Is this a memory problem?

You guys might of read my thread in the general cooling forum, well i am gona put it in the right place and extend one of the questions.

Whenever i got to play a game(any game) my computer will totally freeze up after any were from 10 minutes to a half hour. The current noise will keep replaying and the only thing i can do is reboot. My ram is only about a month old and this is my system specs(no OC'ing done):

Athalon xp 1800+
256mb pc2100 ram
7 fans
Stock heatsink and hsf
Shuttle ak31a mobo (accepts pc1600 and pc2100 ddr sdram)

Is there compatibilty issues? Should i go with pc16000 this time? Do i even need new ram?

hmm

what r your temps on the cpu?
and what temps does your graphicscard have?

maybe its both or just one of them making trouble....

i could aswell really be the RAM. either they work from day 1 or they dont... unless u kill them be your own fault..overvolting for e.g....

fist i´d check the temp.... then try another stick of ram if your temps r ok

I'm thinking its the video card, try 3dmark2k1 se and tell us the results, if it freezes, i'd go with a new video card. Whenever my video card is o/c ed too far, the same things happen.

-also, check the settings in the bios, you might be overclocking by accident

-CPFitz-

Might be a video driver-chipset-sound card problem.
Something about a "infinite loop".
Used to be quite common when using certain combinations of hardware, most of the issues seem to have been ironed out with drivers but irq sharing can still be a possible cause even thou pci bus sharing is supposed to be ok.

See if the stuff at this link sounds like what is happening.

http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=64

You can read the other thread that this was discussed at here . Here is what idgamerd
said and he describes my exact problem:

Dont buy anything yet! I had the exact same problem as you, I even bought a new heatsink and it didnt help any. First question is what kind of ram you have and how many sticks.

Now reboot go to BIOS and LOWER your front side bus, or if you not lazy and want to get right down to the chase open your case and take out one stick of ram and see if that helps.

I had the same exact problem I could NOT play any game or even be in windows for more then 5min PC would freeze with high pitch sound. It happend to be my ram I took 1 stick out and bam everything worked fine, amazinglyram does go bad

Oh and another thing I have a ax-7 with a quite fan (dont remember its stats right now but its quite so its weak) anyways the point is my temp is 57 at full load and PC works great
-------------
AMD Athlon XP 1900+
K75SA
256 PC2100 (was 128 + 256 PC100 and I started having problems with 128)




P.S.----- Are there any compatibilty probs with this mobo, thnx

Nothing specific that I am aware of as far as the motherboard goes other than I seem to rember it didn't overclock well with all the memory banks filled.

Try using x86 memory tester and see how that does.

http://www.memtest86.com/

There are so many things possible that can cause lockup's that anything specific is just a guess.

Run the memory test above and if that's ok check for any driver and bios updates for your componets, patches for games, if thats no help check for irq sharing and if any exist resolve them and if the problem still happens strip the system down to minimun componets(video card,cpu,memory and hard drive) and see if it still happens.

i only have one stick, i will check what u said to tho