Games freeze and stop outputting video on driver crash

[ndfr623]

Hi. As you probably guessed from the title, my games will often times freeze up for a sec or two, then continue as if nothing had happened, except then they aren't outputting video. It happens like this:

 

1. Playing game, doesn't matter if it's pause menu, mid-gameplay, or title screen.

2. Game will freeze up, showing either a black screen or get stuck on a frame. Sometimes the game will get stuck in a loop that can also be heard (tiny loops of music being heard over and over)

3. At this point the game will either refuse to work completely or continue like always, except now the game's stuck on a black screen or a single frame.

 

As I'm sure you will understand, this is incredibly annoying and a waste of time. This ONLY happens on games that max out my GPU (GPU usage stuck at 99%), which isn't really hard to do.

 

My PC consists of the following components. I really don't have money to upgrade it and I'm only able to get a single component at a time once in every blue moon.

 

Cpu: FX 6300 @ 3.8 GHz on Air cooling (Alpine 64 Plus)

MOBO: ASRock 960 GC-GS FX on latest BIOS (P1.70 or something like that)

RAM: 4GB of DDR3 @ 1600 MHz (HyperX Fury, single module)

GPU: XFX Radeon HD 5450 1GB DDR3 (manually OC'd to 800 on the core, 600 on the memory)

Storage: 240 GB SSD from KingDian as well as a 1 TB WD Green

PSU: 250W OEM power supply, it's old and probably not very reliable

No case fans

Network and sound are the onboard ones.

Monitor 1: Packard Bell Viseo 190W (1366x768) plugged straight into the VGA port

Monitor 2: Don't know the brand, it's 1280x1024 plugged into DVI with DVI to VGA adapter

OS: Windows 7 64-bit SP1 (switched back after Win10 CU gave me crap about programs "being denied access to the Graphics Hardware")

 

I KNOW that the GPU is a MASSIVE bottleneck and as such it will be the next component I upgrade, whenever I get the money.

 

My main problem is with the drivers. I have the Catalyst 15.7 WHQL drivers installed, straight from AMD's website. I've also tried 15.7.1 and the newest Crimson drivers. This issue occurs on all of them. So what I'm really asking of you here is this: Is there a way to clean install the video drivers without the iGPU (Radeon 3000, on the motherboard) getting in the way? If not, is there some way to eliminate the freezes when the GPU is maxed out?

 

My thanks.

 

PS: If you say "LOL my laptop could do better than that just get a better PC" you're not helping.

[EunSoo]

What are your GPU usage percentage and temps before it freezes?

[NinJake]

Depends what games you're trying to play.

[Zando_]

2 minutes ago, NinJake said:

Depends what games you're trying to play.

Yah. You ain't trying to push Crysis or Rise of the Tomb raider on that, are ya? 

[NinJake]

Games have "minimum" and "recommended" requirements for a reason. If the games you want to play have higher requirements, of course things aren't going to work properly.

[ndfr623]

21 hours ago, NinJake said:

Games have "minimum" and "recommended" requirements for a reason. If the games you want to play have higher requirements, of course things aren't going to work properly.

I guess you're right about that, after all, it was never meant for gaming and i chose it only for the ability to run more than one monitor. Still, this did not happen before I switched to the FX-6300 (and I refuse to go back to the 64 X2 5000+).

21 hours ago, SCGazelle said:

What are your GPU usage percentage and temps before it freezes?

99% all of the time. Invariably.

[ndfr623]

21 hours ago, Zando Bob said:

Yah. You ain't trying to push Crysis or Rise of the Tomb raider on that, are ya? 

Actually, it can pull off 30-ish FPS with everything on the lowest settings at my monitor's native resolution (which is barely HD but whatever). It is capable.

[ndfr623]

21 hours ago, SCGazelle said:

What are your GPU usage percentage and temps before it freezes?

I also forgot to mention that the card never goes over 75 Cº under full load, but it is a passively cooled, low-powered (under 25W consumption under load) card so I don't know its thermal tolerance.