What could be causing this BSOD?

[Black Panther]

(Desktop in system specs)

I've noticed that whenever I play Dirt2 for more than 2 or 3 hours at a stretch the game starts lagging and occasionally even freezes with the sound looping like a 'stuck record'. Normally I just quit by then, but yesterday I felt like continuing so I reloaded the game (thinking it was a graphic card memory leak). However, as soon as I started it was lagging again.
So I re-booted the pc... and on reloading the game it started lagging immediately After a minute, it froze and I got this BSOD:

Now my desktop never BSOD's... the cpu is overclocked but it's stable running orthos prime for 12+ hours without going over 58 degrees C.
I've played other games for similar long hours with the same overclock.
I tested the temperatures of the 5970 ingame using gpu-z but they don't go over 72 degrees, which is quite reasonable for stock cooling.

I've googled the problem but got more confused than before since the 0x00000124 error points out either to a nvidia driver problem (my card's an ATI) or to sound driver problem. Tbh it's true that the sound starts freaking out first by having the background music quitting, before all the lagging in Dirt2 starts. Then after the lagging starts the game freezes and the sound gets 'stuck'. But then I've got all the latest drivers & alchemy for the x-fi, so there isn't much I can do? And if it's a creative sound card driver issue it doesn't make sense to manifest itself only after some hours of gameplay and not immediately? And why doesn't the problem resolve itself by rebooting the pc but it resolves itself if I start my pc some hours later?
I'm suspecting that my sound card is getting hot, is it possible? lol

 

[sneekypeet]

you need more volts, either in the CPU or VTT That usually corrects a 0124 error. The fact that is acts like a GPU freezing and themn the PC crashing is odd, usually when I get that message its a fast kill, no sound or freeze, just the BSOD.
BTW I was getting lag on the servers last night as well. Not from you, you were pinging awesome when we played, but I think if someone else has a poop connection it can affect your game play as well

 

[t_ski]

Many search results suggest something hardware related. Sound card drivers, memory timings, PSU or CPU OC. Even heat is a potential issue.

Are you using 10.4 Cat's with your card or another driver?

 

[Black Panther]

you need more volts, either in the CPU or VTT That usually corrects a 0124 error. The fact that is acts like a GPU freezing and themn the PC crashing is odd, usually when I get that message its a fast kill, no sound or freeze, just the BSOD.
BTW I was getting lag on the servers last night as well. Not from you, you were pinging awesome when we played, but I think if someone else has a poop connection it can affect your game play as well

I was going to pm you and erocker explaining my sudden vanishing

In my case it starts from the sound. It either goes away half of it (I can hear the effects but not the music) or it starts looping and sticking, while gameplay remains as fine as ever..... Then some 15 minutes later the game would start lagging, and only afterwards it freezes. I got the BSOD because I persisted in rebooting and reloading the game.

I'm not sure about VTT - the only voltages I see in my bios are the cpu voltage, the NB, the ICH (?) which I think is the south bridge and the ram voltage... I thought that since pc was 12+ hours prime 95 stable it could deal with any game?

Many search results suggest something hardware related. Sound card drivers, memory timings, PSU or CPU OC. Even heat is a potential issue.

Are you using 10.4 Cat's with your card or another driver?

10.4 here.

 

[Asylum]

Sounds like overheating to me but you said your temps were ok.

Have you checked you mobo temps while gaming? like north bridge and voltage reg.

Could be a sound driver issue also.

 

[erocker]

Control Panel --> Administrative Tools --> Event log. Check there for Errors and warnings.

 

[sneekypeet]

In my time running a PC, I never got that error at stock clocks, and with the reading I could find, it leads to what I was suggesting. Sorry about the VTT its a P55 thing. For the 775 it would be CPU or NB volts.

A good way to look into this is to return the PC to stock, after saving the bios settings of course, and see if the 0124 comes back. My honest guess is it wont.

 

[Black Panther]

Control Panel --> Administrative Tools --> Event log. Check there for Errors and warnings.

You mean this?

 

[erocker]

Most likely you need more north bridge voltage. Dirt2 will crash your computer where LinX, Linpack, Prime95 whatever cannot.

 

[francis511]

Sound card would be my guess.

 

[Millennium]

I used to get this error with a creative sound card, the stuttering sound was the killer, when playing BF2. I think lowering my overclock fixed it for me.