Games freezing

[Joeyboy]

Right ok i thought my computer was only freezing while playing Spore and that it was an issue with Spore and windows 64-bit but this is not the case. I just played another game Dawn of War:Soul Storm and after 15 minutes it froze on me in the same style it does in spore.

I am wondering if it is my Graphics Card overheating since the games installed and start fine, the freezing seems random from a few minutes up to half an hour which is why i am thinking overheating as a probable cause.

My GPU is the ATI radeon HD4870, i've been told ATI cards can run very hot sometimes, how do i accurately check the temperature of my graphics card to see if it's too hot?

If you don't think it's a heat issue can you give me ideas as to why my new comp is randomly freezing in games?

ALSO is this the correct driver for my card?ATI Catalyst 8.9 Vista 64-bit download from Guru3D.com

I haven't got it yet i'm using what ever version is on the CD that came with it but i thought i;d try updating my drivers too, so i just uninstall everything with AMD in the name with drivercleanerpro that download this?

 

[Ãœberclok]

If you have Catalyst Control Center, you can see your video card's temperature by navigating to the Overdrive option. However, based on your description I believe you have failing RAM. You can test this by downloading memtest at http://memtest.org/download/2.01/memtest86+-2.01.iso.zip .

 

[Joeyboy]

going to sound dumb but how do i use memtest? I double click BOOT and it says its invalid..

any usage instructions.:happy:

according to catalyst my card is at 66c on idle, is this normal?

 

[Ãœberclok]

Do you have an extra CD and a burning utility such as Nero? After you download the zip file, extract it. Then you point the burning software to where the extracted file is. But make sure you are making a bootable CD (usually labeled within the burning utility menu) or you will just be making coasters.

 

[Joeyboy]

then do i just put the CD in the drive, i know before i installed vista the comp first booted from the vista cd but how do i make it do that again to use this?, sorry about the idiocy here.