My system should have very little ventilation problems. My case is certainly big enough (Lian-Li PC-75), and there are two fans near it blowing outward.

I also had a PCI card in the slot two below it, but since I don't need it at the moment, I took it out. Now I have about 6 inches of space below the card, and plenty of space around it given the great size of the case (it's enormous).

This is just frustrating. I put my girlfriend's computer together last night, and it's basically the same system, but a Shuttle with onboard video. It had absolutely no problems playing the game at 800x600 (I didn't try higher - not enough time). My hardware can play the game at very high resolutions perfectly smoothly, but it only gives me about 4 minutes of playing, particularly if there's a lot of action. No slow down, just crashes.

Someone said it might be the chipset. Any advice on cooling that? I can't go through another motherboard exchange, particularly when that might not be the culprit.

Maybe I should get a Shuttle...

Are you running AGP 8x? Go to the SMARTGART tab of the display properties and play with the settings there. Drop AGP speed first to troubleshoot. You may also check AGP fastwrites...

Bruno

I am running AGP8x, and the fastwrite is set to "On". I'll try lowering to AGP4x