Games stop responding - driver issue, RAM?

[Flogger23m]

Recently I've been getting some errors when playing games. It is mostly happening in ArmA 2. My error is that I am playing a game and suddenly the screen goes black, and then my game gets minimized and I am on the desktop. Everything is normal, except that I can not maximize the game. The sounds keep playing normally as if I were still in game, but if I try to maximize the game it will just fail to respond.

I also recently had Crysis Wars crash on me, but this game always had the random crash every now and then. Though I do have another issues in Crysis Wars. When I am in certian areas (in doors) I get black flickering/tearing depending on the location I am in. I never had this before. This only happens in Crysis Wars, and not any of the other 6-7 games I have played recently.

This makes me believe that my drivers are not very stable. I am running the Nvidia 280.26 drivers. Has anyone else had instability with these drivers?

While this will not explain my Crysis Wars tearing issues, I recently installed an extra 2 DIMMs of 4GB RAM. Both are identical sets of Corsair RAM. Perhaps the 4x DIMMs (8GB) is causing stability issues?

Specs:
GTX 260 216 Superclocked 280.26 drivers
AMD 965
2x sets of: Corsair XMS2 TWIN2x4096-6400c5 4GB
Win 7 Pro 64bit
M3N78 Pro with the latest BIOS <--- any issues with all DIMM slots used?

 

[Mister Natural]

I'd check the video card to be sure it is cooling properly. Blow out the dust if needed.

 

[sirmonkey1985]

if you think its drivers, update them to the newest version. or roll back to the 258.96 drivers which are very stable with the GTX 260's and see if that fixes it. i had nothing but trouble with the 280.26 drivers with my 8800GS and GT.

but like the above poster mentioned, check your gpu temps while you're gaming and see if they are getting really high.

 

[Flogger23m]

The GPU temps never went above 66 C the last few times I was playing games. Which is really nothing to worry about for this card.

There doesn't seem to be any new drivers out at the moment (aside from beta drivers).

 

[BugginOuT]

The beta drivers are geared more towards Battlefield 3, but it wouldn't hurt to try them. You can always rollback, if needed.

Have you tried uninstalling the added RAM modules and see if the issue is reoccurs?