Expert: Rider - 1/2/2009

Question
Hi,
Sorry to ask you a question related to a game, but I have recently bought Fallout 3 on PC and every 10 minutes or so the game crashes to a black screen and I have to restart. Just wondering if you could shed some light on the problem from your perspective. My PC is built with:
AMD Athlon X2 64 processer
Nvidia GeForce 9500 GT PCI 2.0 Graphics Card 1024 Mb
Realtek HD Audio
1Gb of RAM
Do you have any idea why it does this and if possible any solutions.

Regards
Cal

Answer
There are some possibilities as to why the game causes the computer to 'crash'.

1) Heat, check you system to see if it is overheating during game play. Most games are video intensive, that is the video card may be working to hard, try lowering the resolution of the game and see if that cures the crashing (I recently started playing Mass Effect, the system would lock up, reducing the resolution cut down the lockups, increasing the Graphics cooling air competed the job).

2) Memory, 1 gig of system memory may not be enough for the game, even though the game publisher says xxxx meg or gig is required. For games I always try to have twice or more memory installed in the computer. (You will know if the system memory is inadequate if the game pauses - not hangs - when it is loading the next scene or changes missions).

4) One game I played for a long time the cause was the sound card drivers, I had at the time a SoundBlaster 512PCI. When the game publisher made the game they went to the sound card manufactures and asked for an upgrade on the sound card drivers. Not reading the readme when I installed the game I found out the hard way that I needed to upgrade my sound card drivers.

Hope this helps