Radeon 7000 Display Deteriorating ?!?

[Jon Dickinson]

Wierd issues occurring - got a really stable system now, with the one exception of a problem with my card. System is a Dell Dimension 2300, but I added a Radeon 7000 32MB PCI display card to take the heat off the CPU, which comes with integrated Intel 845 graphics. However, every now and then (i.e. sometimes a couple of times in an evening, sometimes not for a couple of weeks!) the display will start to deteriorate, as though pixels in video RAM are being corrupted - this can happen when I'm using PTLE, ReCycle, Reason or Wavelab, or indeed no apps open at all. The system is still useable but after half an hour or so a reboot is in order as it's quite messy by then. So, I figure whilst on the one hand I don't have to bail from what I'm doing, but it needs dealing with and I have choices:

1. Find out what's going wrong - I've put up to date drivers (7.992_2kxp.zip) on the system, but no change noticed. Anyone else had this hassle?

2. Put a better card in it - I don't have big-time redraw time issues unless things are getting really heavy anyway, so are there any practical benefits to be had from going up-market, or should I just try a different low-end brand and see if it agrees with my system?

[da BaSsTaRd!]

get a genuine ati card, not a "powered by ati" card.

[graveleye]

Your monitor may be going bad. Thats what mine did when it started going bad.
Also the latest Microsoft ATI driver download on the MS critical update can wreak havok on your system too.
Does that vid card have a fan on it? Maybe the little fan is bad.
If all else fails, buy a better video card... you can probably get a Radeon 9000 series for $50-$75. Dual head too for two monitors if you wanted.