Same thing
Hi. I've been lurking Google for awhile now, and have found little help for the M916 motherboard. I've had this machine for over a year now, through ENDLESS fiddling/fussing, and am having the same problem as the original poster.
I think, after all this time, I'm making progress.
Before I start, I have a very similar setup to the other guy:
PCCHIPS M916 mobo
1 gig RAM
Radeon 9800 Pro 256mb
At first I thought it might be memory related, but my memory seems to be just fine. Pretty much the other big option is heat. And it IS heat-related. When I take this huge room fan blower thing, prop it up on something and BLAST it into the open case, the crashing subsides or stops completely.
The CPU gets very, VERY hot during gaming.
So I thought, "alright, that's it. it's just overheating."
I forgot, though, that all this time, I have NEVER been able to enable AGP acceleration!!! AT ALL!!!
I looked around for an ALi 868Pro AGP driver (ALi 868Pro is the chipset the M916 uses), with no luck. I installed a generic ALi AGP driver, and nothing changed.
I believe this is key. With no AGP acceleration, most of the rendering stress is being pressed onto the CPU . . . am I right? If not "most", then at least "too much". This would explain the crashing.
Note that there is NO option in the BIOS settings to enable or disable AGP acceleration.
However, in the specs of the mobo, it says it supports AGP 8x.
This is the extent to my research. I need to find some way to get AGP acceleration running. I think this is the key to everyone's problems with the M916 . . . THAT and something is up with the USB function. I don't completely understand . . .
any help with the AGP problem??