Games crash every single time

[B4RK0D3]

This problem is driving me insane. Every single (modern 3D) game that I play crashes to the desktop at a random time. Sometimes I'll get an hour or two of play, but most of the time it's right in the middle of the action no matter what. First, the screen will freeze and the audio will continue to play, then after about 30 seconds it will just quit and drop to the desktop with no sound hangs or anything.

I consider myself pretty savvy, but this is a strange issue that has been following me through multiple installs of Windows and video card swaps. This leads me to believe it's a hardware problem. Is there a dump or log file that can tell me where the problem is occurring? I appreciate any advice!

Details:
Windows 7
Abit nForce4 Fatal1ty AN8 SLI / Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 4000+
eVGA GeForce 7900GTX
4GB DDR2

 

[TemjinGold]

What power supply do you have, Mr. Savvy?

 

[dfuze]

What are the temps of your CPU and video card when you are idle and gaming? Does your case have good airflow?

 

[nboy22]

If I were you, I would also go into my device manager and right click my sound card and disable it.

A lot of game crashing issues have been caused by those low quality realtek onboard soundcards.

Just play the game for a while with no sound if you can, and see if it crashes with the soundcard disabled. If it does not crash, that means that the sound card is most likely your issue and in that case I would recommend purchasing an ASUS soundcard or something that is NOT realtek.

 

[Devilpapaya]

If I were you, I would also go into my device manager and right click my sound card and disable it.

A lot of game crashing issues have been caused by those low quality realtek onboard soundcards.

Just play the game for a while with no sound if you can, and see if it crashes with the soundcard disabled. If it does not crash, that means that the sound card is most likely your issue and in that case I would recommend purchasing an ASUS soundcard or something that is NOT realtek.

Not saying its not the issue, but I've been using my onboard realtek card for years with no issue .

At anyrate you could get the event viewer and see if there are any errors showing up in there. Could also run a memtest just for fun.

 

[wanderer27]

My first thought is the PSU may be fading out as well.

As mentioned, the Sound device could also be the culprit.
Since your MB has a Sound device built in, make sure it is disabled in BIOS if you're using a PCI Sound card.
Alternatively, you can try enabling the MB Sound device and remove your PCI card.
Don't forget to remove/install Sound drivers for whichever of the configs you are testing.

Not sure about Win7 and the nForce4 chips, but I believe you still need to have these Chipset drivers installed as well.

These are where I'd start, followed by RAM testing.

 

[B4RK0D3]

Thanks for the input, guys.

All of my temperatures are within normal range, and my case is well-ventilated. The interior ambient temperature usually floats around 75 F.

I will definitely try disabling my sound card, I didn't think of that. It's quite a possibility since last night, the sound cut out completely in the middle of a game. I'll also check my PSU rail voltages when I get home... It's one of those OCZ 650W Modstream modular power supplies from a few years ago, so it could also be the culprit.

I'll post results when I get home and am able to run some tests. Thanks again.

 

[B4RK0D3]

I disabled and uninstalled sound drivers... problem still occurred. Checked the Event Viewer and no errors related to the game I was running, even though it crashed. Ran chkdsk on all drives, defragged, updated chipset and video card drivers, checked rail voltages -- and the problem persists.

Any other ideas?

 

[TemjinGold]

I've had a similar problem before and it was my video card. Basically, every time it ramped up due to the strain put on by modern games in certain sequences, it would exhibit the same symptoms. To rule out heat, have you tried to force your card's fan to 100% to see if that fixes the problem?

 

[dfuze]

Have you tried using older video card drivers? Maybe the newer drivers aren't playing nice with your older board (socket 939 it looks like)