N56VZ Hard Crash

Hello,

The long story short:

When I am playing Battlefield 3, watching online videos (FlowPlayer), the machine hard crashes (see video):
https://vimeo.com/62970730

I checked the regular hardware errors: RAM with Memtest (3 Hrs), CPU with Prime95 (2Hrs) and 3D Mark, Kombustor for GPU (3 Hours) - no crashes.
I created a random resource hungry project in After Effects, which rendered for 5 Hrs 28 Minutes stressing the CPU, RAM, GPU all always above 95% usage - surprisingly no crashes.
Temps were <75 Celsius during the test, cooling is okay.
Also borrowed Dead Space 3 from my friend aaaand - no crashes for 3 Hours!

It happens only when playing Battlefield 3 and watching online flash videos.

I suppose it should be a driver problem.

All correct drivers installed from respective sites.

Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium OEM
i7 3610QM
8GB DDR3 1600 Mhz RAM
GT650 4GB VRAM
Intel SSD 180 GB (330 series)
Factory 1 TB 5400 RPM in Mediabay

The Notebook is 2 weeks old.

Any help appreciated to solve this.

Thank you.

 

there few nVidia driver versions causing BF3 to crash. check the driver version and maybe try roll back to the older version.

 

And what about the flash video part?

 

You can test it by disable nVidia video card in Device Manager and play BF3 with Intel HD Graphics, if the intel HD graphics works fine then could be the nVidia GPU problem. still try roll back the drivers see if problem goes away, my nVidia driver version is 314.07 and no problems with BF3.

 

It freezes out with HD4000 as well

 

Then it's not the graphics card issue, next thing you can test is pull one stick of RAM at a time to test the game. hopefully it's not something serious.

 

I tried with one sick and it even crashed when my girlfriend played Farmille 2 in FF :/ I bet is some driver, but i uninstalled everything and reinstalled the latest drivers.

 

Latest driver doesn't mean it won't any issues, sometmes latest drivers create issues.

You can try roll back to older versions see if it helps.

 

Haven't seen colourful hangs like that since the Voodoo 3dfx boards.

Have you tried downloading the latest hd4000 driver from intel? It could be that - they've made some changes to the way directx chooses the viewport in the few latest win7/8 updates. And depending on what other programs you're running in the background, or depending on the nvidia driver settings/version on top of the old intel driver - at least that can cause these kinds of hangs.

For example, if you have a 3d-dock of some sort that use some direct addressing, windows can happily cause overruns or context changes that will just cause random corruption on the active port like that - with that combination of updates+old intel drivers.

 

BF3 has a reputation for poor compatibility/optimization, and since FF supports hardware acceleration, it could very well be GPU related still. Do you get the crashes in Safe Mode (w/ networking) in Firefox?

 

I found out that issues were with the RAM - based on this thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/677457-asus-n56vz-16gb-ram-thread-15.html.

Now I am on Kingston HyperX 2x4 GB kit and everything is fine - Corsair Vengeanace has random issues with N56VZ as it looks like.

I thought it should be a GPU problem as well, but FF even crashed after I replied to a facebook message, not doing anything else. Strange is how Dead Space 3 was working for hours, though.

Plus I reinstalled the OEM Windows completely and after format I had the same issues - then decided to switch the RAM.

 

Just glad you figured it out. :thumbsup: And thanks for following up!