Graphics driving me NUTS!

[whatruplayingat]

hey all,

well i've been working on the SAME problem for the past 3 months. barely keeping my sanity lol.

i have:
P6N 680i MOBO
GeForce 900 GT 600 MHz 512 MB
Intel core 2 duo 3.00 GHz
Crossair 2GB
Windows XP home 64bit Service pack 2
250 GB Sata
LG DVD Rom


Now....no matter what game i play every 15-20 seconds(ish) the graphics stutterer really bad along with the sound sometimes. even low end games like Rome Total War and Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne.
I've changed video cards, Ram, upgraded my Bios, downloaded many drivers, and still the same thing. any help would be great!

Thanks,

Ps. this was my first time building a computer, i've built many after this and they don't have this problem.

 

[aaronkupen]

It could very well be a faulty power supply. Have you considered this yet?

 

[whatruplayingat]

It's a brand new 600 Watt ATX ULTRA. it seems to be running fine? any way to check?

Thanks

 

[aaronkupen]

You can try using a power supply that you know for a fact works properly.

 

[whatruplayingat]

thanks, i'll give it a shot.
any other suggestions? the problem is almost like clockwork....i could probably set my watch to it, which is why i thought it was memory or RAM.

 

[aaronkupen]

Well if you've changed out your memory and the problem still happens, then that isn't the issue. You could try running a memory diagnostic to be 100% sure though.

 

[whatruplayingat]

I'll give it a shot.
thanks a lot.

is it possible this could be due to over heating?

 

[aaronkupen]

It's possible yeah. What temperature is the card running at under full load?

 

[whatruplayingat]

wow.....it sits around 45c when i'm just using windows applications but the second i load a game it soars to high 60's 70's c.

I might have found the problem lol. Is that really high for running a game?

 

[aaronkupen]

Well I have had an ATI card that ran in the high 90's C and it fell under the safe range. I'm not sure about your specific card, but it doesn't sound too extreme to me to be warranting all of these issues. Sounds like a power supply issue to me.