I get that my year old, middle weight graphics card just can't handle SL anymore. (I get a message about timing out from the driver on occasion, though usually, it just crashes without warning or pop-up)

did you do a clean install the last time you did a SL update?

you know, I did with firestorm for sure. Can't remember on the official viewer, but I'm crashing on both.

check for device drivers, you might have an update, i did that today to with my graphic drivers when i uploaded the new FS today

Yeah, I checked that too. My driver is up to date.