Dell Dimension 8250 2.8 intel 1 gig ram ( 2 X 512 rdram, rimm) SB live 5.1 8X DVD CD-R/RW 120g HD Before Problems: Ati Radeon 9700 pro Now: Ati X800 XL It was a hot day i was playin WoW. Suddenly the graphics took a dive. Slowly at first the mostly textures breaking out and clogging up the screen. This happened for about 10 min before i became frustrated and reset the computer. Fixed for about 30 min. Obviously its a tad warm. As i was thinking of logging off the graphics went awry. Massive video corruptions and the like. Then the color colums appeard and wouldn't go away. This made it so i could no longer play almost any game... even 2D. I know the card is zapped. The next day i figure its cool why not try it out. Still the colums were persistant. Even when first booting up. They were black and hard to see but the windows bar moved through/under them. Windows worked as it should aside from the video corruption which kept getting worse over the several hours of TS'n. The fan on it worked. Drivers good. Power supply was attiquate for the frist 2 years but reading doc's (documents) on these video cards it would have liked 300 but it ran at 280 (not my choice as i didn't build the computer). I Bought a new card several days later (Radeon X800 XL). Doc's say it needs juice, no prob. 450 it gets. Still the troubles persist. Now the computer gets to just before you log on (password)a black screen with some corrupted graphics appears then the monitor shifts (clicks res change or some such) then a really nasty corrupted screen of graphics. These screens never change though in thier corruptness. 3 min will roll by and then BSOD stateing: ati2Dvag.*** is causing an infinite loop. Windows shutting down blah blah blah... doing physical memory dump. Then it counts up. VGA mode works, safe mode bars/colums appear on both cards. X800 XL is fine other then it wants to BSOD anytime i wish to use the drivers supplied by ATI Updated and CD versions. 9700 pro im sure is fried as it works with the drivers and plays 3D/2D games albiet the cascading video corruption. Even in safemode the black colums appear with either card installed. Hmmm intresting. Still pondering this one. I looked up and down the bios for an onboard video, alas nothing. Dell doc's says there is none. Still dont get why safe mode shows bars on both cards. The cards look identical in safemode. However in VGA mode it works fine on the new card no corruption just reduced to VGA mode. The X800 XL worked for about 20 min one time before it BSOD me. I managed to look at Smartgart and it wasn't working properly in the AGP section, slider didn't work the DOTS didn't work. The top two were unchecked and the third was check but uncheckable. PCI section worked both DOTS checkable and uncheckable. I would greatly appreciate any info on the matter. The drivers for the X800 appear as X800 series not the specific drivers X800 XL. Does this make a diffrence? I think i hurt the AGP slot that day when it heated up. Then again would the mobo tell me if the AGP slot isnt working. I looked at the beeps and lights section of the doc's didn't see anything that would say though.

Ohhh yea, ive updated the bios and chipset with the lastest drivers supplied by dell. Ohhh an ive tried rolling back to SP1, no diffrence.

try the cards in a different machine and see if they work properly..also post the specs of that 450W PSU Asus A7V8X-X Athlon XP 2600+ 1GB Mushkin PC3200 Sapphire 9700pro 120GB WD 80GB Maxtor VGA Silencer Volcano 7+ Aspire 550W