Desperately Need any Advice on Graphics Issue

[mattycakes]

Hey all, I just wanted to establish a list of all the possible causes of this problem:

Whenever I raise my resolution in games to anything more than 1280X1024 on higher texture settings with anti-aliasing it then proceeds to glitch like a bitch and crash. Such games as Fallout 3, Dirt, COD4, BiAHH as well as 3dMark06 have this problem.

To date I have tried everything I can think of to remedy this issue. I changed my videocard from a 8800GS to a 9800GT, upgraded my PSU to a 600W OCZ SS, tried older drivers, re-installed widows etc.

If anybody has any idea of what could cause this please post it, no matter how unlikely it is to be the culprit. I want to try everything I can to fix this so I don't have to replace the rest of the rig.

 

[mactronix]

You will need to post full system specs for us to answer that properly
Mactronix

 

[mattycakes]

Sorry, here they are:

Gigabyte M57 SLI S4
AMD Athlon 64X2 5600+ @2.8Ghz
4GB OCZ 1066 Platinum
512Mb xfx Geforce 9800GT
2X 160GB SATA
64 bit Windows Vista

 

[mattycakes]

What happens if you're using 1066 RAM on a mobo that only supports 800...could that be the problem?

 

[mactronix]

Well Ram can cause just about anything to go wrong if its not working properly. You would need to pull the ram and try it one stick at a time and see if the problem is still there, then two etc. You need to be sure you try all differant options, if you think the second stick is bad for example try a differant one first, if it then works its most probably the stick you thought, if both seem bad try a "bad" one on its own first if thats seems ok then it could be an issue with running two. You may not find an issue buy at this point it needs doing.
Also any Overclocks you have set (GPU or CPU) may be stable at lower resolutions/workloads but when you increase the load they can quickly go from stable to oh dear whats happening.
Singling out 3dMark06, its possible you have a bad download or install. I have had issues with this before that have been fixed with a fresh download and install.
Mactronix

 

[mattycakes]

@zipzoomflyhigh Yep, I've had the same problem with both of them. Weird eh.

@Mactronix I currently have no OC's going on this system and I've used different installations of 3dMark on different versions of windows! All with the same result. I'm going to dry fiddling with the RAM for a while now, how do I check the RAM voltages?

 

[mactronix]

The ram voltages are listed in the bios
Mactronix

 

[mattycakes]

IT WORKS!!! I raised the voltages for the RAM and I made it through 3dmark on default and max settings. Thank you sooo much guys!