Pls Hlp, 3d, artifacts(sp?)radeon 9600 pro problems

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Am hoping someone may be able to help me with issues I have been having with my machine. My specs as follows
intel 2600c asus p4c800 mobo, 350 watt pwr supply, dual channel ddr400 (512 total), powercolor radeon 9600 pro, windows xp pro.

My problem is difficult to explain but here goes. My machine is 8 months old. After about four months I would occasionally see what looked like perforation marks around desktop icons and the tool bar icons in many windows apps. I didn't think much of it because it was ussually after the machine had been on for a long period of time and I would just restart the machine and the marks would be gone. No big thing. In the last month it had seemed that the problem was gradually becoming more pronounced. About two weeks ago I went to the windows update site as I hadn't done so in quite sometime. I was surprised to see an ati driver update at the windows site and was hoping that installing it would fix the problem I had been having.

@#!$^&@Wrongwrongwrong

Since that update the artifact problem has been dramaticaly worse. Thinking that maybe the problem was heat related I opened the case and gently cleaned all the dust out with air. All fans working. No change.

I went to the ati site and downloaded the most recent drivers and followed ati instructions for installation, including un-installing old drivers and controll panel. Still no change in the artifact problem.

? Shouldn't I have had to un-install drivers for the update from microsoft?

A few quirks of this problem that may or may not be germain...I have found that hitting the re-set switch two or three or sometimes four times will give me a clean screen. I've run 3dmark2001se a few times when I've had clean video and I generally get about 11,500, right about where I should be. Generally trying to play a movie in media player will instantly bring back the artifacts, but often just web surfing in IE will trigger it, or so it seems. Movies are always streaky with artifacts now any time i play them.

When the perforation marks are around the icons I've discovered I can play no 3d games like postal2. The game will run but everything will be distorted beyond recognition.

I've found that if I turn down hardware acceleration in display properties/settings/advanced/troubleshoot the marks around the icons go away, however video is still corrupted in media player, 3d games are un-playable.

Sorry for the lengthy post, would that I didn't need to make it at all. Thanks in advance for any and all help.


!Free Tommy Chong!
 
I had a similar problem with a radeon 9800 pro. The card would artifact all the time and it grew worse as time went on. I called ati and they said there have been many complaints about this and to just return it to where you bought it and get another one. The cause is still unknown as far as I know.
 
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