System Crashing / Artifacting

[Hessian]

For quite a while now I've been getting a lot of artifacting while playing games and a lot of random system crashes without any warning! It's slowly been getting worse and worse until the past week it's almost impossible to play any game for longer than 30mins before the system crashes!

Does anyone know exactly what could cause it? Is it simply just an old gfx card (Radeon X1900 XTX) or is it simply lack of cooling? Or something else?

I'm asking because I'm planning on buying a new GFX Card anyways and was wondering if maybe I need to get some better cooling while im at it, or more RAM, etc.

 

[RJC]

I thought usually if your getting artifacts it means your video card could be on it's way out.
Is it possible to test another card!

Tried updating drivers just in case it's a driver got corrupted.
Run some diagnostic software like Prime or Orthos to ensure system stability and possibly mem test to check your ram.

Are you overclocked at all.

 

[Hessian]

Yup I've tried various different drivers and the results all seem to be the same! I asked a mate of mine and he thought that the card may have just burnt it self out through a bit of overheating, hence the slowly getting worse and worse?

Now I just need to decide between another ATI or go to NVidia?


Edit: Nope not overclocked at all, but am I right in thinking the XTX is pre OC'd? Tbh I know nohing about OC'ing despite being a member of this forum