9600 VPU Recover Problem

Okay, got my 9600pro back from ati on wednesday [woot go me] and i bought a cheap antec case and an ok powersupply to fill in while i send my burnt out case/powersupply back to newegg. i also purchased two 80 mm fans to cool the components. At first when i installed the video card i could not play half-life 2 or rome:total war because of missing textures [replaced by solid colored textures] in hl2 and a very odd looking menu in RTW. That was with the 4.11 drivers. I reinstalled hl2 [thought it was a problem with those files] and tried again, no dice. I downloaded the 4.12 beta ones [the hl2 ones] and tried. worked fine for a while. Now heres the problem. i can play hl2 for about 20 minutes or so and then it will freeze up and i will get a VPU recover screen. I can restart and it still happens. I also tried the drivers in rome total war. It is playable but i get flickering textures in the sky and it freezes my computer during heavy action scenes.

video settings in hl2: this happens on recommended settings: everything at high, no aa/af, reflect world, wait for vsync = off. also happens on medium with simple reflections.
video settings in rtw: everything at high besides grass, no aa, normal unit scaling.

resolution: same for desktop, rtw, and hl2 = 1152x864

How much of this problem is driver issues if any and what steps can i take to fix this problem. [if its a hardware not software issue i will be pissed off because im not in the mood to send my video card back to ati for 10 days+]

p.s. im really not sure about driver #'s... got used to nV ones when my card was away. device manager tells me that my driver # is 6.14.10.6497 which is not a catalyst number so if someone with an ati card could check their device manager that would be great.

thanks
-lawler

AMD Athlon 64 3500+ | MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum | 1gb Kingston HyperX PC4000 [2x512] | ATI 9600 Pro [upgrade soon] | Sound Blaster Audigy LS | Samsung 120gb hd

Did you try running without FastWrites?

That did it for me before with unexplained VPU recovery crashes.

Haven't had much time to play recently.

That's my suggestion for now.


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK

I've had a few VPU errors too, I will try turning fast writes off..

<font color=blue>AthlonXP-M 2500+(12x200)</font color=blue>|<font color=green>Abit NF7-S</font color=green>|<font color=red>Kingston DDR400 2x256Mb</font color=red>|<font color=purple>NEC Accucync90 19"</font color=purple>|<font color=black>Sapphire 9600XT</font color=black>