I am pretty new to PC games so I was wondering if some people could explain to me what my issue is here- if it is just I need to play on lower settings, or if there is a problem with the games themselves.

I bought this PC rig a year and a bit ago, and for the most part it has been working great, but some games just always seem to crash. I'm not sure what the issue is, I'm always playing the game at a solid 50-60 FPS, and then I just get a random freezing, or a crash to desktop. This crashing seems sporadic, sometimes I can play a game for an hour, sometimes only five minutes without a crash. Some of my problems games are Deus X, Sleeping Dogs, and Far Cry 3 (which I am running at lower than "optimal" settings).

My Specs are as follows:

GTX 570 (With latest drivers)

8GB Ram

I7-2600k (3.4GHZ)

24in' display running at 1920x1080

If anyone can be of assistance, I would be most appreciative, and if there is any extra information you want, just ask.

Possible fault with the hard drive or power supply if its haping across multiple games.

It could be a video driver issue. I know you say you have the latest version but maybe older files are conflicting? Try uninstalling your drivers, run Driver Sweeper to clean up any Nvidia files and then do a clean install with default settings.

Are these games cracked by any chance?

You and I have the exact same build, but I don't experience these issues, so it could be a hardware defect or a driver/software issue.

@dgtlty: No all my games are off of steam, Ill try that though.

Are you SURE it's plugged in?

XD

That could be one of a lot of issues:

1. Are ALL drivers up to date (sound peripherals also chip set and bios updates)

2. Is your computer well ventilated and not overheating

3. virus/ male ware run them scans son!!

4. It could be one component failing- a bad stick of ram, failing HDD etc etc.

I could go on but I won't you could start by going to the windows performance and reliability monitor. There you will have a graph showing when a fault occurred and what probably caused the issue (application failure, hardware failure etc) that will give you more information on where to start looking.

There is also memtest to check RAM, run chkdsk from windows on your HDD's etc etc.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head but hope it helps.

We have more or less the same machine (i have 16gb ram and 64bit Windows tho), and it is running those games just fine.

I don't even update my drivers that often.

Some small things i have noticed over time, might help:

When playing Skyrim, my sound settings crashed the game for me before all the logo screens. The solution was to "downgrade" to a specific bitrate or whatnot. This might not be the problem here tho, but i like to keep it in the back of my mind when troubleshooting.

Since your machine seems to bug out at random intervals, my guess would be heat or power.

Get a temp.monitor and check it out while running a game. Open your case, and see if there is a lot of dust in there. fans full of dust kept triggering my temp-monitor while playing Diablo 3, heating my CPU to a toasty 86 degree Celsius. ( I have been told that temperature over 64 C is bad... dont know if this is correct or still the case.)

A can of pressurized air blew all that shit away, and got my machine running smooth again. (+ you can use it to wake up sleeping friends!)

Power is another thing i have run into a couple of times the past decade. Your PSU just might be too weak to power all your components. This really sucks, since a new PSU with a lot of power costs almost the same as the CPU. Not a welcome expense when you could get a xbox/ps3 for the same price nowadays :P (at least here in Norway)

Sleeping Dogs (steam) has crashed some times for me also, so it might not be totally stable at all times. (but again, i have not the most up to date drivers.)

Good luck to you friend. Nothing worse than a unreliable computer.

What 570 card do you have? My EVGA had a similar issue, random crashes on certain games. I ended up sending it back to EVGA (they have a great return policy) and the new one that was sent back doesn't have any issues.

So if checking temps doesn't show any problems I would suggest trying a different card (borrow one from a friend perhaps?) and see if the issues go away.

@Sumbog: Check Direct X settings? Can you use an older Direct X in those games? Are you monitoring your temperatures while these games are running?

If this were a memory issue your computer would be crashing with the games themselves, so I don't think it's that. I'd think the same of any other hardware related issue. I believe what you're running into is an issue with software - and not necessarily the games themselves. It could be something to do with sound as well.

@mosdl: My card is an EVGA, I hope that isnt the issue.

Does anyone have any good CPU temperature checking applications they could recommend?

@Sumbog: http://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp/

@Sumbog said:

@mosdl: My card is an EVGA, I hope that isnt the issue.

Does anyone have any good CPU temperature checking applications they could recommend?

I would register on the EVGA website and fill in a support request. They will send you some links to follow to fix common issues (I can't access the support thread I had when I had to return my 570 for some reason).

EVGA has great support.

@mosdl: Thanks, if the temperature isnt the issue I will try this for sure. I appreciate the assistance.

@Sumbog said:

@mosdl: Thanks, if the temperature isnt the issue I will try this for sure. I appreciate the assistance.

http://www.evga.com/precision/ and http://www.evga.com/articles/00530/ were the links they gave me to test heat issues.

Last year I built my buddy a PC with leftover parts so he could play some games on it - nothing crazy but it was still a respectable gaming PC, and I gave it to him for nothing. Anyway, about six months later he started telling me about very similar crashing issues to what you've been experiencing...turns out the problem is the machine was loaded with spyware.

A full wipe and fresh Windows install solved the problem.

@MB: I just wiped my PC a few months ago, but I found the solution, my GPU temp is running between 89c, and 90c, so I think I just need to find out how to reduce that and I'll be good! A good cleaning is probably in order, as well if there is any other tips I'd gladly take them.

@mosdl@Bwast@Toxeia@Saik0u@George1St@dgtlty Thank you guys very much for your help, I believe I have found the solution to my problem, feel good that you were able to help a PC noob today!

Wow, 90 degrees Celsius is extremely hot! Are your other components up there too? If so your case might need better ventilation.

It appears that graphics card has a single fan? I'd examine it while it's powered to ensure it's spinning and then try some canned air to blow any dust out.

Which card do you have exactly? Does it have an after-market cooler on it?

You should be able to use utilities from the vendor that will allow you to monitor the temperature on the card and adjust your fan speeds. If you're not using it though, it should just be defaulting to 100% at anything above 40C. Another option for you would be to invest in a cooler yourself - Zalman and Arctic are both companies that make good after-market coolers for VGA cards. Don't go crazy though - the 3 fan set up from Arctic will be way too huge.

MSI Afterburner is great for monitoring temps and for creating custom fan profiles (used to ramp the fans up faster beyond certain temps). Also, consider lowering your settings a bit. I have a 2xGTX570 SLI setup and although one card will rarely hit 90C, it only happens for really demanding games at super-high settings, eg. Witcher 2 with Ubersampling on, Sleeping Dogs with AA set to Highest.