System as per profile (i7 920 @ 4GHZ, tested stable, 6GB RAM stable, HD7970 stock or OC stable). Problem is that _only_ one game will completely freeze my computer and that's Shogun 2. After roughly 20 minutes of playing my sound freezes (that loop of one sound), as does the rest of my machine (display, ...), but it doesn't shut off or reboot until I hit the reset button. Just locks up entirely. I've looked for faults everywhere, cleaned everything, re-seated everything, tried stock speeds on EVERYTHING, no dice. I even took off my motherboards chipset heatsinks to clean and reapply thermal paste in case they would overheat or something. Out of ideas now. I want to blame the AMD drivers (using 12.3 pre-WHQL). The issue only started occurring after I got the HD7970, I upgraded from a 5870. Normally I'd say the GPU is busted but EVERY other game or stability test runs fine, be it Crysis 2 or Metro.
Done the latter. Will do the former in a minute, but what's the point in all this hardware if I have to play on DX9 mode or something? Shoudn't happen!
Not trying to derail the thread but everywhere I go, I read that steam sucks. Glad I don't use it, couldn't if I wanted, satellite internet. Please don't trash me too bad. Will I regret this post as a Newbie?