I have a system with an i7-3770K and a GTX 980 Ti on an ASUS SABERTOOTH Z77, running a dual boot between Windows 7 and Windows XP. I recently moved to a new city and, as part of reorganizing, I decided to format my systems (something I’ve done many times before). However, I made the unfortunate decision to update the BIOS, since a newer version was available.

The motherboard was bought used from a really great guy, who is also into retro gaming, so it came with the settings he had maintained. After updating to the newer BIOS version, nothing worked anymore. I downgraded back, and everything returned to normal—except for some strange behavior with my GPU.

I noticed that in some games, the image suddenly freezes on a solid color. Sometimes brown, sometimes turquoise blue, and sometimes black. This frozen screen has no text, just a solid color filling the entire display. Occasionally, it flickers—I get the impression that my GPU turns off and then comes back on, with the game closed and a pop-up stating that the driver stopped responding.

This has happened on every operating system I’ve installed:

Windows 7 Pro 64-bit while playing WYD (With Your Destiny, from JoyImpact)
Windows 10 Pro while playing Valorant (from Riot)
Fable: The Lost Chapters (This one seems to crash more frequently when my character approaches the tavern windows on the left side of the Trader who sells chocolates to Theresa. If I keep moving back and forth while keeping the camera fixed on the windows, pressing only A and D, the crash happens consistently.)

After installing MSI Afterburner on Windows 7, I noticed that my GPU temperature always stays below 60°C, and these crashes happen well before reaching that. Sometimes, they occur right away, with the temperature around 40°C.

I don’t know much about BIOS settings, so I’m not sure how to configure them properly—aside from things I assume to be correct. Some people mentioned that this issue might be caused by some kind of conflict with my memory frequency, but the person who brought it up had to leave (we were in an online game), and I never got a response after that.

It's important to mention that all the drivers I install today are the same ones I used to install before the problem started happening. I keep these drivers organized on an external hard drive where I store all the files for this computer.

I’ve taken screenshots of my entire BIOS, and I apologize if I’m being too inconvenient by asking you to help me set the best configurations and to solve this issue. I don’t want to give the impression that I’m using the forum to get free technical assistance. But believe me, if there was someone with specialized knowledge of our hobby where I live, I would have already asked for help.

I appreciate any help from all of you, and I’m happy to provide any additional information about this build if needed.