ati 9600

ok i have a basic ati 9600, a sempron 2500+ half a gig of ram but i can't remeber what mb i have. anyway my comp freezes every hour or so when i'm running 3d games. i've tried most of the basic troubleshooting methods and still having this problem. so does anyone know whats going on? maybe i might be over heating the gpu on the video card? i'm lost and any help would be greatly appeciated.
thanx

 

Are you getting any wierd error messages?
Also do you have an old video card that you could put in your computer, if so then try that and see if you get the same lockups.

 

So it just freezes when you play engaging games? No slowness, speeding, or incorrect display of graphics, basic random colors? Overheating is a possibility, but the gpu being the thing that is getting overheated doesn't seem likely. Do all other programs run well? How is computer performance when not playing games? Any error messages or other applications freezing up?

 

Have you updated your Drivers lately?? If not here is a set of modified drivers that I have found to be the best so far, Extreme ATi, only 9Mb, no CCC and after having tried standard and 3 other modded types these ones KICK ARSE:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=179393

You might have to go to the 3rd or 4th page to find a functioning link but make sure you uninstall the old ones using Drive Cleaner Pro.