games freezing for no apparent reason

[rxrotary]

hey guys just wondering if somebody out there could help me with my situation here... when I play games after a short while they just freeze, only the game though, not the computer/os itself. Usually when playing full screen games I am able to fight my way back to the desktop and windowed games I can get out of very easily once frozen. This always happens a few minutes into gameplay and its very annoying! I cant get anywhere in any games because it just freezes a few minutes in.

my hardware is as follows;

AMD AM2 athlon 64 dual core 3800+
Asus M2v
samsung 1gb ddr2
WD 320gb sata hdd
Asus 512mb GeForce 7600gs

if anybody has any ideas on my problem be sure to share them! oh and I've got current directx and the latest nvidia drivers for my graphics card, also have sp2 installed and what not.. cheers

edit: card, cpu and motherboard temps are stable when this is happening also

 

[Blue]

I sounds as though you have a stable PC, yet 3d applications are freezing. Have you tried older drivers?

Check that "direct draw Acceleration" is enabled, "direct 3D Acceleration" etc. (under display in Direct X Diagnostic tool). If they all are enabled head for the sound tab, try lowering the acceleration level.

It sounds as though most or all your drivers are up to date, how about sound?

 

[DCIScouts]

Do you have a separate sound card, or is it built-in to the motherboard. There have been certain sound cards and drivers that have been known to do this (namely to me... ).