Should I change my graphics card?

Appleblossom42

Daughter plays The Sims2 and for a while now after 30 to 40 monutes of gameplay the screen goes black. Can hear the sims but can't get it back on screen to turn it off. Had pc checked out and could find nothing wrong with it. Even happens to some games downloaded from internet. It's not the monitor and pc is well capable of running the game. I also updated the graphics card.
Downloaded System Labs and it gave excellent report. The graphics card is Ati Radeon x550/600 256mb.
Windows home xp
3ghz processor
1024 ram
Can anybody advise?

chump

check power settings in the control panel. Could the monitor be turning off after X amount of time?

There's a turn off the display option in vista - and it's happened me I think when watching avi's or whatever occasionally. But I just amended the power settings!

Appleblossom42

Ok will try that, thanks!

Appleblossom42

Did that and still no luck, went black after about 20 mins. Please someone HELP!

Shiny

check that the fan is working on the graphics card.

Although if it is overheading the colors would go crazy
before the screen would go black.

jonny72

Try to download the latest ATI catalyst drivers
http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html

Download the latest directx (for playing games)
google for directx 9.0c


Could be some kind of complicated power/overheating problem. You can pick up new dualcore PC's for 200 - 300 euros nowadays.

Appleblossom42

Nope the fan is fine and already downloaded latest driver.