Boarderlands2 first try always cause hard freeze

[justtrying]

Been playing this game on steam since mint cinnamon 17.3 without any problems. I have since fresh installed mint 18.1 & 18.2 and in both, i can start and play the game for awhile
( unpredictable amount of time ) ..but almost always it eventually crashes and i would not be able to do anything but hard reboot the computer. Strange thing is after i do that it plays flawlessly for hours with no crashes whatsoever for as long as i want. First time to see a problem like this and i have been using Linux mint for many years .
i am running AMD fx 9950 no over-clock and my graphic card is Nvidia GTX1080, using current drivers 384.59, but this still happened with earlier stock drivers . Kernel 4.10.30 (makes no difference).
Has anyone had this problem , that is, if you still playing this game. Is there a solution to this problem ? I searched and could not find one ...except to resign to the fact I have to play the game till it freeze restart the computer, the really play the game.
Sorry for the long post but i am curious as to what might be the cause