Quick, Multicolored Bars/Freezing

[Hyphen]

When I play in windowed mode in a few games (awkwardly enough, it is two space-based games with black backgrounds, starfields, etc.) very briefly every now and then I will see a very quick flash of thin, horizontal bars that are all colored differently on my screen. They will continue until eventually my screen completely freezes and I must restart by my tower. When I play fullscreen, this doesn't happen. Why?

Here is information regarding my hardware: http://www.xfire.com/profile/crayder/
(at the bottom, Gaming Rig)

 

[sirmonkey1985]

sounds like either the cards overheating or its about ready to die.. the bars is artifacting which could be caused by the vram overheating or the gpu overheating.. check your temps.. if they look within the norm.. then id say the cards about ready to bite the dust..

 

[MrkXCeL]

Could be that in windowed mode V-Sync doesn't kick in and your game tries to and or does run at much higher FPS and therefore loads your hardware substantially more than fullscreen. Just a thought. Try running something like Furmark windowed/fullscreen see what happens there. Either way follow sirmonkey1985's advice

 

[sirmonkey1985]

Could be that in windowed mode V-Sync doesn't kick in and your game tries to and or does run at much higher FPS and therefore loads your hardware substantially more than fullscreen. Just a thought. Try running something like Furmark windowed/fullscreen see what happens there. Either way follow sirmonkey1985's advice

damn i didnt think of anything like that..

 

[Hyphen]

sounds like either the cards overheating or its about ready to die.. the bars is artifacting which could be caused by the vram overheating or the gpu overheating.. check your temps.. if they look within the norm.. then id say the cards about ready to bite the dust..

My temps run a little hot but not so hot that I should be freezing like this, this is a brand new computer. Should I try using a lower windowed resolution?