PC crash - video card related?

[stavesacre03]

Recent new build as follows: Vista Home Premium 64 bit, Q6600 G0 at 3.2, Tuniq Tower, Gigabyte P35C-DS3R mobo, 2gb Crucial Ballistix at 2.2, x1950xt stock, Antec Trio 650 PS, onboard sound, one HDD.

System is Orthos stable for 13+ hours, memtest stable, temps at 68C under load (per Everest), etc. All latest drivers, Vista updates, and BIOS.

I had no problems until playing Bioshock, which works smooth, high framrates, etc, but will randomly crash the PC completely (no BSOD--I can hear sound looping sometimes, and then the system completely powers off). I tried various things such as reducing game settings, reverting to stock speeds, etc, all to no avail. At this point, I've given up on Bioshock due to frustration with these crashes--which sometimes happens after 5 minutes and sometimes happens after 45 minuts. At the time, I wrote this off as being a game problem and I hoped for a patch.

But then I tried TF2, which also crashed in the exact same manner under recommended settings (all high with AA/AF enabled). At this point, I'm thinking maybe my power supply is at fault, but here's the kicker: When I run TF2 in windowed mode, with AA off and AF set to trilinear, I can play for hours on end with no crashing. I can't imagine that the power supply would be the problem if it works with game settings slightly changed...

So, what is causing the crashing with full settings? Is the video card to blame??? Motherboard??? Thanks in advance for any feedback. Let me know if I can offer more information.

 

[Pez D Spencer]

I'm not sure about Vista, but XP has an option to disable automatic restarts after failure. I'd find that in Vista and turn it on. That way you might be able to get a BSOD instead of a reboot and then you can analyze the stop error code and possibly figure out what's going on.

Here's a good page that explains stop errors:

http://aumha.org/a/stop.htm

Good luck. Hope this helps.

 

[stavesacre03]

I believe I tried that at one point, but it is worth checking into again. Thanks for the link.

 

[nitromullet]

You mentioned the power supply, but not what kind of PSU you are running...

 

[stavesacre03]

Antec Trio 650

 

[stavesacre03]

OK, here's an update. I swapped power supplies with a spare I had, but same results. I downloaded 3dmark06 and ran two cycles with no crashes, but tried again this morning and crashed on the second test. I left CCC open during the testing and saw that my idle GPU temp was 53C and after the first test was 90C. Are these temps too high? I e-mailed Gecube to see about an RMA. Anyone else have any other ideas?