System Crash

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LeroyHarr

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I recently built my own pc and everything seems to be working fine except for the fact that my system keeps crashing during gameplay (Grand Theft Auto IV).

My System Specs are:

AMD Phenom ii X6 Processor 1090T Black Edition. (3.2 GHz, 9.0MB cache and is an Socket AM3.)
Motherboard: Asus Crosshair IV Formula 890FX/SB50
RAM: 4GB Kingston Hyper X DDR3 1600mhz
Nvidia 8600GT 1GB graphics Card.
PSU: Arctic Power 700 watt.
HDD: Western Digital Cavier Black 500GB.
Antec 300 computer case.

As I said up top I built this computer myself and installed windows 7 home premium 64bit onto it.
Loaded up the computer and all seemed to be fine. Internet connection was excellent. Then I decided to install Grand Theft Auto IV onto my system and it all seemed to work fine until about 50 minutes into gameplay. The game started to lag, then froze and then these really saturated colours appeared on the screen, then the speakers made a weird buzzing noise, stopped and went directly to a blue screen displaying quite a lot of writing but unfortuanately this writing was not readable as the screen dissappeared very quickly and the computer restarted itself and booted normally. I did go onto the nvidia site and download the latest driver for the graphics card. One thing that does concern me is that my RAM has a maximum frequency of 1600Mhz but in the bios its set to 1333Mhz and when this is changed up to 1600Mhz it automatically changes the voltages to suit the RAM. But that doesnt seem to be the cause of the crashing as I changed it back to 1333Mhz and it still crashes. Could someone please help me out.

Any Information would be a great help.
Thanks.
 
Have you tried monitoring your temps? Maybe the gf card is overheating and just bombing out?
Get GPU-Z and set it to monitor temps while in background and log to file. Then play your game. If it bombs check the log file at the end for your temps.
 
Thanks for the hint.

I ran the GPU-Z program and played the game and once again it crashed after 2 minutes.

I had a look at the log and it recorded a start temp of 48 and a crash temp of 61.
Do you think that this is causing the crashes? What would you suggest?
 
LeroyHarr said:
Thanks for the hint.

I ran the GPU-Z program and played the game and once again it crashed after 2 minutes.

I had a look at the log and it recorded a start temp of 48 and a crash temp of 61.
Do you think that this is causing the crashes? What would you suggest?
Click to expand...

I doubt that that temperature would crash your pc. If your gpu has a fan, check if is working.
Download this free program to stress test your graphics:
http://freestone-group.com/video-card-stability-test.htm

I usually try to let it run for an hour or so or the length of time the games takes to crash your pc.

I would think psu or ram or driver would be your likely suspect. Test your ram with memtest.

The psu I stress test with any software that will stress cpu's. At the same time I connect to psu with multi-meters and test 5v & 12v lines. This I do up to 3 hours.

Saying that, if this is the only game that crashes the pc, you will have to look at game compatibility and drivers.
 
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Does it only crash during this one game or does it crash during any game? I would start by integrity checking the memory (using memtest86).
 
thanks, Im going to be trying all of the things that you guys recommened. If it works I'll let you guys know.
 
Ya my initial though was heat since it cause problems for be before, since my fan would stop spinning on my gf card (old 4850) and then stuff would artifact then restart.
I doubt it is memory but definitely do a few stress tests.
Intelburntest is very quick and gives a good indication of cpu and ram stability. (works on amd as well) http://downloads.guru3d.com/IntelBurnTest-v2.3-download-2047.html (use the maximum ram setting on 5 runs)
Then you can use furmark to test graphics card. http://downloads.guru3d.com/FurMark-v1.6.5-download-1965.html (use full screen on stability test for about a minute)
If all pass then i'm sure it's a software issue (game or drivers) as said previously.
 
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I have tried everything that you guys recommended to me and it seems that everything is working fine, but the game still crashes.

Should I try to download some new drivers?
 
Can you try to swap out the psu even if it is not a 700w?
Is it only the 1 game that crashes the system?
Do you know what the cpu temp is when the system crash?
 
So it's just that game that crashes

Edit: I know i get heavy game lag when my cpu hits around the 55 mark so could be that
 
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I will Install another game shortly just to make sure that not all games crash.

I have an older psu that is a 400 watt... should i try that?
 
Stress test your rig with something like Prime95, Everest, Superpi etc
 
reinstall your windows with your drivers only, not any other 3rd party apps, install the game and check if it lasts, if it survives, then there is probably a problem with a driver, but try that first. keep me posted on how your system performs after the install.
 
hey guys

just an update, i installed another game and everything seems to be working fine, im guessing its an incompatibility between GTA IV and Windows 7

Thanks for all the help!
 
Google GTA IV and Windows 7 , it is a problem, try a few of the fixes. Thats best advice i can offer
 
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