Guild Wars 2

Hey Lalangamena,

First of all, I think you should have a look at this: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/371181-33-crashing-temperature

Do not really have a solution but wanted to share a couple of things that might help. I have the exact same symptoms/crashes. I.e:

“The symptoms of how it is crashing for me- randomly inside the game:
a) I get black screen with the latest sound bit looping
or
b)orange screen with vertical lines with buzz sound.
when the crash occurs I cannot alt-tab or ctrl-alt-del or alt-F4 out of it, I have to shut down the PC with on/off button.”

I used to have this sort of crash randomly after playing most games for 1-2 hours. But I get it way more often with Guild Wars 2. So I started investigating. Turns out it is heat-related. After underclocking my gtx 550ti back to Nvidia’s factory specification and limiting frames to 30 FPS, the temps got lower and I rarely have this crash now. But I still get it occasionally especially in GW2 despite low/normal temps (50-64C during gameplay).

It never really made sense as to how this was possible. That is until I stumbled upon that Tomshardware’s forum post. It seems that GPU’s RAM is the one causing such crashes because it is the one overheating.

“It is almost certainly the GDDR that is overheating. Most cards do not have a monitor for the RAM temp on card.

The fan will increase the heat taken away from the RAM as well as the GPU.

Also I hav efound that if you are playing a modern game that is streaming textures from an SSD (if the game is installed on an SSD) it puts more heat into the GDDR.

My card has a MEMIO heat sensor and I can watch this happen in real time."

Seems like getting an aftermarket GPU cooler and getting a better case/better air flow is the only solution. But then, I have to try it to know for sure.

Here is my spec in case you need it:
Intel Q9650 (@stock)
Gigabyte GA-P45-UD3LR
Gigabyte GTX 550 Ti GV-N550OC-1GI
6 GB Kingston DDR2 667MHz (2GBx2, 1GBx2)
Hitachi Deskstar 1TB 7200 Rpm
Zalman 750 PSU
Windows 8 Pro 64 Bit

Needless to say, all drivers, etc, are up to date.

Good luck,
DS