Wow, that worked. I am so happy. But feel like a total goof
So not only does patio post insightful pictures, he's also insightful himself!
(let's ignore for the moment that I had already planned to underclock the card, and pretend it was patio's idea all along)
I underclocked the GPU to the stock 270 as opposed to the factory default 290, I ran the quake 3 timedemo, and then started a game and just sat there for a while (would pause before). I believe I sat there for at least 5 minutes (I know, I know, not necessarily cut and dried proof the problem is gone, but it happened a lot sooner.
This proves that it is indeed the GPU, which for some reason I didn't even suspect (on account of the clever card-restarting drivers that don't even post a darn Event Viewer message like, "The Video subsystem was restarted" or something.)
This just raises a few more questions though-
Since it is obviously GPU related, it still isn't safe to say that the fan is working as it should- but my computer is a Dell dimension 4400, and opens in a clamshell fashion. So I haven't actually seen it spin, at least in this computer. I had the same card installed (for a few minutes) in my older AMD K6-2 computer, and the fan did spin. I will have to check very soon (at least if it happens after a longer interval) to see what is going on inside the case.
Should I contact BFGtech about this? I mean, they do advertise the OC part, and if I had to underclock to fix it...
Anyway, for now I'm going to do some further "tests" (play some games
), and see if it happens with some more graphics demanding games, like NFS:Underground or HP2. I will of course post back here
just hope framerates don't suffer too much. probably 1-2 at the most loss I'm guessing- 20Mhz couldn't possibly be worth that much!
Anyway, I'm getting closer to solving it, so thanks to everybody who helped me out here!
