x1800xt + creative x-fi = crash?

ok... so i have been doing my research and it seems like creative drivers and ati drivers conflict. However, I have also heard that running certain games with a dual-core cpu can cause issues as well. Here is my problem: I will run the new Half Life 2: Episode 1 with maxed out graphics (which my card is capable of) and the game will go for only about 5 minutes before it completely crashes my computer. I used to have problems with the computer (which i built less than a week ago) just going to the BSoD and windows rebooting saying that i have a driver conflict and that a driver caused a stop error. Last night i ran memtest86+ all night (about 17 cycles) without one error.

My system configuration is something like this: AMD 4200+ x2 processor (no overclock), ASUS A8N-SLI mobo, sapphire x1800xt vid card, creative x-fi xtrememusic soundcard, 2 gigs of Corsair XMS, 550W psu (should be more than enough juice), 320gig SataII hdd, and Motorola wu830g wireless USB broadband adapter.

One problem that i have seemed to corrected is the random BSOD. I believe i fixed this by uninstalling Java (i had the newest update: 5.0 revision 7 i think)

So right now, the only problem i am having is the crash during games. I have read that people with creative soundcards and ati videocards encounter the same problems while running heavy-graphical games WHILE running them with HDR. The thing is... i don't want to go without HDR because it looks AWESOME and HDR is basically the reason i built this system in the first place!

I appreciate anybody who has the patience to work this out with me because i have definitely run out of patience on this issue. As I said, this has been happening for about a week and i am tired of it!