My PC blacks out or locks up while playing easy-to-run games

Mythstatic

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these are my specs:
Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case with Upgraded USB 3.0

AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition Thuban 3.2GHz Socket AM3 125W Six-Core Desktop Processor HDT90ZFBGRBOX

Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

CORSAIR HX Series HX750 750W ATX12V 2.3 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply

ASUS M4A89TD PRO/USB3 AM3 AMD 890FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9

Antec TRICOOL120MM 120mm Case Fan

XFX HD687AZNBC Radeon HD 6870 Black Edition Video Card - 1024MB, GDDR5, PCIe, Dual mini-Display Port, HDMI, Dual DVI
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My temps are average, with a height of 57c on my gpu while playing Battlefield 3. sometimes my computer freezes and i catch it in time by pressing ctrl+alt+del and it says "display driver has stopped working and has recovered." but sometimes my screen just goes black and a weird noise plays through the headset and i have to hard reset my pc. i dont understand why this is happening, my temps are fine, and my pc is well put together. my brother and i have the same build and he doesn't have any problems (only difference between out pc's is the PSU. I figured the psu would be the problem but it has good ratings and wattage to support my pc. please someone help me diagnose this problem. thanks!:D :Gasp:

I do have the latest drivers for my gpu, and i have windows 7 completely updated
 
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Try updating your video card drivers, if that doesn't work then your video card may be faulty.
 
my video card is fully up to date, my friend was just playing runescape and the "display driver has stopped working and has recovered" message came up, i couldnt move the cursor and the screen blacked out for a second. makes no sense, i ran a memtest and it came out clean. i need to swap out the ram to be sure, if its not the ram im just going to assume the gpu is fualty
 
I had this happen to my 9800GTX+ around a year ago a couple times in a day, after that day it never happened again, was weird. Don't know what the problem was but maybe you will get as lucky?
 
Hi Mythstatic and other forum users,
I'm having the exact same problem.
My system specs are:
processor i3 530
mobo intel dh55tc
ram 6gb, 1333mhz
psu corsair 650tx (recent)
video card xfx hd4890
display samsung b2030 (1600x900 @ 60Hz)
hdd segate 500gb
optical drive 2 lg DVD-writer

my problem started couple of months ago, one morning i tried to start l.a.noire and the computer froze as it was loading the game graphics. thinking something went wrong with the same files i tried other games like nfs the run and cod mw3, but all caused similar problems of frozen display and then hanged computer.

the odd thing is when the display froze then if i press the restart button, sometime the system restarts and other time i have to long press the start button to make a forced shutdown as restart button did not respond.
now if i had to make a forced shutdown, then when i start the system next time, there was no display on the screen and the video card's fan starts to run at its highest rpm as if the system is under very heavy load but in reality i was only booting the system.

so initially i thought the video card is faulty, so i took it to a xfx service center, and they cleaned the fan, and tested with for about 30-35 mins with gpu-z and playing cod mw2 and the responded fine without any problem, so i thought the psu was the problem (i had the coolermaster extreme power plus 600w) and also hearing all the bad review about this psu i finally replaced it with corsair 650tx 2 days ago.

this time with new psu i started playing gta-4 with high settings, for near 3 hours i was able to play without any problem, but then suddenly the problem started, my display froze and computer hanged. i was able to warm restart and again started gta4, this time i was able to play only for 5 mins before the same thing happened and this time i has force shutdown as system was not responding on restart button. and when i restarted the old thing of video card's fan moving at abnormally high rpm and no display but the pc was booting normally, so i again force shutdown it and restarted and it started normally but playing any game now causing this blackout and freezing problem.

could you please help me with some diagnostics with which i may be able to pin point what could be the problem.

my guess its the video card, but then why it was able to run straight 3 hours i cannot fathom, and could it be caused by heavy dust accumulation in the card, the card is covered by a plastic casing, can't reach inside without breaking the cover :cry:

please help.
 
that is similar to what happens to me. sometimes when my system freezes, the display goes black and i hear the fans in my system spin abnormally high for no reason. and other times, my screen simply freezes and the "display driver has stopped working and has recovered" message comes up. i am going to try different ram next and if the problem persists, i will point my guns to either the psu, hdd or gpu being faulty
 
Ok, please post your experience with different ram.
But from my experience i think its pretty much gpu issue.
But the gpu may not be completely faulty, otherwise nothing should be displayed as the computer starts. So probably when put on load somethings failing!
I want to find what part of gpu could possibly behave in such way, if this ultimately proved out be gpu issue.
 
ok, probably i got a solution to the problem ;)
today i did a little cleaning on the card. there were lot of dust. after some extensive cleaning i reinserted the card and till now i'm playing heavy games without any problem. (but i think my card's thermal pastes also gone weak. so in a new thread I'll seek help on how to get it done)
so to me could be the problem was due to poor evaporation of heat, the core was getting too heated and it was stopping to save itself
and probably its also solves the issue of high spin of the fan on start-up. because the core was getting heated too fast, fan was trying to cool it off and in the process denying to take any load, i.e., no display.
but here psu could also play a role.
hope it helps. :D
 
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hmm, I used to reapply thermal paste on my old gpu. I remember it being a pain but definitely possible. i thought your temps for your gpu were normal? i haven't had time to test the ram because my brother's pc is at a friends house but i will still post my results :ForeverAlone:
 
try this,
download evga precision.
raise your video card voltage by a single notch.
play a game, test it out.

if computer freezes. raise voltage by another notch.
play a game, test it out.

if it still freezes, i am out of ideas.
 
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