I got an uber fast computer for my birthday, got it hooked up, and for some reason it crashes on me randomly. I am currently using:

Vista 64 bit
9800 gx2
8gb RAM
790i Ultra Motherboard
1000watt power supply

I think that it's because of the RAM (either the video card's or my 8gb) simply because in the two games (nexuiz and UT3) that I have on my computer (and it has frozen with) it was always loading something. (the crylink model in nexuiz, and an explosion the last time it crashed in UT3)

The one time I managed to ctr+alt+del out of the crash it said that the video card drivers failed. But I haven't managed to do that since. I updated the drivers, (for the video card) but that hasn't solved it.

It may be overheating, though. I put a PCI-E8 (divided into a 6 and 2) into the 6 pin power slot on my 9800 gx2. Am I supposed to do this, or am I supposed to use the regular cord that says PCI-E on it into that slot?

BTW, Nexuiz is up there with crysis. I can't max it out. (atleast on vista) The HDR is sucking most of the processing power.

For first I'd open the case and blow some air with a fan into it. That's an easy way to find out if you suffer any thermal issues.

Second, I think you either got 2x 4GB RAMs, or 4x 2GB. Just remove the half of them, swap their slots and try around.

Mulit-GPU Graphics cards btw are quite useless for many games (e.g. Nexuiz and iirc Crysis), as they don't provide any support for it.

Random crashes are a recognition feature for "brandnew" high end M$ OSes, aren't they? So I wouldn't mind that too much

Oh and btw, even if your PSU is a MegaWatt one, if it's crap, it's crap. Crappy PSUs cause random crashes while gaming and sub-optimal performance of the whole system. What brand is it, and does it have an 80+ efficiency label?

Vista is the problem. I just found an update that solves exactly what my problem was. Now all I have to do is hook it up to the internet...