Games crashing

[KoolAidMan]

My computer runs fine for the most part, but when I play Team Fortress 2 or Warhammer online I have been having trouble with them randomly crashing. Sometimes just the game crashes, sometimes the computers locks up, and sometimes it goes to desktop but with all the video settings and colors stuck at minimum. I can play both games with no problems until it happens, and I can't figure out any sort of pattern. Sometimes it does it 20 seconds in, sometimes I play for over an hour.

I thought it might be overheating at first, but I have added fans and fixed up the airflow and I can't see any difference. I know my RAM, video card and CPU are all borderline with the minimum requirements for these, so I figure they need upgraded.

I have
Windows XP
Gigabyte GA-M55SLI-S4 Motherboard
1 Gig of ram (getting another gig)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+
NVidia GeForce 7600 GT 256.0 MB

If anyone can suggest suitable upgrades, or even just help me decide what is causing the problem, that would be much appreciated. I am looking to spend at most 250 dollars, less if possible.
thanks

 

[letired]

What is your power supply like? This seems like it could be your video card not getting enough power...

 

[KoolAidMan]

I hadn't thought of that. I have a

Rhino ATX12V RX400Y 400W

I don't know if any of that matters other than the 400W but I figure it won't hurt. I couldn't find it on newegg, but I used their calculator and it said I would need about 377W. It seems like that could be a bit too close, but I'm not sure.

thanks for helping, any more advice you can give would be appreciated.


edit: ok so I noticed that with the new ram I want itll put me over 400W. maybe I'll just get a good power supply with the new ram and see how things go.

 

[oynaz]

Try a Memtest86 run.

400 watt is enough for you (that Newegg PSU calculator has a massive safety margin, or perhaps they just want you to give them more money), but the PSU might be the culprit anyway.

 

[katank]

Try swapping out your vid card if you can. Borrow a friend's or something. I had the exact same symptoms with my 7600GT.

 

[faxon]

what driver version are you using with your 7600GT? its probabpy your PSU anyway as a 400 watt PSU is pushing it, but you might want to update your drivers and see if that helps. if anything it wil help as the new drivers usually have something new for each game in them.

 

[KoolAidMan]

I unplugged my cd roms and at least Team Fortress 2 is working, so I think it was the power supply. I still may upgrade the video card though, so if anyone has a suggestion for that i'd appreciate it.

thanks for all the help

oh and I have the latest drivers, thats one of the only things i knew to try on my own =P

 

[faxon]

lol fair enough. your GPU is going to be super slow for WAR once it launches, what kind of price range were you looking to spend total on upgrades? this will give us and idea of how much more power you will need, and also tell us how much power your gpu will use, since the higher performance ones = higher power usage as usual lol.

ed nvm read your post again. gimme a bit and i will see what i can come up with for upgrades



ed2:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814102747 Radeon HD4850 $180 + $20 MIR

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16817163108 Silverstone Zeus 650 watt PSU $70

those 2 products should get the job done along with that extra gig of ram, but you really are going to want to look into upgrading your CPU soon as well. MMOs tend to run into huge CPU walls a lot what with all the stuff going on around you, and an X2 4200+ will run the game, but you might not have the greatest experience ever. if you do upgrade though, that PSU should cover you for a new mobo, cpu, and ram just fine. the only place i would watch your power usage is if you start expanding into multiple GPU solutions or you turn your computer into a file server with tons of hard drives in it.

 

[KoolAidMan]

so if I got these and a CPU around the same caliber as the video card, what would be the top end of things I would be able to run? I would love to be able to do mass effect, but I figured I was pretty far off of that, but if I upgraded all of these, (video card, psu, cpu, ram) would I be able to?

I'm sure i'm getting annoying, but what would be a good choice for a cpu? I might have to upgrade these all one at a time, but if it will be a substantial upgrade it would be worth it.

you guys all rock btw

 

[faxon]

if you got that card, an e8500, a p35 mobo, 2x2gb of ram, and a PSU, im betting you could play crysis pretty well at medium at lower resolutions just fine. if you want a quad core for some other things that support quads better than duals, like encoding audio/video, 3D rendering, ect, you could get a Q6600 for the same price as the e8500. e8500 will be better for gaming though, not to mention a better overclocker. if you get one, make absolute 100% sure you are getting one with E0 stepping!!! these are the latest batch of chips, and are superior in every way over the older 2 batches, not to mention thet OC like champs, even more so than the older ones did before

 

[Buyaboat]

Hey guys I've just bought a new computer with all the parts separate so i got my brother to build the computer for me (he's done it before) but i think i have a very similar problem to KoolAidman. I run Team Fortress 2 and i encounter problems every time. Sometimes it will just freeze at the first page after the weird valve thing (the page with the same picture as the main menu) only it just freezes there and i have to turn off the computer with the switch cos task manager wont come up. But then some times it will go all the way until i join a server then when i pick a class it will crash straight to desktop. And then just to annoy me it will play fine for about an hour and then crash to desktop. Also when i play Company of heroes it will play for about 10 minutes then will crash to desktop. I can run Counterstrike source fine the other day but i know that's not the most demanding game in the world. This computer should be able to run all those games no problem. This is my specs:

processor : Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600

motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P35-S3G

RAM : RAM: 2GB (2x1GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400

graphics card : gigabyte ATI 4850 HD 512mb

Power supply : Power Supply: 580W HiperPower

Hard Drive : Hard drive : Western digital 320GB 16mb cache

DVD drive : dvd writer drive: Samsung

I have tried the latest drivers from the Radeon website and the couple before that one so i don't think it is the drivers. Plz reply ASAP guys because i have had problems the whole time i have had this computer. Thank you

 

[Buyaboat]

Also guys i am running windows xp with service pack 3 installed. The Intel processor quad core is 2.4 ghz for each core and i have 2GB of RAM. I think this computer will be able to run a lot of games on full settings but maybe not the most newest game (supreme commander, Crysis of course!) Thanks guys