Games crash, freeze and occasional BSOD. Possible BIOS Update needed?

[Carrisonfire]

Here's My Specs:

System:
Manufacturer: HP-Pavilion
Model: KQ496AAR-ABA a6530f
Power Supply Rated: 750W
BIOS: Phoenix awardBIOS v6.00PG
Total amount of system memory: 6.00 GB RAM
System type: Windows 7 Pro 64-bit operating system
Number of processor cores: 3
Total size of hard disks: 3039 GB
Disk partition (C:) 108 GB Free (244 GB Total)
Network Adapter NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller
Graphics:
Display adapter type: NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT
Total available graphics memory: 3327 MB
Dedicated graphics memory: 512 MB
Dedicated graphics memory type: DDR3
Dedicated system memory: 0 MB
Shared system memory: 2815 MB
Display adapter driver version: 9.18.13.1090
Primary monitor resolution: 1920x1080
DirectX version: DirectX 10

I've been having problems with my games freezing, crashing and (rarely) causing a BSOD. Currently Fallout 3 GOTY but have had this problem pretty consistently with any game.
nVidea's update app is saying my drivers are good and I've made all suggested changes to the FALLOT.ini file and tried running in XP compatibility mode (The last solution caused a BSOD). I notice on the BSOD it said to check for newer BIOS versions as a possible solution. Upon further inspection there are known issues with my BIOS and nVidea cards. I've found references to an updated Phoenix BIOS but cannot find a download page. Has anyone else ever ran into these issues?

Any help would be much apperciated. I should be able to play All my games on high (except maybe skyrim) but even CS 1.6 will crash on me.

[The Rock God]

Could you run a dxdiag and check which version of your BIOS you have? I don't want to point you to the wrong one.

In the meantime, your mobo is an ASUS M2N68-LA, which looks to be an HP specific one. The latest BIOS I found from HP appears to be this one:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=12454&prodSeriesId=4002330&prodNameId=4002340&swEnvOID=2100&swLang=8&mode=2&taskId=135&swItem=pv-74348-1

[Carrisonfire]

Mine is version 5.14 so it looks like there has been quite a few updates. (Current release is 5.49 on that link)

[Kak]

Well one time i was overclocking my GPU, after playing BC2 for a while i got the BSOD. Im guessing it was from over heating as it never happened again

[Carrisonfire]

I haven't Overclocked it and i dont think its heat, My PC is spread across two cases to avoid overheating

[Carrisonfire]

also bu_chengshi that link says required OS is windows Vista?

[Kak]

Hmmm... well i played BC2 again for a a while at it BSOD'd again! Its the only game that seems to do that... not even skyrim/ far cry 3 which are more demanding... But i got a "dumping memoery" BSOd so its most lieky something to do with my RAM.
When you BSOD, is there something that says "dumping memory 0-100%" ?

[Carrisonfire]

Yes, to my knowledge that is Windows dumping the ram to the HD for recover upon boot. don't think it's related to my issue or yours

[rotNdude]

Download and run this so you can get more information for us to help you

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html

[Carrisonfire]

Just did, there's no record to view when I open it

[rotNdude]

Then you're probably not getting a BSOD.

[Carrisonfire]

I got 1 last night when running fallout 3 goty in XP compatibility mode. I watched it dump the physical memory and saw a part suggesting a BIOS update to fix the problem

[rotNdude]

It's probably your old video card.

[Carrisonfire]

My card is no older than the mobo or the game so it shouldn't be issues with that. I have read on issues between most nvidea cards any my bios version on other forums so thats why i'm leaning in that direction

[ChrisW]

Fallout 3 crashing when you have a multicore processor is normal. The developers know about the problem and refuse to fix it. The only known way to fix it is to manually set one core to affinity every single time you play. I wish Valve would add an option to set one core to affinity in the game properties.

[Carrisonfire]

Originally posted by ChrisW:

Fallout 3 crashing when you have a multicore processor is normal. The developers know about the problem and refuse to fix it. The only known way to fix it is to manually set one core to affinity every single time you play. I wish Valve would add an option to set one core to affinity in the game properties.

I have done this in the fallout.ini file. I have it limited to 2 cores. when i tried 1 it crashed almost immediately