3d Games Freeze CPU

[manharris]

I have an ABIT BE6-II Mother board, 600mhz intel, 128 ram, Savage4 GT 16mb VideoCard etc.. I have all the newest drivers downloaded from the s3grapics website.

My Problem is any 3d game on my computer locks up and the only way to reboot is to reset the CPU. Games like Quake III arena, tanks 3d, prince of persia 3d etc.. My video card is capable of 3d gaming and I have a AGP 2x slot. Does anyone know what I can check?

 

[Snug]

Make sure you have all the requirments the games requires, like DirectX.

 

[crisc]

Chasing down lock-ups can be extremely frustrating. The key is to try to determine what has changed to start causing this (assuming that your system WAS stable at some point, of course).
Did you recently add/upgrade any hardware, such as your vid card, or RAM?
You are sure that ONLY your 3-D games are causing the lockups? Not any other apps, or even other non-3D games? If this is so than you've greatly narrowed down the scope of the problem. In my experience, game lockups can sometimes be the result of incorrect drivers. You say you are using the OEM drivers, but I'd check the game sites and find out if there are known issues with certain drivers.
Also, you mentioned a 2x AGP slot. Is that what your card is or your mobo? You can have a 4x mobo and a 2x card (or vice versa) and it can lock you up.
Good luck.

 

[manharris]

Yes I have direct X8.0. My computer never locks up for any other reasons. Never at random. I have other games like The Sims, starcraft, duke 3d, and such and they work fine. Same with all the 3d screensavers that came with windows. There is however one screensaver I download that was designed special for 3d cards and it freezes my cpu just like quakeIII, prince of persia 3d, tanks 3d... I have also installed the newest open gl drivers same problems so now I have uninstalled them. Well I guess maybe I'll try a new videocard or something. I also tried removeing and reinstalling the card in the case.

 

[crisc]

Like I mentioned in my previous post, can you determine a particular point in time that this STARTED happening? Perhaps after you installed a game, or upgraded hardware, or something?
If not, it's possible something like your card just fried. I was having a problem somewhat like this a few months ago, but my hardware was completely different than yours and my PC locked up after a few minutes of doing anything, not just certain games, as with you. I tried everything before I started swapping hardware. I had an older mobo and once I replaced that the problem disappeared.

 

[manharris]

Thanks for your help... I tried to pin point a time and place the first time I noticed it was when I installed quake3 arena. So I just took the game off. Well then my little brother asked to install Prince of Persia 3d and I had the same problem. Thats when I started to investigate the problem. I have tried everything I know other the reinstalling windows but I won't do that.

I have Fixed the problem though I went out and bought a GeForce2 32meg video card. Plugged it in and everything seems to work mint.

No any one that wants to but a Savage4 gt 16mb card that doesn't work? HAHA Kidding.

Merry Christmas