Games crashing w/Sapphire X1950XT

[puck]

System specs:

Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 rev 3.3
E4300
2x1GB Super Talent DDR2 800
Zalman 460W PSU, 2x12v rails are 16A & 18A

Ok, so I've had nothing but problems with this X1950XT for awhile now. I got it new almost a year ago and I only played Half Life 2 for a few months with no issues. Then once I started playing more recent games like Bioshock and Crysis, and now COD4 do I have issues.

What happens is after 5-10 minutes of playing those games, the screen goes black and the PC hangs. Temps are not an issue, ATI Tool shows temps are always below 60C under load and the CPU is pretty cool too. I leave the case open so I doubt case temps are an issue. I've googled extensively and found a few posts with similar issues, some people had driver issues, some people had memory issues, or PSU issues.

Dropping the game resolution has helped some, and using MSconfig to kill off most services and startup programs has helped some. But the crashing still eventually happens. I even crash in 3DMark06 and with the ATI Tool renderer unless I underclock 20% and even undervolt the graphics memory by about 0.5%. I think I'm at 420MHz core, 468MHz memory and 2.0778V memory voltage now. And I still crash in COD4. I've tried almost every version of CCC drivers out in the last year, makes no difference.

Is this a sign of a bad video card, or is it possible the PSU is not supplying enough current or is just bad? How can I tell if my system memory is the culprit? Anything else I should look into?

EDIT: Forgot to mention this is in XP.

 

[puck]

Please any help would be appreciated.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

A more powerful PSU would definitely help narrow things down. If it has a warranty, the priority is to troubleshoot this before it runs out. If a better PSU doesn't resolve the issue, other questions include- Have you been completely cleaning out the old drivers with something like drivercleaner, before installing the new ones? System is running at stock settings, mobo drivers are updated? I'd memtest the ram too. Last resort before RMA would be a fresh, clean install, or just install fresh on a different HDD or partition for testing purposes.

 

[puck]

Ok, I figured out my problem, hopefully someone else will benefit from this. Temps were the problem, but not GPU or CPU. I have big coolers (non stock) on both that keep things cool.

However, the X1950 series (and maybe others?) have a small heatsink on the voltage regulator near the power plug on the back of the card. This heatsink normally gets airflow across it with the stock cooler, but my thermalright HR03 cooler provides no cooling to it. And on top of that, the thermal glue on the heatsink had come loose, so not only was it not getting airflow, the heatsink wasn't even attached!

I noticed with ATI tools app that everytime the VR-t got above 70c the system would crash. After reattaching the heatsink, and plugging in a front case fan to pull in cool air (which luckily goes right over the heatsink), the VR temp barely gets above 55c now!

No more crashing in games! Time to overclock it now!

 

[DAPUNISHER]

:thumbsup: Good deal. Nice job finding the culprit too.