I need some advice from some of you who are more computer literate than I am. A few months ago, I upgraded my computer in several areas. In order to save some money, I did all the wiring, etc, myself. Now, I'm not a technician by any means, but after a day and a lot of swearing, everything seemed to work. However, when I installed Oblivion, it crashed a lot. Now, at first, I thought this was a problem exclusive to Oblivion, because it's not like that's a bug free game, but then I started having the same problems with Madden and Hitman. Now, I figured since I could play non-graphical games like Football Manager and BG2 for hours on end, it was an issue with the graphics card. So I take it back to the shop, and the case was pretty poorly cooled, so they redid the wiring and added some more fans, and I just got it back. However, it does the same thing. What will happen, is the 3d games will run fine for awhile, then the frame will freeze, and a little later the sound goes all static, and only a hard reboot will work.

Two other strange problems having to do with the graphics card also manifested themselves. It's a brand-spanking new card, an X1600, but it totally chugs 3DMark 06 (like, 12 FPS at the best on any test.) Also, when I try to get the latest ATI drivers, it won't finish the installation. It just stops, even though the CPU, etc, is still working fine.

I'm sort of at my wit's end. I can provide the tech details if you need them, but if anyone has any clue as to what's going on and how I could fix it, I would be really grateful.

Tech details are always good [img]smile.gif[/img]

Did they replace the card in that computer repair shop? Is it under warranty?

What happens when you stress test just your CPU with something like http://users.bigpond.net.au/cpuburn/ ?

If it handles CPU burn in fine, then I would think about returning your gfx card.

If drivers won't install though, that's likely to be a separate windows problem (although a borked driver install could then screw up your 3d).

Also when you upgraded your video card etc did you also upgrade the power supply ?

Could be your new card is sucking more juice from the power supply than it can handle.

Rightio, does the sound crackling only happen when it freezes?

Crackling sound certainly indicates to me that there is a heat issue, but if it only happens when the PC freezes then it could be a lot of things.

By the way, 12fps in 3D Mark06 isn't bad for an X1600 ;)

So yeah, if you give some tech specs we might be able to see something more, but the problem from what I see is either Heat/Hardware or possible driver related.