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HankScorpio

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Hi. I recently bought an intel core 2 quad Q6600 intending to fit it in the motherboard that I had. But it turned out that my board would only work with P4 processors(I found thatout after buying it.) So I decided to just buy a new board and fit all my current hardware into it (except the memory which I had was DDR not DDR2 so i had to buy that aswell). When I got all the components I built the system, installed windows and ran a game for 15mins...it worked fine. I then installed all the apps I use and ran 3d mark which i left running and went to bed, by the morning my PC was still running and hadnt crashed. Then I went to play the same game(MII:TW) and the PC starts to crash about 10..15mins into it. It seems that the graphics card is failing. The screen either goes black, or everything freezes except the mouse will move for 15-20 secs then stop and I need to reset my PC. I get no error, except once today which said "Fatal Graphics Error" and recommended lowering the graphics settings. I tried that and put everything on minimal and...same thing, it crashed.(When i got the error and was able to go back to the desktop the refresh speed was really slow like before you install any drivers, so i reckoned the card was off and i had to restart).
I know my graphics card isnt faulty because its the same one i had in my old system. I thought maybe the card is overheating and tried opening the case and opening the window(its-4Ëš here). That didnt work.
Heres what else i tried:-
A different game(BF2, when it crashed got the black screen but i could still shoot my gun/run around/get artyd), Ran microsofts Memory checker tool which my memory passed, Updated ATI Drivers(oh yeah..the mainboards chipset driver stopped my mouse and USBs from working so i havent installed that) Ran Registry Cleaner, reinstalled a fresh copy of windows and ran the game without anything else insalled(except drivers), turn down hardware acceleration/disable write combining(resulted in The card crahing 4 times and being saved by VPU recover before a red and white striped screen apeared).I considered installing the chipset drivers again but when i put the CD into my drive it broke the drive (its been on its way out for a while).
Today when running 3d mark it got to about 15 secs before crashing.
I am all out of ideas and really annoyed that after spending £250 on my PC, it does less than it did before. Even though Im not sure if it will work, Im considering buying a new graphics card, but I cant afford it and i need a new dvd drive aswell.

Heres my specs:
intel core2 quad q6600
foxconn motherboard
radeon x1650
2 SATA HDDs
2 gb DDR2 RAM

And here my old spec just incase it helps:
intel P4 3Ghz
Abit ag8 motherboard
radeon x1650
2 SATA HDDs
2.5 GB DDR RAM

Everything else seems to work except games. Nothing else crashes. Im not entirely sure if its a hardware or software issue.And everything that im trying to run worked on my old system.

I really hope someone can provide a solution because i built my old system and it couldnt play games without crashing for over a year(because i was a bigger noob than i am now) due to faulty memory.

Thanks in advance
 
What power supply are you using? It is possible that the PSU is insufficent and causing instability.

Have you tried another video card, a cheap one, just to elminate the possibility?
 
The PSU is newish, but i dont know what kind it is.I can get a graphics card from my friend. Any more thoughts?
 
I did not ask you how new it was, I asked you what power supply...
As in, tell me the specific Name, Model, advertised wattage etc etc.

The trouble shooting process will go further once you either try a different video card, or give me enough information about your power supply for me to inform you whether it's enough or not.

How long did you say that memory test was? memtest86+ is a bootable utility that if run for 4 hours or more will give a great indication whether it may be memory related or not.
 
The label reads
"Q-tec 500w Big Fan
Switching power supply
ATX 12v"

i only ran microsoft memtest for about 30 mins

hope that helps
 
Should be enough, now, I really do suggest you go out and either buy or borrow a different video card from someone, somewhere.

When you do this, you will need to uninstall the drivers for your current card before, then for good measure you can use Driver cleaner pro. (But you don't have too).
After that you can then pop the different card in, install the driver for it, try to game on it.
If the same problem occurs it is probably a Motherboard fualt, it could also, and still be a bad power supply even though it should be more than enough.
If the problem does not occur than it is most likely a bad video card and you should RMA it.

We will know alot more, and have more to do once you try a different video card.
 
I tried my old graphics card and the system is stable when gaming now. unfortunately I dropped my newer one and its now broken with no video outpt whatsoever. So im stuck with a crappy radeon x300. So im probably just gonna buy a new card. I dont think the card was faulty to begin with. I think there was some kind of conflict.
Anyways thanks for the help!!!
 
The broken card turned out to be a dodgy cable. So iv put it back in and installed the chispet drivers which seems to have added slight stabillity. But i still get occasional crashes while gaming. But not nearly as often as before. im gonna run 3dmark overnight to see if it crashes.have you got any other suggestions as to what might be causing these crashes?
 
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