Radeon 9800 PRO crashing in direct3d

[ufctom]

Hello. Great forum. First post.

Ny pc crashes anytime I envoke a 3d application such as a game (running radeon 9800 pro for two years now without problems till now).

1. any games I run freezes with blurred graphics or in case of Oblivion - graphics are all over the place but doesn't crash. It seems like a mixture between snow and 3d shapes jutting out in all direction. A classic overheat look.

2. dxdiag shows the spinning cube all fuzzy and not properly rendered

3. atitool simply crashes the computer as soon as I press test or show render etc.

4. movies generally run well unless its in windows media player where i get a snowy white dots effect

5. any other time, the pc runs perfect even under heavy load

What i may have done to stuff things:
1. recently installed tiny firwall & nod32
2. recently vacuumed pc ...may have been rough on the internals
3. recently plugged in a tv card & plugged to antenna...i thought I detected a hint of current through the antenna. since then I disconnected & took the card out

So my question is:
Can someone help indentify the problem?
I think the problem is a stuffed gfx card but want to confirm before i buy a new one. Any help much appreciated.

Tom

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

That overheating look is called artifacting and it is usually a sign of the video card overheating or the power supply not being able to supply enough power to the card.

 

[ufctom]

Thanks.
So I will unplugg unnecessary devices to eliminate power. After that it leaves overheating.

So why would it decide to overheat just like that you think? Do you think I should clean the whole unit again to get more dust out? Maybe I bumped the fan on the gfx card or something?
I'll give these a go to see what happens. Cheers

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

To test the PSU theory, use a PSU from another PC to see if it gives the same error. That would make sure of the PSU is the problem factor.