One of my friends need help

Hey. I have heard similar problems with vista...and xp. He has the same monitor as I do and in my opinion, a great for gaming! The setup he has is pretty good. Make sure he checks his video drivers! That caused problems with me in the past. Sometimes they will not install properly causing these "freezing problems." Make sure every driver is working together and not against...if that makes any sense. Good luck!

If it is only in gaming, it might be a heat issue. Make sure the fan is working and see how hot the card is getting both idle and under load (in a game). If the card is overheating, it might shut off as a safety measure.

What game is he playing? Or is this happening with multiple games?

Start with the basics.

1.) Download, burn, then boot Memtest86+ to test his memory, takes about 20 minutes or so
2.) Download and run some of the overclocking tools to test the CPU/Memory from within windows to see if you're getting errors (OCCT, Prime95, ORTHOS, SuperPi, etc).
3.) Download install the newest drivers from nVidia (try the latest final release and then the latest beta if that doesn't work)
4.) Was his HDD bought new? Try running some disk testing tools to see if that is the issue.
5.) Check the temps as he's playing the games, who hot does the CPU get? Maybe he installed the heatsink wrong (check temps as well while you run the tests in step 2 using speedfan, coretemp, etc.)
6.) Maybe a faulty power supply? Try another one if you can, you'd only need at least a 400W power supply but with enough amps on the 12v rail

Let me know how it goes, that should get you off to a good start.

At this point his symptoms are rather general and could be due to a number of different things. The fact that Widows runs OK and games freeze does not necessarily indicate a video problem. 3d games stress the entire system much more than anything else a casual computer user is likely to run. So it could very easily be a cpu over heating issue. We see this all the time, trust me.

Download orthos http://sp2004.fre3.com/beta/orthos_exe_20060420.cab which will run a stress test on your cpu and ram, or the cpu separately. Also download a temperature monitor such as speedfan and report to us your temps at idle and under load.

You should also run a memory diagnostic such as memtest86.

If there is any doubt that the heatsink went down perfectly flush on the CPU that could be your problem right there. Those stock INTEL coolers are not easy to snap in.

If you can get through an extended period of Orthos and memtest86 without errors reported or a system crash then we might think it is a video problem though there are still other possible suspects.

Sounds like a faulty card to me.

I agree that monitor rocks for gaming I'm saving for one right now, for 20inch such a high resolution  

I was going to get the 19" Samsung, but instead went for the 22". Huge difference. The 22" is only 270 on Newegg with rebate. Go for it Hatman...man up.

ok thanx guys i will tell him