Gaming problem

[tomjamieson]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, but i figured my problem is probably to do with my sound or video card.

I have just installed Sid Meiers Pirates on my brand new pc, which has a spec. easily good enough to handle the game. However, the game, and the entire computer, keeps freezing after i have been playing for about 15 minutes.

I'm using a Creative Soundblaster audigy pro soundcard and a ATI Radeon 9550 256mb graphics card. Any idea's why my computer is acting like this?

[J1978]

Have u installed the latest drivers for ur video card?

[Force Flow]

Are you OCing?

What are the rest of your system specs?

What is your O/S?

What are you temps?

[tomjamieson]

just bought the pc so the drivers are all up to date (i have double-checked this). I'm running windows xp on a pentium 4 3.2ghz with 1gb RAM. I am not overclocking anything... and as for temperatures... i'm not sure. how do i find this out?

[mrmister1]

What brand is the computer? Have you had this problem anywhere else? In any other games?

[tomjamieson]

It's a self-build, and I haven't experienced the problem elsewhere yet, but saying that, i haven't used any other games. I have used Reason (the music production software) a lot with no problem but that's about it. Tonight i'll install another game and see how it goes.

[discodanman45]

just bought the pc so the drivers are all up to date (i have double-checked this). I'm running windows xp on a pentium 4 3.2ghz with 1gb RAM. I am not overclocking anything... and as for temperatures... i'm not sure. how do i find this out?

To check temps you could go into bios, download a windows utility, or the utility that came with your motherboard (if one did).

[tomjamieson]

I have installed hitman 2 and it encounters exactly the same problem, so there is definitely something wrong with my PC. I have tried playing with the soundcard disabled and it still crashes, so that rules that out. Temps are all fine. Do i assume my graphics card is faulty?

[shadowbreaker513]

Do you have sp2? It seems some 256mb graphics cards (especially ATi) tend to mess up in games with it.

[tomjamieson]

yeah I do... do you think it's worth removing it and seeing if that works?

[shadowbreaker513]

First go on the sites for the games and see if there a fix for sp2, I know that for Halo Pc and Custom Edition, all that was needed was an updated version of the strings.dll, but if there isn't a fix then try uninstalling it. If that doesn't fix it then just reinstall sp2.