Always crashes after a few minutes.

[ZombieRaith]

When I bought this game I met all specs except the video card. I had an nividia 7600gt 256mb card. I had to put all the settings down to minimum and played at 1024x768, but I could play it without problem. When I started multiplayer, I had a crash here and there and a couple of "your computer is too slow" disconnects. So, I went out and upgraded the video to a 9600gt 512mb card. Bumped up the settings to high/medium and 1280x1024. Game loads up no problem, runs smooth and looks great, BUT it crashes to desktop EVERYTIME now after 5 to 10 minutes. Got a BSOD twice, but mostly it goes to desktop while the sound keeps going for a few seconds.

 

None of my other games crash. Everything runs perfectly fine for hours except GTA4. I've been trying to hunt down a solution. Here's some of the things i've tried by reading the boards:

 

-Reinstalled the game

-Patched game to most current version

-Cleaned out all old drivers and reinstalled most current nvidia WHQL drivers

-Tried Nvidia's newest beta drivers

-Lowered all graphics settings

-Tried out the -memrestrict command file (various numbers) and launch from social club

-Installed an AMD processor optimizing program (don't remember it's exact name)

-Installed Rivatuner and tried various suggestions with that

-Changed "Rendered Frames" option in Nvidia control panel to 0

 

System specs:

 

WinXP (SP3)

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3.2Ghz

Zotac 9600GT 512mb

Creative Audigy X Gamer sound

2 Gigs RAM

450 watt PS

4 Case fans

 

Built the system a couple years ago and NEVER saw a BSOD till now.

Any suggestions? Am I missing any possible solutions? Is there a new patch for the game coming soon?