My machine randomly freezes when im doing work or letting the system idle. The only way I can recover is to restart. I originally had x86_64 on my system but installed i386 to see if it still happened...and it does.
My best guess to the problem is something hardware related [i have an old PCI graphics card]. But I have read that this problem occurs to some other people and disappears after a few minutes which is not the case on my system.
-Andrew
I have had gnome lockups with 3d graphic screen savers. This has occured with normal resolution before I had the 3d working properly and under a user that has lower resolution than the default resolution.
You are probably correct in assuming it is related to your video card. Disabling the GL and 3d screen savers has prevented lockups for me. I set just one screen saver in situations that I have had problems.
-- Robin Laing