Game quandary

[Davenstuff]

For a few months now, whenever I play a game, i get anywhere from 1-20 minutes of game play before the on-screen action freezes and the sound glitches and repeats. I've tried removing my onboard sound and just using my sound blaster, I've tried removing my sound blaster and just using the onboard, I've tried moving my video card to the other slot on my mobo, I've tried taking out each stick of ram and trying them individually in each slot. I also tried updating my PSU from a 350 to a 680 watt. I've tried updating drivers, updating direct x, and updating windows. I think I've pretty much ruled out a software problem though, because I fresh installed windows xp 64 and I still have the same problem. The specific games I play and crash on are Warcraft 3, Call of Duty 2, Elder Scrolls 4, and Counter-strike: source. The only games that seem to work are Starcraft and the Battlefield 2 Demo. I've done everything I can think of to solve this problem and I've gotten nowhere; my only other thought is that God might hate me, so if anybody has any other ideas, pease let me know.

 

[aggravated]

What are your system specs?

So everything was fine up until a few months ago? Do you remember if you added any hardware, etc. around the time the problem started?

What are the temps for your cpu/video card like?

Have you tested the rails on either or both of the psu's? If you're not sure how to, there's an excellent guide here-http://www.devhardware.com/forums/power-supply-units-98/what-s-a-multimeter-how-to-use-it-to-test-75111.html

When the game freezes/sound loops, what happens? I mean, does it force you to reboot the system or just close the game?

Have you tried running memtest (www.memtest86.com)? I guess if you have more than one stick of ram and you've tried them all individually, you're problem's probably not there, but who knows?

Have you tried killing all non-essential applications when you run these games (turning off anti-virus, etc. programs, absolutely anything you don't absolutely need to have running)?

I don't think God hates you...I think you just have one of those hyper-irritating computer problems we all know and are missing clumps of hair because of. javascript:smilie(':bald:')
bald

 

[Nitestick]

i'm going to have to say this one is down to an overheating cpu/gpu.

solution: fix the cooling by any means necessary

 

[Davenstuff]

Well it CAN'T be overheating of any sort. For about the past year i've kept the side of my case off and put a big old fan next to the computer. Sure it's loud but it's also very cool (overheating is a problem i've already tangled with and don't want to do so again). However yesterday I did think of one more thing to try. I swapped out my x800 for my brother's x1600 for a while and everything worked perfectly. So, hopefully my warranty hasn't run out with newegg. If that doesn't fix it though, believe me, I'll be back.