to get 20-24 fps during the take off from the VC. After 32 - 39 (locked at 39 because lower is too jerky and higher makes the AI planes fly and look funny!!)

 

Amazing! Hope something in my long message may help some other hardware rookie like me.

 

Thanks again

Eric