Games freezing with GeForce 3

[eviltoon]

New system 1.2 Athlon,256 ddr,A7A mthrbrd,Asus GeForce 3. Anyone got any thoughts as to why every game I play (Vampire: Masquerade, Sacrifice, Sin, Diablo 2,), except Unreal Tournament which ticks along just fine, freezes after about 5-10 minutes of play. My only option is to reboot.
The guys who buildt the machine said it could be anything and that they would try some things out. Doesn't fill me with confidence. Photoshop and Bryce don't have any problems, so I'm not convincded it's a memory thing.

 

[gunf1ghter]

What OS are you running?

letting someone else build your PC isn't always a good idea... if these guys knew what they were doing you wouldn't have these problems.

Most hard locks as you are describing involve two devices that don't support ACPI trying to share in IRQ. Most commonly the sound card is involved.

The problem could also be caused by running an outdated driver, not having DX8.0a loaded.

The list goes on and on.

 

[12thMan]

Just a thought:

I had purchased a GeForce 256 several months ago and experienced similar problems, I replaced it with a GF2MX card and have had no problems. I say that to say this, I think I had problems with power use. I think a power drop was crashing the card, due to me having lots of periferals in the box and a 250W PSU.

The GF3 (a hunch here) uses lots o' power. Make sure your not having a drop in volts. Only way I know to check is unplugging everything but the necessary items (RAM CPU Vidcard HD CDROM)

Otherwise, as the other fella said, could be anything. Heat, conflict with other stuff, etc.

Do you have the newest drivers from Nvidia? that may help. DX8?

Good Luck!

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My Boxes

 

[shOOter9]

My Counter-strike was crashing every 30 minutes with my GTS and I went and bought a 350 watt enermax and upgraded the drivers to 12.60.....now I can play all day!

 

[FireStarOmega]

Try the latest drivers 12.90, they are so great and offer a samll but noticeble performance gain. Try them out and like everyone else said makesure you have DX8 and that you are not overclocking the card too much. Maybe your friend who built the pc overclocked the card way too much and that can always be a problem, and ofcourse check everything!!

 

[Altima]

I had the same problem, try turning your agp to 2x worked for me

 

[k0w]

"...trying to share in IRQ. Most commonly the sound card is involved..."

- Quite right, try moving the soundcard to a different PCI slot.
That should stop that nasty IRQ monster.

-k0w

 

[k0w]

"...trying to share in IRQ. Most commonly the sound card is involved..."

- Quite right, try moving the soundcard to a different PCI slot.
That should stop that nasty IRQ monster.

-k0w

 

[Mem]

Also disable all video shadowing in Bios,your problem sounds like IRQ or maybe PSU problem, I presume your CPU is ok on cooling.

 

[StarRover]

I decided to buy the Enermax 430W PSU because of my Tbird and video card,burner,Dvd player,2 HDD's,floppy,LS120,extra case fans,etc, and this eliminated any PSU problems. 300W just didn't cut it anymore.