Computer crashing when gaming

[jblock2490]

Hello forums! About 6 months ago, I built a computer specifically for the purpose of gaming using Vista Ultimate 64-bit. I started with a BFG 9800GTX+ , which gave me no problems. However, I found a friend who was looking to buy a nice video card, and I bought myself (foolishly I might add) an XFX GTX 260 Core 216 Black Edition and sold him my 9800GTX+. At first, everything seemed fine and all of my games worked great and performed better than before, which of course made sense to me seeing as though I upgraded my video card. Within a few months however, I noticed that Company of Heroes would lock up my computer and crash it, displaying a screen of 1 solid color (color varying from crash to crash) and repeatedly looping the last second of sound from the game. This required me to hit the power button and restart, as the system became completely unresponsive. I updated the game to the most recent patch, and updated my drivers as well. This had no effect as the crashes persisted. I blew off the problem as I don't play Company of Heroes much. Slowly however, other games that I do play a lot began to crash. FarCry 2 crashed in the exact same fashion, Dawn of War 2 began crashing in the Campaign menu, and Crysis...well don't get me started. Anyways, I tried underclocking the video card (it's factory overclocked out of the box), and turning up the fan to no effect. I also tried different drivers which people claimed would run Crysis better, also to no effect.

I found myself a copy of Windows 7, wiped my hard drive completely, and did a clean install. I have the most recent drivers installed for everything, and all Windows Updates applied. I hoped that perhaps it was simply a stability issue with my driver/video card/vista 64-bit. I think I was wrong, and Crysis still crashes in the exact same spots it crashed with Vista. Dawn of War 2 has now given me in-engine crashes for the first time. As a side note, the in-engine Dawn of War 2 crash I've experienced caused the colors of my screen to start flashing and turning purple/green/pink. Although the game could still be seen behind the distorted colors, unlike the other crashes I experienced in other games, it still required me to restart the entire computer.

I am at a loss as to what I should do. My GPU temps were usually around 70 degrees C when the crashes occurred, so I'm not so sure if cooling is an issue.

Do you guys think that perhaps a new video card is in order? Or could the problem be related to something else?

My Current System:

XFX MB750I72P9 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 750i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard
XFX GX260NADBF GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition Core 216 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 Video Card
Intel Core2 Quad Q9400 2.66GHz 6MB L2 Cache LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor (running at stock speeds)
4 x 2GB OCZ XTC PC6400 DDR2 SLI OCZ2N800SR2G RAM (stock speeds)
CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply Unit
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

NOTE: At one point I had a BFG 9800 GTX+ graphics card, and a Thermaltake 600W PSU which I replaced when I got the GTX 260. Perhaps the Corsair 750W was defective out of the box or it broke somewhere along the line, causing the GPU to not receive ample power under load? I'm not really sure how to determine that without trying another PSU, which I don't have!

Thanks in advance for any help or insight you guys can offer!!

 

[ap90033]

I have very close to the same problem it seems and I am stumped.
I have
EVGA X58 Tri SLI Board
XFX Geforce GTX 260 (Two of them in SLI)
12 Gigs GSKILL DDR3 1600 Ram
2 750 Gig WD Black Drives
Corsair 850 Watt
Intel Core i7 920
Windows 7 64 Bit Ultimate

All very nice components. I have updated BIOS, reset to Defaults, got latest Drivers. I reset the BIOS to defaults a couple of nights ago and so far so good. Maybe a BIOS Setting? If so how the heck do I even begin to overclock? I have the latest revision i7 and a really nice heatskink fan (Dual 120mm in push pull) and used artic silver. I am sure this thing should hit 3.8 easy but am afraid as I dont know what isnt stable...

 

[jblock2490]

bump!

 

[drjest]

similar issues with the XFX GTXZ260+ Black Edition. Got RiVa Tuner (others I have seen posts on have used EVGA's Precision Tools for the same purpose) and uped the fan speed to 68% from its default of 40% and stopped the crashing. The fan does not automatically up its speed (for some reason) on the Black Ed cards.

 

[GeekTech]

Here few things you must know, and they may be useful:

If you computer crashing, try remember when its starting, you install any new software, or install any new driver, or even new windows!

If you don't remember - please follow here few steps, to make sure this not happens again:

If you see your computer crashing without reasons, when you work with your computer or playing video game and got blue screen, or just crashing!

Follow here few steps:


1) Scan for malicious software (Antivirus)
2) Check for new startup programs & services
3) Clean and compact the Registry
4) Run a Disk Check
5) Defragment the drives

If you still got crasges after, after you following with these steps - try update with latest drivers for your video cards, for most common old drivers of Nvidia have big effect of most crashes computer around the world!

Last thing you can to do, this check in computer store, you may have computer hardware problem!

Sources for fixing crashing computer:

How to Protect your Computer

Five Ways to Speed Up Your Computer

 

[jblock2490]

word turning up the fan speed seemed to fix it, at least in every game but crysis which i havent bothered attempting again lol

 

[drjest]

word turning up the fan speed seemed to fix it, at least in every game but crysis which i havent bothered attempting again lol

Ah Crysis - it is very prone to crashes. The thing that worked for me with Crysis is running that game in "windowed" mode rather than full screen. It's one of the settings in the game options. Doing this greatly reduced crashes. 8)