Recurring graphics glitch

Hi guys,
I've been trying to trace the source of this problem for a very long time and haven't had much success, just always looking for more insight (or just sympathy). Certain games cause my computer to lock up and crash with what I've heard described as "jaggies". Basically the sound will cut out, the screen will fill with vertical or horizontal jagged stripes of color (old video card caused greenish/blue, new one causes red) and it'll lock up till I do a manual reset.

I've got the problem in some games, and not others. COD4 causes an occasional crash after a very long playing time (making me suspect it was a heat issue). BioShock and Assasin's Creed crash at the exact same spot every single time, within 3 minutes of beginning the game. Now what has me suspicious is that even less intensive games will crash, today I bought "DreamFall 2" which should run easily on high with my setup but it crashed the same way within 5 minutes. Meanwhile Medieval Total War and Rome Total War will run for hours on end without a problem. So at first I thought it was a overheating issue but after replacing the GPU and CPU coolers, messing around with case fans to no end, and having my temps stable at under 50c under heavy load, I don't think this is the problem. Any guesses or suggestions would be appreciated.


My setup:
Win XP Pro
AMD athlonXP 64x2 3800+ 2.0ghz
Asus A8N SLI Premium mobo
2gb Corsair XMS PC 3200 Ram
Nvidia 9800GT 512mb GPU (Problem also occured with my old 7800GT)
Antec TruPowerII 550w PSU (also tested with different 500w PSU, same problem)


I think my next shot-in-the-dark will be to replace my RAM since I need an upgrade anyways. Anyone else have any comments or suggestions?

 

Yeah, updated graphics drivers (back when the problem was REEALLLY bad, I had to uninstall all drivers, using windows default to even watch video on my pc).

I'm not overclocking my Vidcard (or at least I never touched any settings other than fan speed).

I'm using a 22" Acer LCD with its default refresh of 60hz. I forced Vsync on. Thanks for the suggestions, keep 'em coming.

 

How old is the graphics card and is it under warranty? Do you have the option to either temporarily replace it with a different card, or test this card in another computer?

 

What do you have your fan speed on the video card at? I like Rivatuner. Use it to max out the fans on my cards that don't have aftermarket cooling. Even use it on my ATI 3870X2.

Try maxing out the fan setting and see if it helps.

 

Sorry I haven't updated this in a while because I've pretty much given up. One thing occurred to me today that may help us figure this out though. While I can run RED Alert 3, Stalker, Fallout 3, Call of Duty 4, and Left4Dead just fine for hours at a time, I recently bought a "Relic collectors pack" on Steam. This includes a bunch of games done by the same company. I noticed that Company of Heroes (and expansions) crashes immediately. Same thing with all the Warhammer games. These are all games with an "optimized for Nvidia" splash screen at the beginning and they all crash equally. I'm curious now to see what would happen if I went back and tried all the "Nvidia" games versus all the other...Am I onto something or is this some kind of conspiracy theory?

A little further info on my system:
Yes I have current drivers, and it's a brand new card. I used to have the exact same problem with a 7800GT. I also just installed new RAM so it's not that either. Only way I can figure is that it's a compatibility issue between certain games and either my mobo or windows itself, cuz those are the only common factors.

 

it's ether your memory or something on your mobo is acting up.

 

More likely it is a compatibility issue between the most recent drivers and some older games... if the game is three driver generations old, the newest drivers might not work that well with it. They try for backwards compatibility, yes, but you just can't cover everything.

Do the crashing games work better if you roll back the drivers?

 

It's most likely the newist drivers (because i had problems with them and need for speed undercover (i got a geforce 9400 gt 1 gig)) and the my car's tires would have a high sheen to them but when i installed my oem drivers the video in undercover would be fine.:-D

 

No luck with the older drivers either, as I mentioned the crashes seem to span a wide time-span. Certain older games with minimal requirements are just as likely to crash as the newest, more demanding games. Meanwhile, plenty of brand new, demanding games work without a hitch. One person who has given me a lot of help with my system in the past mentioned that my mobo might have a bad Northbridge. How do I check it? Where is it?

 

The physical location of the Northbridge on your board varies a little bit, but from a computing standpoint it is the part that translates between your CPU and the rest of your system. Kind of important, in other words, and if it is failing you that means you need to replace the motherboard. So let's hope it's not that...

If you do have a hardware issue you need to find out which part of your hardware... Does this ever happen outside of games? If it does, you may need to start checking everything, which sort of sucks. If it doesn't, then start with your graphics card, your RAM, and temperature monitoring. You can get a really good memory tester here, and Everest can tell you temperatures.