Game crashes and needs comp restart

[drosslord]

My computer locks up everytime I try to play UT3. Once this happens I usually have to restart my machine. Here is my hardware. Please help. Thanks.

AMD Athlon 64, 2200 MHz (11 x 200) 3500+
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum v3.0
1 GB of RAM
nVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT

[IceFrogg]

Hmm u might try looking @ the troubleshooting sticky thread.

[Ronvdl]

well, most computer crashes are related to crappy drivers
download the newest driver for your card from this site and try again

for windows vista:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvist...5.19_whql.html

or if you have windows XP:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_175.19_whql.html

[drosslord]

I have already tried everything on the sticky and nothing works. Also, the latest drivers from nvidia (175.19) are giving many people problems. I'm sticking with the 175.16 drivers atm which are more than good enough.

[Ronvdl]

have you also checked your CPU or video card isn't overheating?

[drosslord]

They are not overheating but while I was digging around in it today I just happened to notice that the power supply is only a 300w power supply. The graphic card requires a min of 350w PS. Could that be it?

[Ronvdl]

hmmm that actually could be the problem
does your computer hang immediately after UT3 starts or after a short time playing?

have you tested any other really GPU demanding games?

[drosslord]

The computer acts mostly normal until I start to load missions then it pretty much loads up and as soon as the game starts. BAMM lock up. It does the same for AoC. WoW seems to work okay for the most part although sometimes it does get bad and needs a restart.

[drosslord]

I've also run memtests and everything is good there

[Ronvdl]

yeah that's when the most processing power is needed. WoW isn't really gpu intensive, i meant stuff like crysis, or one of those sick nvidia demos :P

if you know someone with a spare power supply >350 watt, you should test if that works better, if so, buy one.
i'm not really sure that's the problem but it most probably is

[drosslord]

If the problem still persist after a PS upgrade what would you think then problem would be then?

[Ronvdl]

i don't know, maybe faulty hardware, but i'm almost for sure your PS is causing problems anyway because your video card just doesn't receive enough power

[drosslord]

Well, I now have a 550 watt PS in and it worked good for about 30 mins and then started acting up again and I've gotten 2 blue screen memory dumps. I've run tests on everything and nothing is coming back bad. I have a line on a slightly better 4000 amd process that is better than what I have but is still single core. I am also going to get RAM replacements and up it to 2gigs. The upgrade should only cost about 100 bucks which is all can spare atm. Any chance that would take care of my problem or are my specs to low to run games like this?

[Ronvdl]

wow that's strange, it works longer, but still crashes.. :S
have you plugged in the right power connector to your video card? (if your video card requires one)

if it isn't the PS it could be anything, faulty videocard, faulty motherboard, faulty processor, faulty whatever, and that's very hard to find out..

your specs are fine, programs should run slower on slower hardware, not crash more often

still one question, have you ever overclocked anything on your computer?

[drosslord]

I have used the Ntune program from nvidia to "tune" my system. But I did that when I had the 300w PS in the comp. Could that have something to do with it?