PC freezing in games

fantomsheep

Honorable
Jun 11, 2013
6
0
10,510
Hi,

My pc has recently decided to start freezing about 1 minute into playing a game. This isn't the case for older games like Evil Genius or Darkest Hour, but Skyrim (which used to run beautifully) now freezes very quickly into the game, as do other games like Far Cry 3 and Need for Speed. Sometimes the game will only get fps of about 15 and stutter about and then freeze, sometimes it gets ~60fps and then freezes. Any help would be most welcome :)

My system info:
Intel Dual Core E8400 @ 3GHz (CPU)
4GB 800MHz (RAM)
500GB (HDD)
Asus P5B Deluxe (Motherboard)
Ati 7770 1GB (Graphics Card)
Windows 8 x64 Pro
 

Richard Naylor

Honorable
Apr 12, 2013
29
0
10,540
Take the side of the PC case off and check that the fan in spinning on the graphics card. Alternatively use a monitoring program like GPU-Z or similar. Sounds like it is overheating do to insufficient ventilation/broken fan. It might just need the dust clearing from the heatsink/fan...
 

Richard Naylor

Honorable
Apr 12, 2013
29
0
10,540
Hmm. That PSU is very weak for that system - I would suggest at least a 500W power supply for any modern system. Have you recently added any new components to it? For example, I added a Soundblaster X-fi card to my old system and that seemed to take the power supply over the edge and stopped the system from working properly.
If you can, try testing your GPU in another system to rule it out.
Also have you installed any programs recently that might conflict with the software of the GPU?