Well, just when I thought everything was going well
I got myself a new Radeon 9800PRO (stock brand). Finally got it working after a few problems (my CPU overclocking was causing conflicts).
Now, I'm not really sure when it started happening, but I know it's been quite a long time, and deffinitely not before I got the video card. While playing games, noticeably WarCraft 3 (Full Graphics) and Battlefield 2 (Medium Graphics), the computer would freeze. Then a second later, the screen would go blank, and the light turn orange (no signal?).
This is what gave me the idea that it was the video card, maybe overheating? So I looked around the web, and found a few forum posts (but no official word) saying that the new Catalyst Drivers are causing heat problems in namely the 9800 series video cards.
That relieved me, as I was hoping like [bleep] that it wasn't my brand new card dying on me already.
So I read on, and read that the best solution would be to roll back to the previous version, or get more cooling. I did the next best thing and did both.
I bought a Thermaltake Extreme Giant III Video Cooler, however that hasn't arrived yet. It SHOULD arrive sometime this week.
So while waiting for it, I decided to rollback the drivers and give that a go, hoping for at least a little bit more gameplay.
I did that and installed the latest Omega Catalyst drivers instead, which are still based on the previous version.
Now, hurra, the computer didn't freeze on me! However, it did decide to restart for no apparent reason. About 10-20 minutes into a game of Warcraft, the computer just completely restarted.
I haven't tried any games since that first try, however, I'm not hopeful.
I did notice when I got my card that the heatsink was a teeny bit loose on the GPU, however a friend informed me (having owned a 9800PRO himself) that they were usually a little bit loose, however did comment that mine was looser then his own.
My Thermaltake cooler is still on it's way, so I'm hoping that will clear up the problem.
However, I thought I might be double-ey sure and check with y'all wizards at hardware out there, since I'm a software and internet bloke myself
Thanks all!
More PC information (if needed):
AMD Sempron 2800+ @ 2.00Ghz
512MB KingMAX SuperRAM DDR400 PC3200
ASUS A7V880 Mainboard
Stock Brand Radeon 9800PRO
400W Power Supply
80GB HDD
2 Case Fans (window kit+rear) working
CPU and GPU fans working fully
If you need any more info, just ask...
Thanks for all the help guys