PC crashes whenever I try to play a game

[bluedragon]

I have recently built a machine. its specs are as follows
AMD Althlon 64 2800+ XP
MSI K8M Neo V motherboard
512MB DDR ram
Connect 3D Radeon 9250 (64 bit) 128 Graphic Card
A DVD ROM and a CR-R/RW drive
running Windows XP with SP2

well my problem is simple and quite weird. My PC stays quite stable
while doing other work like surfing, chatting, listening music,
watching movies, and even playing light games like solitaire,
blackjack, Mario etc.

but whenever I try to Run a heavier game like NFS U2 or Doom 3 my PC
either crashes or halts for 5-6 sec before giving an error : "VPU has
reset itself as it was not responding to commands".

Sometimes I am able to play the game even after receiving the error
but its just for about 2-3 more minutes. after that either the PC
crashes or the Display gets reduced to 8bit colors after which it
freezes.

I was earlier using an XFX nVidia FX 5200 (128 MB) Graphics card which
was crashing under same conditions (but without giving any error). I
thought the card is corrupt so I got it changed for this card.

Please help. Is my motherboard Slot/Graphic card corrupt? or Is it
that the heating is not proper coz I live in Delhi(India) and these
days the temperature is shooting upto 47 degree Centigrate?

Under normal conditions my CPU temperature remains between 47-59 deg.
C and System temperature remains between 45- 55 deg C

Could it be that my CPU stops responding due to which my system
crashes ?

Please reply with a solution.

 

[DaveW]

Playing video intensive games like Doom 3 with that somewhat underpowered
graphics card is causing the video card to overheat in your warm climate.
You might try getting better computer case cooling.

 

[Eric Cartman]

Playing video intensive games like Doom 3 with that somewhat underpowered
graphics card is causing the video card to overheat in your warm climate.
You might try getting better computer case cooling.

That is not the reason. That card would work with no coolling but dont
try it at home. You have more serius problem than that. Download Prime95
and run it on stress test overnight. If it passes that, download
Memtestx86+ and again run it overnight. If those two programs run with
no errors, wich i doubt the card is somehow responsible. But you said
that you tried other card or what? Anyway i had a card 9600pro that did
that on stock cpu/mem. I had to underclock it by 10%core to make it work
without VPUrecover box. The heat was not problem because the card was
cold every time it crashed. It was phisicaly damaged and it was replaced.