ATI Radeon 9800 Pro giving me weird problems...

[azurestone]

I just got a new motherboard and processor (P4 2.8, Asus motherboard...) and finally got to use the 9800 Pro I bought months ago. But, weird things happen. For one thing, with the 9800 installed, my computer seems to sloooooooow down over time. Around ten minutes, my computer is almost unusable. It takes a full ten seconds just to load the task bar, even longer to start loading a program.

When I try and run any games, the screen becomes distorted and I can't see crap.

What's really weird is that, I plugged in my old video card (Radeon 8500) and I was having the exact same problems. I thought it might be the processor or motherboard, but after switching to 16 bit color and back to 32 bit, the problems completely went away and I was able to roam on doing what I normally did.

So I thought I solved the problem, plugged the 9800 back in, and as expected, I had the same problem. Only the 16/32 bit switch doesn't solve the problem.

This problem just gets weirder. After attempting to run Sim City 4, and the screen becoming garbled, the Recovery thing kicked me out of it and everything was back to normal...except that Windows had reverted to a desktop theme I used...what...a year ago? And ALL my icons seem to have randomly switched to something completely different. I'm seeing icons in my taskbar I'd never even knew I had.

Doing the 16/32 switch got my icons back to normal, but the distortion problem is still present.

God, don't tell me it's a bad video card. I blew like four hundred dollars on this thing and the warranty ran out a long time ago. And it runs everything just fine -- just not games.

Does ANYONE have ANY idea what could be causing this?

[mikead_99]

If you are using your old hard drive, with your old Windows installation on your new hardware, you might have remnants of the old Radeon causing your problems.

If that's the case, download and run "Drivercleaner" (do a google) and reinstall your Catalyst software with the new card installed, after a reboot.

[rosieox]

Standard reply is:

1. Latest Chip set drivers?
2. Latest Catalyst drivers?

If the problem happens with your old card too, doesn't sound like video hardware.

When you changed cards, did you uninstall then reinstall the drivers?

Also, if you have a 9800pro, they haven't even been out for a year yet, how can the warrenty be gone?

[freedon]

Size of your power supply?

[azurestone]

Well, the drivers are the same for both cards, but I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling them.

Motherboard drivers are up to date as well.

The warranty's gone because (if I remember right) it was a one-month warranty from the idiots I bought the card from. Regardless, I no longer have the papers to send it back because my roommates fricken lost it.

Power supply is 450w.