Game crashes after overclocking my CPU

[hameem 1]

i overclocked my phenom ii x4 955 with the CM hyper TX3 @ 3.6 , x16 , and did a one hour stress test running at 40c at full load
but now when i play BM: arkham city it crashes after 10-min and i can't play music any more and i can't open AMD over drive after the crash . . until i restart the PC.

but games like COD4 dosn't crash . . it only notify that i have to reset the setting because there is hardware changes . . etc

 

[zybch]

So whats the problem? Stop overclocking that old chip and be happy with the performance it has, or buy a better video card, which will give you greater gains than OCing a chip thats well over 4 years old now. If you're only running at 1080 resolution your GTX560 is probably going to be 'throttled' by the refresh rate of your screen anyway, and unless you like running with vsync off and like tearing, you'd not see much difference anyway.
Some CPUs can overclock better than others, you might get an additional .2Ghz or .8Ghz depending on a whole heap of factors not least of which is luck. I run my i7-2600k at 4.4ghz (a 1Ghz overclock) but a friend who has the same CPU and motherboard can only reach 3.9 without things getting unstable.

 

[omega21xx]

Very good possibility it is not stable, you can't judge full stability with only 1 hour of prime. Up the voltage one step (stay below 1.425, i've used higher but going past this can lead to lower life span for the cpu) if you can pass 24 hours of prime and stay under 1.425 and 55c then you should be good to go for 24/7 stability.

Edit: you should also look into overclocking in the BIOS and not AMD over drive, Over drive usually sets your voltage at 1.525 and just keeps upping the multi until you crash.
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=596023
Read the overclocking guide in that link, one of the best guides i've seen for phenom ii overclocking.

 

[hameem 1]

So whats the problem? Stop overclocking that old chip and be happy with the performance it has, or buy a better video card, which will give you greater gains than OCing a chip thats well over 4 years old now. If you're only running at 1080 resolution your GTX560 is probably going to be 'throttled' by the refresh rate of your screen anyway, and unless you like running with vsync off and like tearing, you'd not see much difference anyway.
Some CPUs can overclock better than others, you might get an additional .2Ghz or .8Ghz depending on a whole heap of factors not least of which is luck. I run my i7-2600k at 4.4ghz (a 1Ghz overclock) but a friend who has the same CPU and motherboard can only reach 3.9 without things getting unstable.

am not overcloking my CPU to increase the gaming performance . . and am not asking if my GPU will be throttled by my screen . .
am just asking why some games like BM arkham city crashes after overclocking and some games don't . . i mean 3.6 is not much overclock for a black edition CPU like the 955

 

[hameem 1]

Very good possibility it is not stable, you can't judge full stability with only 1 hour of prime. Up the voltage one step (stay below 1.425, i've used higher but going past this can lead to lower life span for the cpu) if you can pass 24 hours of prime and stay under 1.425 and 55c then you should be good to go for 24/7 stability.

Edit: you should also look into overclocking in the BIOS and not AMD over drive, Over drive usually sets your voltage at 1.525 and just keeps upping the multi until you crash.
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=596023
Read the overclocking guide in that link, one of the best guides i've seen for phenom ii overclocking.

if i passed one hour of FULL cpu stress i thing i will be able to play 30-min game . . ! games are not so much CPU depending . .

also am not going to do any over voltage !!
am just looking for a stable overclock and multiplier settings that will allow me a stable work and gaming.

 

[alhanelem]

is it possible that the game is just crashing randomly?
ive had a few crashes on arkham city that were just randomly occurring and could never fix it

 

[wolfram23]

Unstable OC. If you are using Prime95, 1 hour is nothing. Try a LinPack test like LinX, OCCT, Intel Burn Test.

Run 20 passes on normal stress levels, then run another 5 at maximum stress. It's very possible your memory is what's unstable. If the FSB was changed at all, then it's almost definitely the memory.

You should OC from the BIOS.