DEFCON causing computer crash

[Aetherius]

I have been experiencing several hang ups that require a hard reboot. I've come to realize that currently, even on menu screens, the game is making my videocard constantly run at near-100 percent activity until it overheats and crashes the system. This essentially makes the game completely unplayable. I have two Radeon 48500s in Crossfire. Other games with more advanced graphics run quite smoothly on this setup without crashing.

It should be noted that the game runs very smoothly, but in the end it seems completely incompatible with my current setup. All video drivers are up to date. Disabling Crossfire does not help.

EDIT: also, this is a 32-bit Windows 7 machine.

[bert_the_turtle]

Enable VSYNC in your graphics driver. This brings the framerate down to sensible (yet still just as fast as your monitor can display it) levels. Even the simplest graphics stress the system if they're rendered 10000 times per second.

(And as an aside, if your setup overheats for any input, it's not the input's fault. It's your cooling solution that is insufficient. You probably need one or two more case fans.)

[Aetherius]

Ah, VSYNC. did not consider that! It seems to have fixed the problem!

And as to the cooling system, you are probably correct - my card is often running hotter than it should be. The main thing is that my card was running at the max to display a 2D interface. A bit distressing.

Thanks!

[bert_the_turtle]

You're welcome. And, just for additional explanation, the simple 2D graphics also stress different parts of your graphics cards. Your standard modern game is very shader intensive, with 10-100 calculations per pixel, so they stress the shader units. Defcon doesn't use any of that, it only uses single texturing with trivial blending operations; that puts the stress more on the rasterizer and memory fetches and writes.