Can Someone Tell Me Why My Games Freeze On My Pc?
Hi all,
I’ve been playing on my computer for a while and have noticed that whenever I play my games, my computer will freeze and hang up after about a couple minutes of playing into the game. The screen will freeze and whatever sound was playing will loop in the background. I cannot ctrl alt del out of the game and my computer requires a hard restart whenever this happens. I have been looking on some forums about this problem with games freezing and supposedly the fix was swapping the different RAM modules. I tried doing that but it still keeps freezing after playing for a bit. I then used Riva Tuner to turn up the fan on my graphics card to 100% but that did not help either. I have the latest drivers for Vista x64 too. I also tried playing the games in Windows XP (I am running both Vista and XP on my system) but the same thing happens. I then started to think if the 500W power supply was too low so we got a new 650W PSU, but haven’t put it in yet. Any suggestions?
Here are my specs:
Vista Ultimate 64-bit and Windows XP w/ SP3
Motherboard: ECS GF7050VT-M
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9450 @ 2.66GHz
Memory: 2048MB RAM Corsair Dominator
Video Card: XFX NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+
Hard Drive: 500 GB Western Digital With Green Technology
Games I play that freeze: COD4, CODWaW, Fallout 3, Dead Space, Crysis, Crysis: Warhead, Far Cry 2, Mass Effect, Brothers in Arms: HH
Please Help!! Thanks!!
January, 19th 2010 at 8:01 pm
i had this problem too lol, but the main thing is the computer is freezing because it can’t run the program properly. your video card is nice, but the greater it is, the more power u need. one way to check if u lack power, is to touch the computer where the supply’s fan is and see how hot it is. if its a little warm, or any signs of heat, then u should try another power supply. i have a 700 w, and it never really blasts hot air, and i got it for about 100 bucks max, probably 70, its a rocket fish i think lol
another source could be the amount of ram. if u run vista, 2 gb is hardly enough, since vista almost uses 1 gb for itself, so u have 1 gb left for gaming. i had 3 gb if ram when the problem occured, so i might check the supplu
i dont think theres anything wrong with your processor, so i would try to solve the ram shortage, and if it doesnt work, try a bigger power supply
the game i was playing was FEAR and i think it happened with COD4 too lol but u dont need to restart computer, just wait a bit and ill run back normaly, restarting computer takes more time
unfortunately, i havent played FEAR for awhile now, not even since i replaced my power supply, but i remember b4 i used to play battlefiled 2 and i always thought it would lag or ram shortage cause of vista, but i sw that my power supply was always hot, so after i changed it to 700 W, it never happened again, so i believe this is the main problem
one good explanation is the graphic card, since it needs a lot to produce very good quality pictures, im guessing it needs alot of power and if u dont have that much, then its not powerful enough to run properly, and all the games u listed have decent graphics
hope my essay helps lol
January, 19th 2010 at 9:16 pm
sounds like a bad video card. Ive had several video cards do this. it freezes and loops sound in the background . I replaced my video cards in these situations and it didnt do it anymore. if you change video cards and it still does it it could be a number of things cpu, memory, power supply is a possibility. I would throw in the 650 watt and see what happens. it’s really the current in a psu that you should be concerned about. I had a 500 watt psu and a core 2 quad and the psu was only rated at like 19 amps accross two 12 volt rails and thats not enough coupled with all the other stuff I plug in. I replaced mine with a 650 thats rated at 69 amps accross 3 12 volt rails. way more stable and the psu runs super cool cause it’s not overloaded.