I have the latest drivers for this video card and whenever I play cod5 for about 30 minutes, the screen goes black and sound skips. Shortly after, the monitor shows no signal and the PC stays on. I am forced to restart my computer every time.
I think it is a overheating problem and for some reason, you can't change the 9600gt fan speed. I put it to 100% and the fan stays the same speed.
Try a pci slot cooling fan to go under your card. I have the overclocked galaxy version of that card, and running at 20-30% fan speed, my card usually does not touch 40 degrees at idle. It would be cheaper, and works for me so far.
1. make sure you have downloaded the latest drives and deleted any previous rev. drivers
2. download something like HWmonitor or core temp to see what your temperatures are under load.
I have had the card since March and it doesn't crash on COD4, only on COD5. I turned down the core clock to 550mhz (instead of stock 650mhz) and its not doin it anymore and still runs the game on max.