Bonnie-

Try adding a slot fan under your vid card to exhaust the heat from it out.

done your test with the MBM. before starting the game, temp reads 47°C. last temp i was able to read in the task-tray was 51°C.
i already changed my soundcard (SB Live 5.1) to another slot - with no effect. the game crashes when done loading the "flashback" or after that, when done loading the first mission. black screen - have to hit reset.

hope you can find something about. my specs :
XP1900 (1600 MHz)
Gigabyte GA-7VRXP
2 x 256 MB CL2 PC266
Gainward Ti4200 64 MB (def. speed)
SB Live 5.1

If this is an issue, (which I still don't think it is), then maybe you guys should add a "slot cooler" or "open your case and blow a big fan in it" to the MINIMUM system requirements?

Did the test in singleplayer also, with the same scenario as described above;  45 min. of playtime at 57c, screenfreeze and machinegunloop at 57c...  
Well...this has become quite a mission...I'll now try removing one of the RAM-blocks...(i have 512 + 128 PC133)
ILL BE BACK!!!

fool... thanks for the info, some interesting stuff there.  Can I assume the game is running just fine for you?

48-50 idle
54-56 game before/during freeze (doesnt make a diff cause its not the issue)

all modern games make the temps go there.

its the default HS&F and isnt gonna be changed for this game.

i tested some more with SOF2. multiplayer and the random scenario are no problem - runs fine. but no chance at the singleplayer.
i dont think this is a heat-issue. my gaming-partition is set up from scratch and any other game i installed so far runs flawless.

@ramrod
i'm curious how you get your overclocked xp1800 to run at 40° ? my xp1900 (non-oc) runs ~47° idle in an cs601-case with thermalright AX7 heatsink. 2 fans blowing in on front and 2 others sucking air out at the back.

Could just be the temperature of the air it's sucking in. I try to keep this room cool. Today I have the ac off and it's running at 44C.
I also have a slot fan under the vid card sucking that hot air our directly.
Could just be my heatsink is all copper for one and my cpu fan runs at 7300rpm.
Not sure about yours, I didn't look it up but i know they make good ones.
Actually, my temp really doesn't vary whether I overclock or not.

...Update on my situation.

I definately do not have a heat problem.  I use the ASUS Probe utility that came with my motherboard.  Usually my CPU temp sits between 47C and 51C under load.  Which is absolutely fine.  

Just for the record I spoke to AMD tech support and the guy there told me that the processors can handle as high as 90C and that anything under 75C is nothing to worry about at all.

Nevertheless, I have 2 case fans.  A CoolerMaster HTC-01 (copper heatsink, noisy-ass fan, with heatpipe) with Arctic Silver 2 thermal compound.  And a slot-fan sucking air directly off the video card and out the back of the case.  On top of that, I also have the side panel of my computer off to give it even more breathing room.  Couldnt afford the Enermax case that I want yet, so for now, I'm improvising  

I also have been playing SOF2 Multiplayer all weekend with no incident whatsoever.  I have been trying all kinds of different graphics settings (640x480x16 to 1024x768x32, No Ansio to Max Ansio, No AA to 4xAA).  No lockups and the heat always stayed between 47 - 51C.

Tried Single Player once and it locked up right in the same spot as before.  This is definately a bug with the game, and I still believe it to be audio related in some way.  Is there some sort of audio feature that runs during Single Player but is not used in Multi?

-jonny

OK, let me give you a little more background on my case.  When I was having problems with my old 300W generic power supply, I was mixing 2 brands of PC133 SDRAM.  I had one stick of 256M and one 128M.  So, I found when I take one of the sticks out the system runs fine.  Of course, I originally thought the same thing that RamRod is talking about.  I also know that mixing is RAM is not recommended, blah blah, so on and so forth.  But, I ran an exaustive memtest86 stand alone RAM testing utility and it showed no problems with both sticks running together!  But, yet it crashed with both of the sticks under heavy load but almost (!! ) never crashed with just one stick.  Now with my new Enermax PSU I ran both sticks together and not a problem.

That is not to say that mixing RAM could not give you a bad result.  I just want to say that the cause of crash is not always obvious.  And in particular, a solid system absolutely *must* start with a rock-solid PSU.  If the PSU is not rock solid, you can't really troubleshoot the system because you could be on a wild goose chase switching components all day long with a bad 300W or, in some cases, even 350W PSU.  Or perhaps your PSU is very old and is out of spec now.  A good PSU is like having a solid foundation for a building.  A solid foundation is critical.

Now, I have 2 game worthy boxes and I haven't tried SoF2 on that ECS box with the new PSU.  I run SoF2 on an older box with AMD 1.333Ghz t-bird C, asus a7v board (via kt133a chipset) with 512M pc133 sdram.  The ECS box has AMD Athlon XP 1500+, 384M pc133 sdram, ecs k7s5a board with sis 735 chipset.  I might try running SoF2 on it, but I can't promise that .  If i do, I'll report here.