Assassin's Creed III Random crashes

I've been playing Assassin's Creed III (version 1.05) for the last two days and I'm getting random crashes. The crashes occur when I'm in game for around 10 to 20 minutes at random locations in the game. When the game crashes, I can hear the sounds for about 2-3 seconds, before they stop working too. The crash also freezes the whole laptop, so returning to desktop isn't an option. I always have to hold the power button to kill and restart the laptop. This post sums up what problem I have.

The laptop I'm using is a Dell XPS 15 L502X. Specs:

• Intel Core i7-2670QM 2.20GHz
• NVidia GeForce GT 540M with the latest driver (320.18)
• 8 GB RAM
• Windows 8 64 bit

My GPU is neither over- nor underclocked. The game runs from the GPU (and not the Intel chipset).

I'm assuming it has something to do with the GPU. I have two additional screens on my laptop, one connected with DisplayPort, one with HDMI. The HDMI output is directly connected to the GPU. The screen connected with HDMI turns a specific color when the game crashes (it's always another color, but the whole monitor is colored that way). The other screen, connected through DisplayPort directly on the Intel Chipset, still displays whatever was on it.

This three screen setup can't be the problem, though, because I've already tried without them and it keeps happening.

On forums about this subject, I can't find any suitable solution. Anyone an idea?

Solution 1:

There have been issues like this with other pcs as well. What we know is this; the game plays for 20 minutes and then dies because of space that is not being "closed" (removed so the computer senses about 60gbs of map instead of the normal 1 gigabyte), additionally the game will sometimes stop due to a certain animation or effect ie. shadows on buildings or a back stab. This is just because the game was loaded incorrectly or has a flaw in the system.