Possible hardware issue

When I play guild wars my computer crashes alot. It either freezes and then has a sound like a cd is skipping or goes to the desktop and that same sound happens. I'm wondering if it is because my graphics card is too much for my computer or maybe something else. I currently have a Gateway GT5670 and an Nvidia GeForce 8800GT.

Motherboard: ECS MCP61PM-GM AM2 mATX Motherboard
I'm working with 3 gigs of ram
Processor: AMD Phenom X3 8400 Triple-Core Processor
and a 320 gig hard drive.
If anymore info on specs for my computer may be needed I can add them. I just don't know what else I should post. I really don't have much hardware knowledge. Also the graphics card gets really hot to a point where I probably could cook something on it.
Here's a web address that shows just about everything for my computer:
http://support.gateway.com/s/PC/R/10...5320Rcl6.shtml

Any help is much appreciated. Thank you.

If your video card is overheating then that could be causing it to crash. Guild Wars is prone to do that - the game is pretty sensitive to an overhot GPU. The first thing I would do, is open up your case and clean out the dust, esp. around the vents, fans and GPU. If you are careful and make sure to discharge static electricity on something metal before going in, you should be fine. There could be dust and what not restricting airflow and making it overheat.

your computer only comes with a 300W no-name power supply. if anything, i think your computer is choking because the graphic card is not getting enough power. either buy a more powerful power supply (450W+, 80%+ efficiency), or get a weaker graphic card that can run on a 300W PSU.

I forgot to put in there that I bought a BFG 550 watt power supply a while back, but the problem still persists. I also bought one of those fans that goes into a pci slot for the graphics card. I'll check for dust, but last time I opened up my comp everything was okay. Thanks again for the help.

Try forcing GW to run in only one core. (ForceCore or similar)

Running in one core brings everything to what can't even be called a crawl. It's like a bus is attached at the hip to every character and it can take about 15 seconds to get the camera to do a full spin. Also I checked for dust and there wasn't much of that.

if the problem happens with Guild Wars only, then I'd suggest re-installing Guild Wars and see if that helps. Also, what drivers are you using for the 8800?

I've uninstalled and reinstalled multiple times. I even used that -image thing to get everything in one sitting. Still didn't help. The driver I have is the latest one I found on the nvidia website. It's the Geforce release 175