Monitor screen srambling/garbage

[KadamonyDeus]

Specs: AMD Atholon 64 Processor 3400+; Standard LCD monitor; ATI Radeon 9800 SE GFX card; ASUS K8V Motherboard; WinXPPro

Problem: My monitor has been showing green and red pixels randomly appearing in bands or other patterns. It happens after a couple minutes after booting up and usually persists until there is some kind of screen activity, then happens again later.

At first I thought my power supply was frying it like it had done before, but the BIOS shows normal voltage readings. It might be my video card dying but I would want to make sure of this before spending $400... I built this computer myself so I need to know what part is dying.

I read somewhere that I should increase my refresh rate. I took it from 60 to 70 and the problem seemed to go away. I ran a benchmark called FreshDiagnose for monitors and it did some crazy colors and patterns really quickly, putting stress on the monitor. After it was done I soon saw a little red pixel garbage appear at this 70Hz but it went away after closing the window. I hope that this problem will stay dormant at 70Hz. As I finished this thread my screen scrambled like a champ again...looks like I better get my checkbook ready.

My question is what do I need to replace? The video card, monitor, motherboard, or what? Also is there a chance giving this scrambling the opportunity to persist may ruin other hardware? If so I need to put this computer to rest.

 

[Peddant]

If you could try your monitor on another PC,or try another monitor with your PC,it would sure help with the diagnosis.Same applies to the Video card as well.

 

[KadamonyDeus]

I am still working on diagnosing the problem, but it is important to know right now, whatever is wrong with some part of the computer, is there any danger in letting this problem persist? I have put the thing to rest just in case, but I need important information on it frequently that is becoming a pain to reconfigure how I use the computer. Could it potentially fry something if I continue normal use? I know there is nothing wrong with the power supply itself at this point.

 

[Lazareth]

if its the monitor thats is screwing up it won't hurt your hardware, nor if it is the graphics hard, letting it go on my show worse results not harmful to the rest of the computer. your best bet is to do a little trouble shooting with another pc/monitor. go buy yourself a cheapy graphics card put it in and see if it works, if not than its not the card, return the card you bought and test the monitor. LCD monitors have life spands like a light bulb does, if its a fairly old LCD monitor, chances are its just its time. go pick up a new one. by old mean OLD ...The only item that ages on an LCD monitor is the backlight, which is composed of one or more tiny fluorescent tubes. The typical life of a backlight is 50,000 hours to the half brightness point-the point at which brightness is one-half of the original brightness, and the industry standard measure for product life