I don't know where to begin on this but i'll describe my system. Running windows xp, gigabyte Ga7vrxPro M/B Amd athlon Xp 2.06 with 1.5 gigs of 2700 ddr. Geforce 4 4200 dual 80 gig harddrives, cdr, dvd rom, Muse 5.1 surround sound card. 350watt p/s And now the problems: any time I play a game let's say madden 2004 for instance, (plenty of power to run this game at max settings)During playing the game the graphics almost shake off the players it's all choppy and the detail of textures is gone, Almost like drawing football guys with a pen and paper. This happens every time, also sometimes when you look in the crowd there is a large flat bank that shoots across the screen totally distorting the screen. I have tried almost everything to get this fixed but no luck yet. Any time you switch back to the main menu (madden) the game will just Crash to desktop with no error message or nothing it just quits. This happens on all of my games it just quits. I've had this computer for 8 months and it just started doing this a couple of weeks ago. I have reformatted at least 3 times, uninstalled and reinstalled drivers at least 50 times (no joke) All updated drivers for sound video bios, any driver that you could possibly update i have done. And nothing works, i've even taken the thing apart piece by piece and put it back together making sure everything was tight connection. And this is just starting to p@#$$ me off. If anyone has any ideas please let me know I would greatly appreciate it. Corey

From a Microsoft web page: If an older application gives you trouble when running Windows XP, you can set the compatibility properties manually so that the program runs in a different mode, such as Windows 95, or in a different display or resolution setting. To set the compatibility properties for a program: 1. Right-click the executable or the program shortcut to the executable, and then click Properties. 2. Select the Run this program in compatibility mode check box. 3. From the list, select an operating system that the program runs in comfortably. 4. If necessary, also change the display settings and/or resolution, or disable the Windows XP visual themes. Run the program again when you?re finished changing the settings. Adjust the compatibility settings again if the program is still not running smoothly: a program that's unhappy on Windows 2000 may flourish on Windows 98.

I already tried that but thanks for the help

Looks like you've covered almost everything here,IMHO you have a hardware issue and since you are skilled at taking the thing apart,see if you can lay your hands on a different MOBO to further isolate it,but try a different graphics card b4 the MOBO.Good Luck