Below is the transcript of a letter I sent CyberPowerPC regarding some issues I'm having. If any of you can help me out, it would be appreciated.

"Hello, I recently purchased a PC from you. I'm experiencing some issues regarding (what I believe to be) the video card. The video card is an Nvidia GeForce 7900 GTX with a 512MB video memory cache. I will list some key factors of my problems. If you want some proof (images, videos, etc.) please ask for them in the reply and I will give you links or attatch them to the e-mail. The issues are all dealing with games, so I will categorize them as such.

F.E.A.R.:
*Some frame rate issues that shouldn't, I believe, be occuring.
*It sometimes crashes, causing my monitor to continuously cycle between reading and not reading the computer, and when it is reading it I get very strange images such as artifacts. When this happens, I have no choice but to restart the PC.
*Strange, colorful (red, blue, green) dots appear on some surfaces.

FarCry:
*The water is simply "messed up." The water looks as if it is, for example, a series of flowing artifacts with (very good) reflections on it.
*The same colorful dots found in F.E.A.R. have been found in FarCry's sky.
*The same crash issues found in F.E.A.R. happened once in FarCry.

Half-Life 2:
*The water in Half-Life 2 (and all other games using ValvE's Source Engine) sometimes makes what ever it is destorting very low-rez and pixelated. I've played HL2 on other systems and this does not happen on them.

Postal 2 (Demo):
*I can't really describe it. The game will be as if it was running at 10x speed. I move extremely fast and the monitor shutters frequently on its menues. If you've ever played a game like Counter-Strike on a server with major lag, you will somewhat know what I'm talking about.

All Games:
*It seems that the overall quality of every game is not what it should be.
*Low-rez textures are constant.
*Low-rez bump and normal-mapped textures are constant.

Things I've Tried:
*I've switched between an LCD and CRT monitor.
*I've used THREE different drivers for my video card, all of which are up-to-date.
*I've switched resolutions, refresh rates, and quality controls and still nothing is fixed.

What I Think:
*Well, it's a 7900 GTX! It should run all of these games on maximum settings with no fuss at all!
*PLEASE help me out! If I need to I'll send the machine back to you to diagnose it and see if the video card is physically defective.

Request:
*If you do end up repairing the machine, if at all possible, please don't format the hard drive. I do not wish to install all that I've installed twice already.
*I pray that this is an easily fixable and well-known issue.

Thank you for your time.

-Adam Perry"

---END OF TRANSCRIPT

-lawl

The X2 4600+ falls somewhere between a 3500+ & 3800+ single core Venice but costs a LOT more. How about listing the rest of the specs to this system so we get an idea of what you're dealing with? Especially the PSU make/model & amperages on the +12v rails...I think you mentioned it in another thread but I didn't bother to look into it's specs. What motherboard did you go with?

I agree with skyfear that the problem is either due to a weak PSU or a defective video card.

Also note, there have been some reports of a buggy BIOS being the culprit on some of those 7900GTX'. My gut feeling on this particular issue leans more to the card and less the PSU.

Mobo: (Sckt939)Asus A8N5X nForce4 Chipset SATA RAID PCI-E w/GbLAN,USB2.0,&7.1Audio [+18]

PSU (that's powersupply, right?):
NZXT PF-500 500Watt Power Supply

-lawl

erh, ignore the [+18] thing on the mobo, it's a price variation from my receipt.

-lawl

"Asus A8N5X nForce4 Chipset"

Odd choice...why didn't you choose a board based on the nForce4 Ultra or nForce4 SLi chipset?

"NZXT PF-500 500Watt Power Supply"

NZXT doesn't list a PF-500 at their site...maybe it's an older model? I'd pull the side panel from the case to confirm the the PSU & it's specs:

http://forums.legitreviews.com/about4611.html

how does it run:

-3dMark 2001
-3dMark 2003
-3dMark 2005

The dxdiag video tests?

Look for the same problems occuring

I've noticed that CyberPower has 24/7 tech support. Have you tried that prior to writing your letter?

Honestly, when choosing the mobo, I didn't know what to get. So that's a noob move on my part.

CyberPower doesn't have 24/7. It starts at 8:30 pacific time and ends I think at 6:00 pacific. This letter was written to them.

Would the motherboard be the problem? Switch a defective vid card or upgrading the PSU is one thing, but mobos can be expensive.

-lawl

The mobo has nothing to do with your problem, I was just wondering why you went with a highend video card, got a dual core CPU, but chose a board based on an old chipset?

http://www.computerpoweruser.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles/archive/c0503/27c03/27c03.asp&guid

Just in case you're asked to subscribe to be able to read that article, here's the section describing the different nForce4 flavors:

"The nForce4 Series

The nForce4 includes support for 20 lanes of PCI-E connectivity and 16 of those PCI-E lanes are dedicated to graphics. The other four PCI-E lanes work to connect other chips on the motherboard or work with x1 PCI-E expansion slots.

The company didn't stop with PCI-E, though. Three different versions of nForce4 provide a variety of features for end users.

nForce4. This is the value chipset of the bunch, and it has all of the basic nForce4 features such as full RAID capabilities, on-chip Gigabit Ethernet, and 10 USB ports. However, enthusiasts will not appreciate the fact that the nForce4 will not let them overclock the 800MHz HyperTransport.

nForce4 Ultra. In addition to matching the features found in the nForce4, the Ultra version includes support for a 1GHz HyperTransport bus, which you can overclock. You'll also find support for 3Gbps SATA drives with the Ultra (along with support for SATA II), compared to the 1.5Gbps SATA drives the basic nForce4 chipset supports (and no SATA II support).

The 3Gb SATA drives support any combination of RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 0+1 configurations. Also, users can combine SATA and PATA disk devices within any single RAID array under the Ultra chipset. With the nForce4 SATA ports and support, end users can have as many as eight devices connected at once. In addition to having those devices work in any combination of RAID configurations, nForce4 will support on-demand changes in RAID configurations.

As well as SATA II support, the Ultra chipset provides support for SATA hot-swappable devices and NCQ (Native Command Queuing). Although NCQ-supported hard drives are still rare, they should become more available in the near future. NCQ improves the efficiency of seek times in a hard drive by minimizing the movement of the hard drive's mechanics. Even though such improvements only shave a tiny fraction of a second off search times, they represent large differences in seek times among hard drives with and without NCQ support.

nForce4 SLI. NVIDIA's nForce4 SLI (Scalable Link Interface) chipset matches the features found in the Ultra chipset and adds support for multiple video cards. When it uses one video card, the SLI chipset supports the card with an x16 PCI-E slot. When the SLI chipset uses two NVIDIA video cards, however, it reprograms the PCI-E to support two x8 PCI-E slots. As a result, switching between x16 and x8 PCI-E slots is as easy as making an adjustment to the motherboard."

What mobo would you recommend I upgrade to in the future?

I'd also like to know what you think is the problem. A defective video card maybe? The power supply I'm using is the one recommended by CyberPower, so I doubt it's to blame.

-lawl