ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Problems

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Beardmaster

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Ok wasn't sure where to post this as I'm a total noob and have just about reached the end of my tether with my pc. I would really appreciate any advice (other than hitting my pc with a sledgehammer) that could help fix my problem.

To cut a long story short my PC locks up during any one of the following activities;

1. Burning a Long DVD (i.e. more than 2 hour long film)
2. Playing 3d Accelerated games (i.e. GTA San Andreas)
3. Playing Visualizations in Winamp

I have spent a lot of money on various hardware upgrades and still the problem doesn't go away, my spec is as follows;

Asus A7V880 Mobo
Athlon XP 3200
Antec Neopower 480W PSU
Zalman CNPS7000B CPU cooler
1 GB 3200 Ram
HIS ATI Radeon 9800 Pro GFX
1 x Lite-On DVD RW 16X
1 x Artec CD RW 52X
1 x S-ata Seagate 160gb HD
1 x IDE Western Digital 80gb HD

I can't actually figure out what the problem is, I've tried re-installing windows in a different directory as well as upgrading the bios and doing virus and adware scans. Still I get the same problem I can play visualisations in Winamp for maybe 10 minutes solidly before the whole thing locks up, pretty much the same thing happens with games such as Half life 2 and GTA SA. The comp also locks up round about the 68% mark when burning a long dvd, maybe there is more than one problem but this is starting to make me lose sleep!

Any advice because I'm stuck and I've just ran clean outta ideas, you are truly a guru of PC fixing if you can sort this one out, any help is greatly appreciated, thanks.
 
I get freezes in games with my 9800PRo, I'm pretty sure heat is the problem and buying a cooler will solve it. I just need to get round to buying/fitting it!

It freezes in most new games (exept Half-Life 2... quite strange) but most demos are fine. It's been happening ever since I fitted more Ram, I had to remove the card to access one of the Ram clips, so I might have broken the fan then, the RAM is of different types but the LAtencies are the same and the faster one should slow down to compensate.
 
I'm fairly confident I had mild freezing problems before installing the RAM, in Rome: Total War at least.
 
You're right they are notorious for overheating, and its really disapointing for as much as they cost new, I solved mine with a Vantec Iceburg 5 GPU Cooler, it also gave me OCing headroom too.
 
I found out what was wrong, the fan was clogged with dust so it overheated!
Check to see if thats the problem, if not the only solution is to get a better fan.
If possible, for anyone thinking of buying one, get a HIS model, they are at the more expensive end of the 9800pros, but the come with a large and excellent fan and heatsink that gives a good potential for overclocking.
 
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