Video Crash in every game

[BadAcid]

I recently ordered a complete new system based around monarch's combo deal. My parts were
DFI LanParty nf4 Ultra-D
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice
4x512MB OCZ PC3200 2.5-3-3-7

also ordered from monarch were:
Connect3D X800XL PCI-e
NEC ND-3540A DVD+/-RW DL

I have a Coolermaster Centurion 5 (120mm and 80mm fan) with an Enermax 535W AX PSU with 2x6-pin and Active PFC.
120 GB WD EIDE HDD
300 GB SeaGate EIDE HDD

My problem is thus:
I am currently running Windows 2000 Profession with Service Pack 4, n-Force 4 6.66 drivers, and various other drivers and programs that aren't related. When I play games, they always crash. Desktop runs fine, but after various lengths of time in game, the game causes my system to lock up (BF2 I can play for about an hour if I'm lucky, but FarCry crashes in under a minute, HL2 also crashed fairly quickly). I've tried running various drivers (Catalyst 5.1, 5.6, 5.7, performing an uninstall followed by driver cleaner while in Safe Mode before installing new drivers) and the problem arises in each of them. Sometimes, with BF2, if I wait about 2 minutes, I'll have the VPU recover error come up, and the game will be minimized, but still running. (I also ran memtest overnight last night ~7 hours, 8 passes no errors)
I'm thinking this is a defective card. I will most likely RMA unless someone comes up with a possible solution, and quickly.

 

[sieistganzfett]

hi. i agree that its most likely a defective card. you can try 3 more things first to make sure.. 1. inside of windows run superpi at 32M if it bombs out its not the video cards fault. 2. do you have all of the updates for win2k installed from the updates site?
3. can you run something older like 3dmark2001se for a long time without the problems? if it even bails on an older 2d mark go right to rma'ing the video card.

 

[BadAcid]

Update: Super Pi worked, took ~50 minutes total.
It seems like OpenGL games work fine. (I tried Doom III - 2 timedemo demo1 runs and about 5 minutes in game, Natural Selection without AA worked without crashing for the half hour I played, didn't try it with AA)

 

[sieistganzfett]

ok. i still think its your video card. run something overnight. or for 4 hrs+ such as doom3 or 3dmark2003. my fav is 3dmark03 for burn ins..