So I'm playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and every half hour or so the entire game freezes, usually accompanied by a message on Windows 7 helpfully telling me:
Your video driver stopped working and has successfully recovered. If the problem persists contact a local vendor.
Or something along those lines. And at first I figured "Well, maybe that's just accompanying the game crash, I'm sure it's nothing to really worry about".
Fast forward several hours into the game, where I hit a blue screen of death and have to shut down my entire computer.
So I won't be playing that game for awhile now, but now I am quite concerned about the time I DID spend playing it.
Is it possible that playing this game has caused permanant damage to my system? And if so, what is it about this 2011 video game that could cause such a problem?
For reference: My computer isn't the greatest gaming machine in the land. It was an out-of-the-box build in 2009 and lower-mid teir back then. I have already lost a motherboard (replaced with a less expensive, smaller one) and recently upgraded my graphics card to a slightly better one with an internal fan, but even that is a lower-tier card.
Best Answer
No. There is no way this game, or any other, could be causing permanent damage to your PC. What is most likely happening is that your video card is overheating, or starting to fail, even though you said you replaced it recently. Hopefully it's under warranty. You should try a different game that stresses your video card; if the same problem happens, it's not the game, it's definitely the video card. Like @MBraedley says, try to clean the dust out of your case.
What the game is doing, though, is taxing your system to it's limits, and if a piece is starting to go, playing the game brings the problem to the forefront. It will require perfect functionality to run, and if it doesn't have that, you run into these types of issues.
I've run into issues like this with a wonky video card before; it actually corrupted the Windows 7 install several times until I figured out what the issue is.