PC freezing while gaming

FederalX

Honorable
Jan 25, 2014
11
0
10,510
While gaming on my computer (any 3D game, from Minecraft (no mods) to World of Warcraft, sometimes my graphics driver crashes and recovers, and I can still continue playing whatever I was playing, although with a severely reduced framerate. Other times, I'm finding my computer emitting a loud, shrill continuous beep (followed by a complete lockup, where there is no sound, no input, nothing), which doesn't match any beep codes. No sound, no artifacts, it just goes kaput, and I need to reboot it. What could be causing this? I have updated all of my drivers to their latest versions (minus the BIOS), made sure my power options were set to High Performance in Windows, dusted the system out, and reseated my graphics card and RAM, with no luck so far.

EDIT: Here's a snippet from the Event Viewer of what happens before the freezes:
JavaScript:
- System 

  - Provider 

   [ Name]  Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-PnP 
   [ Guid]  {9C205A39-1250-487D-ABD7-E831C6290539} 
 
   EventID 219 
 
   Version 0 
 
   Level 3 
 
   Task 212 
 
   Opcode 0 
 
   Keywords 0x8000000000000000 
 
  - TimeCreated 

   [ SystemTime]  2014-01-29T00:43:06.004828800Z 
 
   EventRecordID 28818 
 
   Correlation 
 
  - Execution 

   [ ProcessID]  4 
   [ ThreadID]  44 
 
   Channel System 
 
   Computer FedEx-PC 
 
  - Security 

   [ UserID]  S-1-5-18 
 

- EventData 

  DriverNameLength 62 
  DriverName USB\VID_05AC&PID_1297\c841bfd3e046d112986e3a5f2657da1d8c11be2b 
  Status 3221226341 
  FailureNameLength 14 
  FailureName \Driver\WUDFRd 
  Version 0


Specs (everything stock; nothing overclocked)

Mobo: Gigabyte GA-990XA-UD3

Memory: Corsair CMX16GX3M4A1333C9 XMS3 Desktop Memory Kit - 16GB

CPU: AMD FX-8350 with stock cooling

GPU: EVGA Geforce GTX 660

Power Supply: Ultra LSP750
 
Solution
Do update the bios, check ur gpu if its overheating.
otherwise:
check in the following order
1. ram broke
2.gpu broke
3. pcie slot connectivity.
5.psu power cable
5.5 psu
Its likely that SOMETHING is unstable. But ur average everyday usage isnt enough to push it to the point where it would cause a problem.
Hard to say
Do update the bios, check ur gpu if its overheating.
otherwise:
check in the following order
1. ram broke
2.gpu broke
3. pcie slot connectivity.
5.psu power cable
5.5 psu
Its likely that SOMETHING is unstable. But ur average everyday usage isnt enough to push it to the point where it would cause a problem.
Hard to say
 
Solution
I updated the BIOS, still crashing. The GPU isn't going beyond the normal temperatures I've seen it at, and it's freezing at even simple games like Super Hexagon. Later today I'll be putting the GPU into another computer, and giving it a test drive.
 
Final update: Turned out that the card was bad. It gave a beep code when I plugged it in to another PC, looked it up to find it a faulty graphics error. Thanks for the help, Yingda!