Game Crashing? maybe video card?

[Lunercrab]

Ok so i build my first custom...and here's my problem...I decided to start playing Simcity 4 again and after about 2+ hours of playing it, the game will just shut down on it's own and bump me back to the desktop. Now i have the evga 8800GT card, which is more then capable of handling those graphics i'm sure...but i'm just wondering if the card could be causing the game to crash or what could?...here are my specs

Gigabyte p35-DS3R
Intel Q6600
Evga 8800GT
Thermaltake Tsunami Case
Theraltake 600w powersupply

Now like i said i'm kinda new to all this so i don't know what is causing the problem, now if it was my mobo, wouldn't the whole puter shut down?...could something be overheating...i got three fans running full speed...is that enough?....thanks

 

[Evilonigiri]

It could be a number of things. I wouldn't suspect the vidcard.

Download Prime95 and stress test using the blend setting. If you get any errors, your ram isn't stable so adjust it in the bios. After you get it stable for at least 6hours, move to testing the small FFTs. This stresses your cpu. If it fails, adjust the voltage of the cpu. Stress test for 6hours.

Use coretemp to monitor your cpu temps, do not let it go past 70C.

 

[Dame1701]

Well from your specs, it sounds like the power supply is more than up to the job, so I'd cross that off the list for starters. Which OS are you running? If it's Vista, you may require an update in order for SimCity 4 to run properly. It worth checking for an update anyway and also for the graphics card drivers.

If you are able to successfully play the game for 2+ hours, I suspect your problem isn't due to overheating or lack of power, since these issues tend to manifest themselves much earlier. However if you are overclocking any components, it is worth dropping them back to their default values and see if you have any more joy.

Is SimCity 4 the only game causing this problem? Have you tried playing more graphjically intensive games - Doom 3 for example or UT 4 - demos of either will suffice. If these run fine, then I very much doubt that your problems lie with the video card or indeed with any other hardware on your system.

My feeling with this is that there could be a bug with the game itself. Does it write any form of log that you can view to try and ascertain the problem? Perhaps you should search gaming forums or the publisher's website to see if anyone else has similar issues. It may be that the game just doesn't work properly with later hardware. As a software developer myself, I know that sometimes we aren't very good at looking towards the future ;-).

 

[dragonsprayer]

psu is over heating remove the door

if it crashed in 20 mins its psu

if it crashes in 5 mins or 5 hours its a setting in the memory or cpu speed or voltage

 

[Lunercrab]

ok i'll run the tests...btw everything in the computer is stock...i have not oc'd anything or adjusted any fan speeds or anything like that...also i forgot to mention in my specs that i have 4gigs of ADATA 6400 memory and i'm running on XP 32bit still...i've never really played with bio's before and i'm just curious if there is something within bio's i could do to help the computer maybe run better then it does stock?....Like should i adjust ram speeds and stuff like that?...or is it not really nessasary...btw at idle 2 of my cores are about 32C and the other two are 37C...with the test running it bumped em up to around 50C....are these temps normal?...thanks guys...