Computer Freezing in games

[Junin]

In several games I've been playing recently, my computer will sometimes lock up. I can still hear the sound effects that I'd heard at the time of the lock up. It's happened in UT2k3, Blackhawk Down, and others, but so far it has not happened in Warcraft3/expansion, nor in Counterstrike (but it HAS happened in HLDM). The lock ups are very irregular. Sometimes I can play for an hour without it locking up, and sometimes I can be playing for a couple of minutes before it locks up.

Here are my system specs:
P4 2.4c @ 3.02ghz - 1.6 Vcore
Asus P4P800 Deluxe
Corsair PC3200 - Two 512 meg sticks
Sapphire Radeon 9700 Pro
Audigy2
Omega drivers 3.7

Does anyone know what might be causing the lockups? Or a list of things I might check?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Unforgiven]

well you are overclocking so heat could be a factor. since you still hear the sound, try taking out the sound card and seeing if that makes any difference. i know someone who had this issue with the audigy 2 and had to flash their mobo with the latest bios update to make it stop. it just started happening outta nowhere just as yours has.

 

[AngelWingsRawr]

Get rid of the Omega drivers, I've heard of them causing lockups often.

 

[Junin]

During an overnight session of 3dmark 03, my CPU temperature went no higher than 50c.
I will try using the normal Catalyst 3.7 drivers, but I believe it happened a few times when I had Catalyst 3.6.

I was thinking that if I upped my voltage by 0.5 or so, the stability might increase (as well as the temperature). Would that be something you would try?

Also, I think I will experiment a little with the Audigy2 card.

Thanks for the help so far, guys.

 

[Twista]

try upping the vcore and ram voltage up alittle.

 

[Junin]

Just finished trying out the Catalyst 3.7s in place of the Omegas. Still locking up.

 

[Hossenfeffer]

Why not try going at stock voltage first to see if the overclocking is at least part of the issue?

 

[Junin]

Ah, I forgot to say that the 1.6 IS stock voltage.

 

[Hossenfeffer]

Originally posted by: Junin
Ah, I forgot to say that the 1.6 IS stock voltage.

My bad. Well, what about dropping back to stock speed for the CPU?

 

[Junin]

Sigh.. My dream of having a 3+ghz machine.. You've crushed it.

 

[LesPaul]

You might try relaxing your memory timings too.. That might enable you to keep your 3+ GHz CPU frequency. Overclocking introduces a whole slew of more things to check when troubleshooting system instablilities. I'd recommend setting all of your memory/fsb/cpu settings back to default for trouble shooting purposes.. See if its still randomly rebooting/locking up then go from there. If that clears up the instability, then you know the problem lies in your overclock, whether it be CPU, RAM, MOBO, PSU, BIOS setting or a combination of those..