Blue Screen Every Time I play Games

[Nathrakh]

I have a AMD64 3000
512MB of 400mhz ram
motherboard is a Gigabyte K8N pro 800mhz FSB
ATI Radeon 9600 SE AGPx8
On Board Sound
Maxtor 200 GB Sata HD
Win XP SP2
DX 9.c

all latest drivers

The system is stable for normal web browsing and photoshop elements, printing ect. But after about 2 mins of playing any game I get the famous blue screen and the computer restarts. I usually play Call of Duty and Bf1942. Has anyone any advice? I put the computer together myself and am really disappointed with the gaming aspect of it.

The system is really stable for everything else and it's just games that cause problems.

[Pendragon]

I have seen something like this, great 2D but hanging on 3D. The problem was power or lack of it. Modern 3D card are really pushing the limets of the motherboard to provide enough power. When the 3D card winds up it draws too much power and the system crashes. The solution that has worked for the people with the same problem was to upgrade the PSU. You know the saying "never but cheap paint" well here is a spin on it...

"Never buy a cheap PSU"

We all stuff our boxes with lots of nice shinny stuff, with little regard to the poor PSU that has to provide enough power at the right voltage to keep it all running nicely.

[Ferrit]

You have adequate specs to play any of the games you have listed so it becomes a matter of what exactly is the issue.
I would think the first thing to do is go over the drivers for everything that you are using.
Chipset package is here
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_udp_winxp_5.10

ATI Radeon drivers here
http://www2.ati.com/drivers/5-5_xp-2k_dd_cp_wdm.exe
Sound here
http://america.giga-byte.com/MotherB...altek_whql.exe

I would update those to begin