Crashing in WoW (Gfx overheat..?)

[Starburn]

Been playing WoW for the first time today .. & my PC has froze up twice :| .. second time I recieved a VPU error (ati recovery thing) first; then my monitor reported "signal out of range", or something similar.
First time the monitor just turned off and the keyboard wasn't responding (numlock).

I'm thinking the graphics card must be overheating? It never has before :/.. and its quite well ventilated (using the Cavalier 3 atm; huge grill infront of the AGP slot) can actually feel cool air being pulled through the grill by the rear 120mm fan.. & the side of the case is cool to the touch.
No PCI cards either.

System:
XP2500 @ 11x200
Epox 8RDA (rev 1.1)
Geil Value 2x512mb DDR400 (stock)
Crucial Radeon 9800pro (stock)
Just 1 HDD (WD) & a DVDRW

Oh and an Enermax 350W PSU.

thanks for any advice.

[EvilMunky]

could well be the grafix card overheating. Do you run any other grafix intensive games?

Try cranking down the res on the game a bit, and the detail - and seeing if it still happens.

[Dooms]

I think there used to be a problem with the ATI recovery thing (quite awhile ago) - Are you using the latest gfx card drivers? Try turning off the recovery program? Dirext X updated?

[Starburn]

I think there used to be a problem with the ATI recovery thing (quite awhile ago) - Are you using the latest gfx card drivers? Try turning off the recovery program? Dirext X updated?

That's a good point; I noticed late last night that I was using drivers from December (does that count as a while ago? ). So I've updated them to the latest.
Just hadn't noticed really as everything had been running smoothly up till now .
Haven't tried playing WoW since the update; will try later on.. see if it happens again (it's a fair few hours of gameplay before it happens/ed).

Got the latest DirectX on afaik (I'll double check when I get home).

[Starburn]

could well be the grafix card overheating. Do you run any other grafix intensive games?

Try cranking down the res on the game a bit, and the detail - and seeing if it still happens.

I've played BF Vietnam in full detail for quite a while with no problems.
Oh and 3DMark 01'/03'.. but they don't really run for that long.

[Starburn]

Still crashing.. more frequently now

Got a WoW bug report form on the last crash .. recovered from hardware deadlock.. apparantly.
Now I can't decide if its my new RAM; or the graphics card.. as had some trouble with the RAM at first (failed memtest) - although after switching slots around a bit it passes memtest and memtest+ so I'm thinking it should be ok..
Touching the side of the graphics heatsink its extremely hot to the touch.

Even taking the side off the case didn't seem to help though :/

[mike_w]

Try turning the overclock down on your CPU, and giving your case a good clean - dust can have a serious impact on temperatures.

Try running Prime95. If it doesn't come up with errors, then you can probably eliminate the CPU.

[Starburn]

This case is only a few weeks old.. so no dust, yet

I added an extra side fan and upped the page file (I noticed I had it set quite small) and.. it didn't crash in the last 5 hours or so.. so things are looking up