When playing Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 my PC freezes, then after about 20 seconds it reboots. This happens only when I'm in the game, under normal use everything is OK.

I thought it may be overheating so I added 2 fans to the case 1 to exhaust heat from the video card out through the PCI slot and another to blow room temp air onto the card. This didn't help.

ASUS P5GD1VM MB (Intel chipset with latest drivers)
LGA775 P4 (Prescott) 3GHZ
nVIDIA GT6600FX 256 MB RAM (with latest drivers)
1 GIG RAM (Kingston) with aluminum cooler sleves
ATI TV Tuner card (Theatre 550 Pro - no problem watching TV)
Enermax 460 Watt P/S
Vortex HD Cooler
Gigabyte 3D Aurora aluminum (full tower) case

P4 temperature after the reboot is at 30° C and the VC temp at around 104° C

I appreciate any suggestions you might have.

104° C

I would say that is HOT

Not having much luck finding a nVIDIA GT6600FX 256 MB RAM

GeForce 6600 GT is about as close as I get; or; XFX GeForce 6600 256MB DDR2

Anyway has this card been running OK previously? Is the card fan clean?

Originally Posted by jephree

104° C

I would say that is HOT

Not having much luck finding a nVIDIA GT6600FX 256 MB RAM

GeForce 6600 GT is about as close as I get; or; XFX GeForce 6600 256MB DDR2

Anyway has this card been running OK previously? Is the card fan clean?

You're right, I pulled out the box and the card description is GeForce FX6600 PCI-e 256MB DDR (it doesn't say it's DDR2). I just put the card in about 2 months ago and the game never worked in it. The fan is clean and seems to spin OK.

The default GPU setting for the core shut down is 145° C and as I'm typing this the temperature is at 68°. So, I agree 104° seems very hot and just before the PC reboots I would guess the temp gets to the shut down level. One of the reasons I bought the Gigabyte box was the 3 120mm fans it came with, thinking this would keep things cool.

Is there a way that I can set the event viewer to monitor and record the failure or why the PC reboots?

Is it only this one game that causes problems? Can you play other comparable games?

I take it that you do not get heat warnings when you reboot after a freeze?

The event viewer works all the time but basically only shows driver & services issues as they arise.

In a traditional crash a dump (.dmp) log is created.

In general a freeze will not trigger logs as the system literally freezes.

This behavior is usually a hardware problem.

Still look at your Event Viewer as well as any .dmp logs to see if any appear to coincide.

Also I assume that this card has a warranty?

First of all, thanks for all your help.

I tried playing several other games, Need for Speed, Lord of the rings, Nightfire. No problems what so ever.

I played the golf game again today to see if a dump file would be created, it wasn't. There were a couple of old dump files in \windows\minidump and \documents and settings\all users\administrative tools\microsoft\dr watson, but they reffer to an old rprogram that doesn't close properly (not completly compatible with win xp).

Given that it's only the one game, I'm starting to wonder if it's the software??

The card is still under warranty.

These are the temps I recorded today after the crash abd reboot GPU 89 deg CPU 28 MB 27

Lord of the rings and Need for speed after I exited - GPU 93 CPU 32 MB 30

The GPU Temps are extremely high. Might suggest inspecting the card's heatsink/fan. I wonder if the heatsink is not seated good. At temps that high its VERY possible that the card will malfunction. And its also possible that it will only malfunction on certain games. Are you overclocking the Card by any chance?

Originally Posted by surjer

The GPU Temps are extremely high. Might suggest inspecting the card's heatsink/fan. I wonder if the heatsink is not seated good. At temps that high its VERY possible that the card will malfunction. And its also possible that it will only malfunction on certain games. Are you overclocking the Card by any chance?

I'm not overclocking it, but I'll take your advice and reseat the GPU. If that doesn't work I'll try reinstalling the game.