As a reminder I have an AMD Athlon™XP 2500+
1.82ghz with 2 matching 512 sticks of ram (1 gb)
My OS is XP Prof. Vers.2002 with service pk 2 and all updates to date
(also just updated to the new browser (7) )
My hdware - Sony CD_RW; Sony DVD-ROM; 80gig harddrive with 29 gig free
Floppy. Wireless Logitech matched Mouse and Keyboard
Vinyl AC' 97 Codec Combo sound (updated)
Avitron Av-&TF Monitor
DSL Broadband (Verizon)
OKay I was running Nvidia Geforce 4 ti 4600 with 125 ram - (a 1x,2x, 4x card)
Got new card Christmas - Nvidia Geforce 7300 GT with 256 ram(a 4x and 8x card)
Now here's what's been happening: if I play the Sims longer than 2 hours, all of a sudden the game will freeze and the harddrive starts working like crazy - sometimes while it's doing this I lose the picture and it goes to a totally blue screen, other times it just stays frozen and nothing works. I have learned to just wait until the harddrive stops, which it does eventually, and then I can save the game and quit normally. At that point, if I just reboot my machine, shut down all my background tasks and antivirus I can go right back into the game and play another hour or two - but what's so annoying is with my old card I got the blue screen of death, but it took several hour for that to happen (usually 4 or more) unless I was using really big properties which required extensive memory and graphics. I assumed by what every one told me, the new card wouldn't have this problem because it is more powerful, but the problem is worse. Oh and if I continue to play after I save my game I might squeeze another hour out of it, but when it goes down a second time it will start blinking between a black screen and a blue screen and won't come out of this. Then I have to shutting it down improperly.
So far I have gotten the Registry scrubber and cleaned the Registry. I checked with Nvidia and have the latest driver. I also ran this program that gets fragmented drivers out of your computer. I did memtest86 and it never shut down. I ran Everest and my husband said my power supply readings are right where they are supposed to be. I have a 400 watt power supply. I updated my on board sound.
I only can think of one more thing, is it possible that I'm taking a performance hit on the new card as I just discovered my motherboard was a match with the old card (1x,2x & 4x) and this new card does just 4x and 8x. I saw that on the Everest test - by the way. And before you ask I have the card temp monitors on and I have it set so I can check it's read out over an hour and it never rises above 52 degrees and the slowdown protection point says it has to get to 125 (which sounds high to me, but that's what it says.), and what is even odder I was monitoring it trying a different game and the temp actually dropped to 50 degrees. It's 52 degrees when I first turn my computer on.
I'm at my wits in and I have very little money left to invest here - any ideas? And if it is the MOBO what is affordable without a credit card? That's also maxed out at the moment on Christmas and meds.