Games Problem

[Nachos]

Every time I'm playing a game (Age of Mythology: Titans, CS:S, Metin 2 (MMORPG) after playing 15 or 30 minutes my computer crashes. It happens with all the games. My RAM is more than enough, so I shouldn't have problems.I don't think it is about my video card. It doesn't matter the resolution, it happens anyway.

Also, every time it crashes, the music stops, which usually doesn't happen.

Any ideas?

 

[Venetia]

Is it only when playing games with 3D rendering?

i.e. do PURE 2D games run fine?

 

[Nachos]

yeah, only with 3d games.

 

[Tohsaka]

What video card do you have?

 

[Venetia]

That sounds like a video card problem, friend. The 3D rendering hardware is malfunctioning and giving your machine errors, which causes it to crash.

1.) Have you installed all the latest drivers?

2.) Are you playing games with requirements beyond your specs, or close to it?

3.) Install software which measures the temperature of your CPU and Video Card (unless you already have it). What are the readings while rendering 3D gfx? (it could be overheating)

4.) What is the make of your video card, and how old is it? How long has it been since you went in there with a can of air and a swab and cleaned all the gook and dust off it?

 

[Zethus]

3d games used to crash for me when i overclocked my pc...

 

[Tohsaka]

I might add, what OS are you on? I know XP SP3 ups the Ante in the resources you need.

 

[Nachos]

.) I've downloaded them from www.nvidia.com.

2.) I'm playing game matching my computer specs.

3.) Don't know.

4.) It's and old one but It has card accelerator with lets me play games in Hi-res.
I've cleaned it last week.


Win XP Service Pack 4. NVIDIA GeForce4 440 MX 120 MB.


The problems started last months.

 

[DeM0nFiRe]

There is no Windows XP Servie Pack4

I would say uninstall your video card completely and then re install it. That fixies like 80% of video card problems.

 

[Tohsaka]

Card Accelerator? That might be related.

 

[Venetia]

Yeah, if you don't know how to properly monitor your temperatures or your clocking, you'll definitely need to disable any accelerators you have.

That card is pretty outdated, it could be that it's just on its way out.

If your card is made by EVGA, you can have it RMA'd for a brand new one at no cost to you. EVGA boasts a lifetime guarantee on their cards. Nice thing about EVGA, too, is that when RMA'ing hardware, they send you the new hardware first and you use their labels and box to send the old one back. So there's no downtime between cards.

Though I'm not sure if that model's by EVGA, so just check.

 

[___]

If by "accelerator" you mean an overclocking tool, that is definitely your issue right there. You cannot, I repeat, cannot, overclock a video card without adequate knowledge of cooling. It's not something you should be tampering with if you're overclocking and it hasn't even occurred to you that your crashes may be related. What you need to do is disable overclocking and uninstall that tool before you fry your video card if it's not already too late. You may have managed to burn in defects in the gpu or ram which don't go away even after you bring the clocks back down.

With an ancient card like a Geforce 4 honestly I'm surprised it's still alive at all (I have a geforce 4 ti on its last limbs in a linux box but I've barely used it since I bought it many years ago), but it is not smart to take cards that old and overclock them. All processors, silicon chips in general, have a lifespan which is mostly indicated by heat exposure. Even at optimal temperatures you can't reasonably expect a chip to live more than 6-10 years, but overclocking them adds a lot of extra internal heat even when you're cooling it adequately, which drastically reduces lifespan. So you get a great video card and OC it with good cooling you can expect 2-4 years of life, and your card is already past that time so what you're doing is sort of abusing it on its way out.

Stop abusing that poor old dog and invest 50 whole bucks into a newer video card if you need a little more performance. If you get yourself a used GeForce 6 you'll easily triple its performance, and I bought one on ebay for $50 a little while ago. Just make sure you get AGP (or PCI if you have a PCI card, ew, which is *not* to be confused with PCI-express).

 

[___]

Oh @ven: I don't think evga existed when the gf4 series was in production, but I may be wrong on that. I just know the oldest evga card I've ever carried or come across was a 5 series.

 

[Venetia]

Oh @ven: I don't think evga existed when the gf4 series was in production, but I may be wrong on that. I just know the oldest evga card I've ever carried or come across was a 5 series.

Ah. I was an ATI girl for a while until the 8800GTX, that's when I stumbled onto EVGA. Though now with the R4870, I'm back on ATI's bandwagon again :3

 

[Nachos]

Yeah I'll buy a new one.
I know it doesn't have anything to do, but yesterday I erased like 5gb of crap and now it runs faster and I could play like1 hour without crasing.

 

[___]

Oh @ven: I don't think evga existed when the gf4 series was in production, but I may be wrong on that. I just know the oldest evga card I've ever carried or come across was a 5 series.

Ah. I was an ATI girl for a while until the 8800GTX, that's when I stumbled onto EVGA. Though now with the R4870, I'm back on ATI's bandwagon again :3

Yeah the evga 8800s are pretty good quality cards. I wasn't impressed with them up until that point, as they were the cheapest brand we carried and cheap typically = low quality, but the 8800 at least is running really well in my brother's desktop, benching a lot higher than I expected. I haven't really kept up on hardware since I don't work with it anymore except as favors for friends and stuff, but I have been favoring nvidia lately just because their drivers actually work well and consistently in Linux, which is a lot more than can be said for ATI.

@nahchito: if your drive was nearly full some of your shitty performance may have been due to not having enough space for virtual memory, so it's conceivable that might have helped. you should defrag as well if you haven't done that yet, it's always a good idea after doing some heavy duty cleaning. I'd pick up Crap Cleaner and run that as well before a defrag just to clean out any temp files and other junk you may have missed. CCleaner is actually really handy and reliable for that kind of stuff, I've been using it for a long time.

 

[skirtboy]

Indeed. The last time my computer started to struggle, CCleaner found 10 gigs of old temp files.

 

[Nachos]

Thanks guys. I also use WinASO Reg Optimizer and Reg clearen and they seem to speed up my computer.

 

[Venetia]

Yeah the evga 8800s are pretty good quality cards. I wasn't impressed with them up until that point, as they were the cheapest brand we carried and cheap typically = low quality,

huh? the 8800GTX models, in the height of their day, cost about $550 brand new from the manufacturer ....

You're probably thinking of GTS, which is considerably worse.

Hell, even NOW 8800GTX's cost nearly $400, and they haven't been top of the line in a long time.

 

[Glitchfinder]

Thanks guys. I also use WinASO Reg Optimizer and Reg clearen and they seem to speed up my computer.

CCleaner doesn't just work with the registry though. It works with all kinds of temporary files. I use it regularly, and I'm still often clearing out a gig or more of temporary files alone every time I clean.