Hello, I am currently having trouble with the game oblivion for reasons i cant seem to isolate. Here is what hapenned: After setting up oblivion and playing for around 30-60 minutes the game would freeze up and the Catalyst recovery system would announce that it has detected a driver failure. Yet the game still continued to run fine so i continued playing until the monitor shut itself off. At that point, i reboot, lower the game graphic settings and try again, that time the whole game was infested with tiles and squares forcing me to shut it off, yet after doing so, i began noticing that my desktop has some graphical errors as letters being crooked (as if things were written in russian.) I updated my ATI drivers and tried over and over again. I keep having small play sessions before either mess pops up. Im currently using an Radeon X800 XL on and Pentium 4 2.80 GHz with 1GB ram.

What is happening is called artifacting. Usually caused by overclocking a video card to much. Try lowering the GPU and MEM clock rates to see if it helps. If your not overclocking then it sounds like you may need to replace your video card. Another possible cause is the overall temperature inside the PC case. Heat kills. Have the lambs stopped crying Clarice?

Hello Custom Built, Thanks alot for taking time to reply. I havent learned how to overclock a graphic nore tried it in anyways, a weirder fact is that when i run a game like titan quest, i do not encounter the same problem at all, Oblivion seems to be the one game to cause this mess. What card would you suggest me getting to play this game?

Before you spend any cash, lets try a few things first. Download and install this oblivion patch, if you havnt already. http://www.fileplanet.com/164363/160000/fileinfo/Elder-Scrolls-IV:-Oblivion-Patch-v1.1 You have stated that you can run oblivion for 30 or more minutes before the problem occurs. This leads me to believe its a heat related issue. Do this. Shutdown the PC and take off the side panel and place a fan blowing directly into the case for 5 minutes. Then start the pc back up and run oblivion as you normaly would. You may be reluctant to do this because you say titan quest does not have this problem. Just remember that oblivion is a much more graphic intense game wich works the video card harder, therefore generating more heat. Try the fan trick and let me know how it goes. Have the lambs stopped crying Clarice?

After updating oblivion and letting the pc oool down under a fan for a couple of minutes, i tried running oblivion again. It crashed yet i took time to touch the PC's side and it was quite hot around the fan side. Seems like a heat problem alright. Troublesome, would a new cooling system be in order for this case?

You may want to release the fan/Heatsink on the CPU, Blow it out with compressed air, apply some thermal compund and reseat the fan/heatsink. Would also be a good idea to install some exhaust case fans if you do not already have any. Is your video card hot to the touch? What BUS is your video card PCI-Express or AGP? Have the lambs stopped crying Clarice?

The video card is quite heated on touch but the fan seems more heated for some reason. The video card is an AGP bus.