VIA chipset incompatabilities
Fugleman,
I recently bought an ATI Radeon 9600. I installed it in my old machine and it seemed to work fine. Then I updated my BIOS. Thats's when everything started going haywire. Not posting, losing video when I could get it to post, etc.
Very long story short, I built an entirely new computer around the D@MN card trying to troubleshoot it. The first piece I changed was the MB and CPU. I had a few startup issues with the power management, but once I got past posting problem, I would get these funny lines on the screen during login and with certain pictures (like the google logo).
I had found a forum link to a 2003 apology from VIA about incompatabilities with ATI cards, but thought they would have resolved it. Then, on the fourth re-formatting session, I installed the ATI drivers first, before MB drivers. There were no lines (yeah a couple blips but I was so frustrated I was about to live with them). Then I loaded the VIA 4in1 drivers for the MB. BAM, and there you have it. Both of my motherboards I now own have VIA chipsets.
I went out and bought an nVidia. I was a loyal ATI customer, having bought four of their cards over the years, but their customer support did little to help, so they will no longer get my business.
Hopefully you can return/exchange the card for a non-ATI.
Flipado
Consumerism... the only true form of democracy left.