Monitor Flashes, then loses signal, PC continues to run

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Hi,

I've read a lot of different material around the web and various boards about variations of this problem, and am still stumped. I'm running a Dell XPS 400 dual core, with a nvidia geforce 7900gs, 2gigs of ram, etc.

One day, the monitor started to flash in and out, and after about fifteen minutes of this it finally went black and the monitor's yellow 'no signal' light came on. The computer continued to function otherwise: music continued to play and be changable, keyboard inputs continued to work, etc. On reboot the signal returned, but the problem repeated, and eventually, it took up to ten reboots until signal would return. Sometimes it would take several hours of waiting before the signal would come back. Strangely enough, after a few weeks, the problem went away for four or five months and came back, then went away for a few months, and now is back again. This happens in both 3D games and just general XP browsing.

Over the course of the problem, I have replaced the stock power supply with an antec 500watt. I replaced the original card, an ATI all in wonder x1800xl with the geforce 7900gs. The old ATI card is working just fine in a friends computer. I've tried flashing the BIOS to the newest version on Dell's website, still no luck. I have also swapped out monitors, no luck again.

What else can I do? Is it time to buy a new motherboard? Do I need to test the RAM? Does God just hate me? Any help is appreciated.
 
I tried both the old drivers and the latest drivers with both cards. The consistency of the problem despite changing drivers and both cards leads me to believe it is unrelated to the card. If it was just a hardware conflict, why the cool down period between getting the signal back?
 
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