Hi everyone, my computer keeps freezing I guess you would say when I am playing a game. It first started with far cry 1 I tried an assortment of things thinking it was the game, I had the patches up to date so I decided to re-install it and play w/o patches/updates. It didn't freeze up for a while but eventually it did again. Started playing prince of persia sands of time and it does the same thing. The screen will sometimes go black or an olive green colour... I think it may be a hardware issue maybe the processor not being good enough for the graphics card... Here's my computer:

Windows Vista Ultimate (6.0, build 6001)
Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 2.80GHz (Sticker on the front says Celeron D, and Everest home edition says Celeron D 2800MHz)
ATI Radeon HD 2600 Series video card 512MB
1.5G of ram (1G) (515mb) 2 filled slots
75GB hard drive

Everything is up to date

I also played Spore on it and it crashed to desktop a couple times with a windows error unlike these other 2 games..

...maybe the processor not being good enough for the graphics card...
There isn't a concept of the processor "keeping up" with the graphics card. If the processor is too slow for the requirements of the game, the game will just be slow or unplayable, meaning you sit and wait for things to happen which can look like a freeze. If the graphics card is too slow, the game will be slow, unplayable, or exhibit visible graphics issues. That said, Celerons and gaming aren't the best matches for performance.

Some things to investigate are:

Graphics card drivers are up to date.
Microsoft Direct-X version is up to date.
Overheating issue:

All heat sinks and fans in the computer are free of dust accumulation, functional, and are able to adequately cool their respective components - processor, graphics card chipset, motherboard chipset, memory, etc.
Adequate airflow is being forced through the case by the power supply and case fans.
The power supply wattage is sufficient for the power requirements of and number of devices present in the computer.

If system is overclocked, back off timings.

Free utilities such as CPU-Burn (http://users.bigpond.net.au/CPUburn/) or Memtest86 (http://www.memtest86.com/) can be used to stress and exercise individual components for troubleshooting.

I have speed fan v4.37 and the temps are: just having Firefox open on this site is, system 28-30 CPU 20-23 and AUX 32. Direct X is up to version 10 according to DXdiag. The graphics card driver is up to date. While running the game prince of Persia the temp was pretty much the same as listed, but CPU usage was at 100%? In the task manager.. There is a good amount of air coming out of it.. And the computer is not overclocked.. How would I know/check if it's a power supply issue? I have 2 ram sticks and 1 of them has a copper cover over it if that makes any difference.

Just took out the 512mb stick to see if it will fix the problem, maybe going to buy another 1 gig to match

Turns out it was the 1 gig ram stick, problem solved so far!

How would I know/check if its a power supply issue?
Swapping the supply for one rated for a larger wattage or unhooking some devices and seeing if a difference is noticed could be two ways to do it at home. The various power rails really need to be monitored with an ammeter and voltmeter during use, or a 'scope to see if the supply has stability problems when heavily loaded.


Turns out it was the 1 gig ram stick, problem solved so far!
Suggest you run Memtest or similar so that all of it is thoroughly exercised. It's possible to have a memory problem that doesn't generate any errors or cause problems until a heavy memory user, like a game, forces the issue by actually writing or reading from the faulty memory address. Sometimes just re-seating the modules will correct issues too.

Ran a memory test and now I know 100% its good. Thanks!