BSOD while playing games on vista?

Question

It started out just with shadowrun everytime i started shadowrun my computer would freeze up and its not a blue screen its a green screen that pops up saying fatal system error and then my computer restarts and it dumps memory and cache and stuff. Its has nothing to due with my computer not being up to date because i just bought a 4870 x2 graphics card and 4gigs of ram and now its happening with steam games too what do you think is causing this because sometimes is works but most of the time i get the green screen of death i am running vista also. so help i just want to play my games

Answer 1

I had this problem running an ATI graphics card on an Nvidia chipset one time. Constant driver updates, extra cooling, and basically anything I tried never did help. I ended up buying an Nvidia 7600GT instead, and never had another issue (I am still using that card today actually.) I don't know what type of chipset you are using, and it probably had nothing to do with that anyway. I think I just had a defective card.

I am not saying that you should go out and buy something Nvidia, but I have never had good luck with ATI based cards. Especially with a 4870X2 I understand that you can't likely afford to just go out and buy a new card.

The first thing I would try is updating your drivers. Get the newest ones directly from ATI (the ones on the CD that comes with the card tend to be well outdated before the card ever ships out). Drivers tend to be buggy when they are first released (on both XP and Vista.) Since that is such a new card, the drivers may not be refined enough. Maybe deal with it for a few weeks, and always keep your drivers up to date. It might go away with one of the updates.

Another thing to try is more cooling. Maybe pop the side of your case off and blow a house fan directly into it. If the error stops, maybe you need to contact the card manufacturer and tell them it is defective. If they release a card that doesn't cool properly they should replace it.

If cooling is the issue you could try to fix it yourself by removing the heatsink and adding some better thermal paste (Arctic Silver.) Make sure the heatsink is properly attached and making good contact. Also make sure the fan is working properly. Doing this on your own will probably void your warranty so I would recommend trying to get it replaced first.

I suppose your last option is to just buy a new card, or try and return that one to where you bough it and pick out a different model. Obviously that would suck, but you shouldnt have to deal with something that doesn't work.

Good luck and hope you get it solved! Losing your games would suck