My compter crashes during some of the more grphically demanding games I run. What happens is the screen turnes into a bunch or garbled colors (it reminds me of how a Nintendo or Sega somtimes crashed), and the cursor becomes a smaller block of garbled colors and it can still move sometimes, but the computer will not respond to anything and I have to turn it off and back on to fix it. I think it is a hardware prob because I've tried to update the drivers and it didn't work. I seems to crash the most on Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, Oblivion, FEAR, and Age of Empires 3. SimCity 4 and Sims 2 work fine. My grapics card is a EVGA nVidia 6800GT AGP. I am about to try switching it out with a PNY nVidia 6600 AGP I have to see if it really is the card. It'll really piss me off if it is because I payed good $$$ for the 6800. If anyone has suggestions, feel free...

try reinstalling DirectX 9

Fresh drivers from the Nvidia site is the first place to start. You may need to uninstall all old NVidia drivers first. This is usually not needed, but when you are having trouble, it is best to remove variables.

Your description fits on my FX5600 at the time when it waved goodbye.
Maybe it isn't lost yet, I'd say overheating is the problem.

My friend encountered the same problems but with an ATI card, but he didn't know it was a heating problem and he slowly fried the poor thing. If the card is overheating its best just to leave it and get another heat sink and fan for it or else you'll slowly fry it.

Edit: If you haven't damaged it already that is.

I got the card off ebay with a bunch of other things at the same time (motherboard, cpu, ram, HD) and I'd still be happy with it because eveything else works fine. I honeastly think that overheating is my best lead or the fact that it is just defective. If the card is defective then I will probably buy the best nVidia AGP, the 7800GS in a few months. The 6800 already has a fan, so what can be done to further cool my GPU?

Things that come to mind would be.
Keep the case open or (might be overkill) underclock.

The fan might be dying. Or the fins dusty. For the latter, use an air compressor. For the former... um.

Ah that reminds me, usually behind the sticker on the fan theres a hole where you can spray some WD40 (or some other lubricant). Remember to stick the sticker back or else the insides will catch dust and grind to a halt.

I've had phenominal difficulty with Roller Coaster Tycoon 3. It appears to be about as inefficient as inefficient gets in terms of using a video card.

I trashed my X600 AIW a few days ago for an nVidia7700. Went from 3 fps to about 20 on RC3, from 30 to 150 on Railroad Tycoon 3, and similarly on Civ 4, which of course isn't a big graphics-buster.

Most of the problems I had related to the ATI driver. Expletive driver. Repeated crash/recover/crash/recover... BUT only on Roller Coaster tycoon. ONLY when the "extended coaster" or the "gigacoaster" were loaded. Maybe others, but it stood out with those.

But, mine were clearly driver issues. It sounds like you've got a hardware-run-amok issue. Make sure cooling is working first-off.

Good news! I poped open my case and saw that, in my stupidity, I had not given myself much room between my graphics and sound cards so I moved all my PCI cards to the slots furthest from the AGP slot and then took the expansion slot covers off in between and left the top off the case. I just played AOE 3 for 3 hours on the highest grapics settings without even a hiccup. (I could only get about 10 to 15 minutes before) I will probably get a blower-fan and put it right next to the card in the future. The mystery is solved for now. Thanx!

Glad to hear it's fixed. Now treat your grafix card kindly as it has went through a literal hell when you played your games

Update: FEAR still crashes. There is a nVidia dashboard in the control panel that has a temp monitor and it glitches around 85 degrees C. It said it should be good untill 100 - 120 degrees. Somthing is kinda fishy here. (It idles at about 50 - 55 decgees C)

... uh, I think no processor (CPU, GPU, whathaveyoU) is supposed to run at over 100°C. That's boiling water temperature, you know. The max temp for a Barton-core AthlonXP IIRC is 85°C at which the thermal-breaker will cut in and hangs all program (to save the CPU).

I smell money spent in my future. Either some fan or water-cooling device for the card I have or another graphics card altogether.

Could be worse. Let's see...
- You changed the fan.
- The GPU dies anyway.
- Change to a new card.
- GPU starts overheating again.
- Change cooling system of GPU.
- Helps but not much. You go ask a friend.
- Friend tells you that "your casing's air circulation sucks." You buy a new casing.
- Some cables are too short. You buy new cables.
- CPU fan got shifted. The CPU got fried
- ...
- You throw your PC out the window and buy a Mac.



(of course, I'm extremely exaggerating, but )

CPU overheating has been ruled out?

try to add intake and outtake fans (if not there yet), they are usefull anyway, even if you eventually change the gpu.

Its best you try and fix the current problem before moving on to a new graphics card, or else you will encounter the same problems with the likely chance of burning out a brand new graphics card. Although newer cards have better heatsinks...


I guess, unless the heat from the graphic card just sits there and gets sucked in to the CPU HSF and doesnt heat exchange properly.

Like smok3 said, intake and outtake fans will help loads since moving the soundcard away helped...unless it picked up somekind of interference before hand...

A bit OT (and also OTT) but look at this.
http://www.zalman.co.kr/eng/product/view.asp?idx=151
RRP is about £740

£740 for a casing!!!!

I don't know whether to or to ...