Video applications crashing (Cat 3.10)

Continuing the rocky saga of my upgrade woes, things have improved but still need work. I was previously having issues booting at rated speeds, but that has since been fixed with a new power supply.

Now I'm in an interesting situation that I've really never heard of before. After opening a game, whether it runs using OpenGL or Direct3D, it will either crash, BSOD, or just simply restart the system. Different versions of the Catalyst drivers seem to lengthen or shorten this window, but none of them so far have been completely stable. I'm hoping for another opinion on the situation; I've simply been fiddling around with everything from drivers to bios settings to power configurations trying to get this stuff to work properly.

edit: forgot to mention that it doesn't seem to be a CPU/cooling problem. The system runs stable at 100% usage with CPU Burn.


Vitals:

Asus A7N8X Deluxe w/ latest BIOS (1007)
Athlon XP 2600+ Barton
512mb PC3200 Corsair (system won't boot with default voltage, have to up to 2.7)
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro w/ Cat 3.10
Windows XP SP1, all updates current

edit: even more info:

First of all, the metal part on the top of my video card is burning hot. I can barely touch it for more than five seconds without burning myself.

Secondly, when I run memtest86, the onscreen 'graphics' kind of mess up halfway through, which makes me wonder.

Thirdly, Prime95 fails the first test, claiming a hardware error.

So, are there any other memory tests I can run that won't mess up, or is that an indication that it's time to RMA it?

prime95 only tests the cpu. the fact that fails probably indicates something, possibly low voltage on the cpu. on my Abit NF7-s and Barton 2800+, I have to up the voltage a tiny bit to get it adjusted properly because Mobo monitor reads 1.62 under full load when my BIOS is set to 1.65, so I upped it to 1.7 and it does 1.65 now. prime95 had errors before, not anymore. you may want to look into this with mobo monitor.

as for the video card problem, i've never touched the heatsink on my card so i'm not sure how it feels, but i have a feeling that if you burn yourself by simply touching it, that's not normal. is it like that when your computer is idle? i do have a 9700 pro and will let you know what it's like.

edit: just checked, nowhere on my video card that i can touch does it burn my finger.

I've been touching the metal part on the top. I had my friend do the same and he said it's simply room temperature. I noticed also that it REALLY heats up (I'd wager that I could boil water with it) when I play a game. Would simply putting like an oscillating fan blowing into the open side of my PC work, or will I have to wait until I have the money for a new case to play games?

just buy a pci cooler, it blows air from outside your case strait onto the vid card.

Right, so I'm 9hrs 15 minutes into running memtest86 and I'm up to 43.2 million errors. Who wants to make a bet?

Memtest86 cycles indefinitely. You can stop it and work on getting some new RAM.

well that certainly sux amun. btw, sorry for not responding to pms, was busy

It's ok invar, I love you anyway.

I think I finally got this fixed. I posted in Corsair's support forum and a guy helped me reconfigure some stuff. memtest is coming back clean and Prime95 is actually working properly. I'd suggest buying from these guys in the future :bigthumb:

http://www.houseofhelp.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=20925

Whoa, wait. Did you have your timings set wrong or something?

:huh: