Hey Dutch,
It sounds like you made the Computer from components? <–guessing.
What is the rating of your power supply? If it’s 300W or less you might need to upgrade to 350 ro 400?
A co-worker, who helped me build my system, had a similiar problem, frequent crashing after upgrading a video card, and the end result was he needed more power.
Hope This Helps,
-Andrew
This ain’t gonna help you, but I’m curious. Why not just buy an X-Box to play those games? And no, I’m not a salesman. (can “INAS” be a new disclaimer?) FWIW, my copy of GTA III runs as well under XP with a 2400+ chip as it does on the X-Box. Though I like to tweak my comps with extra Ram and Video cards, etc.
Because they’re expensive.
Yes, it was a component job.
AGP stands for Accelerated Graphics Port, which naturally leads one to the conclusion that it’s the bus for your graphics card. Your settings are spot on for it, so no worries there. I’m not familiar with onboard video, but I’m guessing that your onboard video buffer memory does, in fact, specify how much memory to reserve for the onboard video. Try changing it and seeing what happens, if you feel so inclined.
35 degrees for your CPU is beautiful, really. And don’t worry about your power supply; I’ve seen two- and three-year old computers (Dell or Gateways, one of those) running on 150W power supplies. In one case, there was one running on nothing more than 90W. Now, if your PSU came from some no-name company, then that might affect it, but since it’s not crashing at all now, I’d place the blame on Windows 98.
Okay… its all about the temperature.
I was using one of AOpen’s little utilities to figure out the operating temp.
However, I just had a random shutdown w/ alarm again, and it turns out the CPU is at something more like 60 deg.!
I have a system fan (set to run at 100%, or 3700 rpm)… why is my CPU temp so ridiculously high?
Your CPU temp is high because the heat transfer path is insufficient. Which is like saying the person died from being hit by 30 cal machine gun bullets from lack of oxygen to the brain.
Why is the heat transfer path insufficient? There are many possible causes. The most common cause is a defect in the thermal paste between the top of the chip and the heat sink. Another common cause is improper airflow over the CPU/Heat Sink/Fan unit. Here is a link to an AMD support document/pdf. On page 16 of the document, (page 26 of the pdf), there is a picture of proper airflow. If any one of the 5 air passage ways is blocked, then there will be temperature problems.
Good Luck!
AMD processors are notorious for running hot. I bought the Athlon XP 2100 with the Palomino core (runs hotter than its Thoroughbred counterpart) and the damn thing would overheat right out of the box. AMD recommends using the fan they provide, but it just doesn’t cut the mustard. Rather than take it back, I just bought a better CPU heatsink/fan (a coolermaster…I forget the model, but is’ huge). Before I purchased the coolermaster, my comp would freeze up at about 60 degrees celsius, so I’d imagine that is your problem. You have 3 options: buy a bigger fan, 2) buy better thermal paste (quicksilver is supposed to be the best…), 3) open up the side of your computer and aim a boxfan in there. or do all of the above.