My Computer hates me

very tricky to track down.. to eliminate software (i.e. windows corruption / virus ) have you done a wipe and restore.. after that it could be a lot of things and hard to narrow down (unless you have several pieces of hardware laying around 2nd power supply, ram,cpu,graphic card and main board..)

If it only happens in X3, it may be a driver issue, had something similar going on with Toca Race Driver and Bioshock on an older system. Fixed by installing a different driver, older or newer.

If it happens with games in genera, again maybe a driver, or it may be something wrong with the video card. Check that the power connectors are well in place, and that the temeperature does not go out of bounds. Ati Catalyst Control Center has a function that automatically shuts down the GPU if it goes over 90 degrees.

If it happens outside of games there may be a lot of things causing it.

GPU temps are around 55 degrees celsius in X3. And it is only in X3 so far. I am going to try a AV scan and new GPU drivers. Are there any known issues with the catalyst 10.6 drivers?

Also, it should be noted that the issue has only popped up recently. It never occured when i was using the integrated graphics in the cpu.

AV scan was clean.

If you were using the integrated graphics before, it may have a conflict with the video card. I'm not that familiar with solutions for that sort of problem.

On a long shot, have you installed any strange DirectX versions or unusual video/audio codecs recently? They may also cause problems.

You may have to boot into cmos and disable the onboard graphics manually.

Onboard graphics are already disabled. Made sure of that when i installed the card.

I have not installed any weird codecs or Direct X versions. Just the most recent DX 11 release when i got the video card.

At this point it is just a waiting game. I wont be sure if my problem is fixed for a couple of weeks.

Interesting. I just ran memtest 86+ and everything passed, but the RAM was shown as being 3966 M (Should be 4096 M I believe). Could this be the problem?

Sometimes rebooting is caused by the  cpu overheating... maybe the fan on it died..  you might have accidently unplugged the power to it when installing the card.

Try using this...nothing special but you can shut down some stuff to free up ram and such. http://www.iobit.com/gamebooster.html

CPU fan is still chugging along. I think that the amount of ram shown in memtest is significant because the crashes in X3 have only started since the latest patch which enabled the use of more then 2 gb of ram.

I'd try rolling back to the 10.5 or 10.4 drivers. I've been having my own issues with 10.6 and I have the same card as you.

I'd roll back to the onboard graphics and see what happens...

I'm doing fine so far. I have not had any problem with the 10.6 drivers (yet), but i must admit that ATi has not impressed my with their drivers so far.

Perhaps a power supply fault or... certainly worth checking... a CPU overheat? Perhaps the CPU was on the verge of over-heating, the dedicated GPU increases the case temp and *boom*, your cpu now overheats.

This could be the problem but like others said try rolling back the drivers first and if that doesnt work then reinstall the game without the update to see if that works.  If neither does it could very well be a power supply problem... If it is dying slowly it can cause intermittent problems.

It is definitley not the ram... the difference you are seeing is that windows 32-bit still wont see 100% of the ram when 4gb is installed.