Games crashing

[Bloodloss]

Hello. I've already posted about this on other forums and no one could help. It's still not fixed and it's driving me nuts.

I'll be playing a game. And all of a sudden the screen freezes and gets 'muffled up' with weird squares. Shortly after the sound will start repeating. It is a hard crash that forces me to turn it off manually.

It has happened on all games I've played, but with varying levels of frequency. It happens very quickly in Fallout 3, The Sims 2 and some others. It rarely ever happens in Team Fortress 2 or Counterstrike: Source, but has still happened in them.

I've updated my drivers. No use.
I've uninstalled and reinstalled drivers. No use.
I've checked the temperatures. No use.
I've spent hours Googling. No use.
I've checked the event log. No use.
I have ran programs that put excessive stress on the video card / CPU / RAM individually and together to see if these can simulate me playing a game so I can narrow down which component is the problem. It didn't crash during any of them.

OS: Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400
Motherboard: Asus P5Q Pro
RAM: 4 GB (4 x 1 GB) Geil 'Black Dragon'
Graphics card: ATI Radeon HD 4870
HD: Seagate Barracuda 500GB
Case: Antec 300
PSU: OCZ 600w StealthXStreme
Peripherals: Razer DeathAdder mouse and bog standard old emachines keyboard


In the event log I saw "A request to disable the Desktop Window Manager was made by process (Fallout3)". A Google search led me to believe that disabling Windows vista Aero might fix it. It didn't.

Also, just now whilst playing Fallout 3 had a crash. I get back on and Windows says "This problem was caused by ATI Graphics Driver, which was created by ATI Technologies, Inc.. There is no solution for this problem at this time."

I update my drivers (turns out there was an update a few days ago), restart, launch Fallout 3 and within 2 minutes (as opposed to about 15 like usual), it does its usual crash, then goes to a BSOD mentioning something about an infinite loop. So the drivers have made it even worse if anything. Great.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Tiber Septim]

Hi Bloodloss. Welcome to TSF.
First, a few questions:
* What were the temperatures? Both idle and load if you have them.
* Which programs did you stress the system with? ATITool? Prime95?
* Have you overclocked anything?
* Have you checked your PSU's voltages, both idle and load? You can use programs such as SensorsView, Everest or simply your BIOS (for idle).

[Bloodloss]

Originally Posted by Tiber Septim

Hi Bloodloss. Welcome to TSF.
First, a few questions:
* What were the temperatures? Both idle and load if you have them.

CPU load

CPU idle

The temps of the graphics card under very stressful circumstances were about 72 degrees celsius, or 163 degrees fahrenheit

* Which programs did you stress the system with? ATITool? Prime95?

Prime95 and Furmark.

* Have you overclocked anything?

This is a pre-built PC and they overclocked my e8400 to 3.6 GHZ. I'd really rather not tamper with that unless I have to in case it voids the warranty or whatever.

* Have you checked your PSU's voltages, both idle and load? You can use programs such as SensorsView, Everest or simply your BIOS (for idle).

Do the above screenshots handle this question? I didn't pay attention to the voltages in any regard.

Thanks.

[Bloodloss]

Sorry for the double post. Won't let me edit the previous.

It looks exactly like this, by the way.

I thought I'd finally found a situation just now. People with the same problem. I changed it, and the game was doing good. But what do you know? The same problem happened again after awhile. I really, really hate computers!

[Mcninjaguy]

lets see if your card is artifacting by using ATI tools
http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/

and the graphics card temps
http://www.filehippo.com/download_gpuz/

[pharoah]

Originally Posted by Bloodloss

It looks exactly like this, by the way.

that pic looks like artifacting to me.which is a sign of a graphics card being bad.