Game crashes

It seems my system is crashing on almost everything.  I've had issues with my system crashing from the first day I got it, almost any game crashes quite often although some inexplicably work quite well.  I get this error code quite a lot on several different games; Open gl message, Nvidia timeout exceeded; or some other such thing such as driver crash.  Now I have the latest drivers and the games are fully updated.  It's a fairly high end system and I'm a bit of an amateur so I'm not real sure how to get the most out of my system(which was not cheap).  I just want to be able to enjoy my gaming experience as much as possible but unfortunately my knowledge on how to get the most out of it is limited but I'd absolutely love to hear from you guys on how to get some good performance out of this machine as I'm kind of new to this and trying to learn as much as possible about pc's.  Please be gentle, I am admittedly a former mouth breather console gamer who has recently seen the light and now I'm somewhat addicted to pc gaming and I really want to learn as much as possible about gaming and pc's in general.  Here's the specs.

i73820 Water cooled

680 GTX classified 4gb

16gb ddr3 ram

Edit: I forgot to include the power supply, 1050 watt.  Sorry bout that.

As I said I'm fairly new to all this and for some games my system's performing incredibly.  It just seems to randomly dislike some games.  In particular games it should have no problem whatsoever playing.  For example it absolutely beasts games like The Witcher 2, Crysis, a HEAVILY modded Skyrim, but then it seems to crash when playing non graphically intensive applications and older games like Chronicles of Riddick and Star Wars The Force Unleashed.  Any help or opinions would be much appreciated and I really do appreciate anyone's time.  Thank you all, oh and this is my first time posting on Tek Syndicate soooo yaaaayyyyy!!!

So you never run into problems playing games like: Max Payne 3, GTA 4, Portal etc.. ?

Do you have Windows 8? It could be possible that your older Games have issues with newer version of Windows. (Windows: XP, 7, 8...)

You can readily give more details if you want.

 

 

 

 

 

No I'm terrified of Windows 8 so I decided to stick with 7.  I don't have Max Payne but pretty much any Source game and Rockstar game so far seems to run beautifully.  Also of note is that it takes games like Deus Ex Human Revolution and Sleeping Dogs like a champ as well.  Sleeping Dogs it kept crashing on as well but after I disabled the desktop composition and ran as administrator it worked beautifully.  But just in general it seems to crash more than it should.  Also of note I know my computer's safe and clean as I run Norton Full scans and tune ups once a week and I don't go on goofy websites.  Thanks so much for the reply! :)

As for Winshit 8:

http://teksyndicate.com/videos/de-suck-windows-8-best-windows-8-start-menu-start8-vs-start-back

 

 Mak WinWin 8 out of it, and cash in the extra speeds.

 

I wouldn't recogment Northon, it is doing things it shouldn't as much as I know. (using Kaspersky, and it rocks!) Now back to your problem :). This could also be a Hardwareproblem. I've had problems with my Graphics card, started a thread here, now I've sended it back, and wait for it to come. Here is an idea to determine if it's the GPU: Get the Graphics card out of the PC, and let the Pc run on it's CPU integrated Graphics. You can play with like 40 frames per second Modern Warfare 3, and other games on these graphics. Try playing the games, where you are sure it will crash afte some time. If it's fine, you can send that GPU back. But if you've not build the PC by yourself, and it has a warranty, then just bring it back, and let them repair it.

 

 

wait, I just checked it. Your CPU has no integrated graphics :(. But this could be a hardwareproblem.

You may be right.  See I had a 570 before and although this 680 outperforms the hell out of it it doesn't seem anywhere near as stable.  For example I get MUCH better performance out of the 680 but the 570 almost never crashed. 

 

I would send that GPU back. It doesn't sound normal. Damn it, with integrated graphics you would've seen the result right there ;). Have you done all the Windows updates? Just in case.

Yes sir sure have.  My first course of action was updating all drivers and what not.  Like I said though the weird thing is that it perfoms beautifully on some very taxing games.  And then it can't handle Chronicles of Riddick?  I mean it's just weird.  And it crashes on The Force Unleashed.  To be able to max Sleeping Dogs playing for hours and crash on The Force Unleashed just leaves me.....confused....to say the least.

Stress your GPU with Furmark and see what happens. If it fails it will be probably that.