Windows 7 crashes when using any 3d program

I recently installed Windows 7, and after many hours of frustration, I finally found graphics card drivers that worked. I have aero enabled, and all the effects are beautifully smooth even when running a LOT of programs. However, whenever I run anything 3d, like chess titans, blender(3d modelling software) the computer just freezes completely, can't move mouse, type, ctrl-alt-delete does nothing etc. I have to do a hard restart every time. This is really frustrating as I expected a much better experience considering my hardware is fairly new. Its kind of dissapointing, as when I put any linux disk in and run linux without installing, everything works perfectly, no mucking about necessary.

Any one know why this is happening?

p.s. Having a look at another forum, it sounded like it might be temperature related but, playing 3d stuff in xp/linux runs fine at much higher temps than win 7 is at now...