I just recieved the psu. Well, my 2500+ barton was running stable without the underclocking, but my 9800 wasn't so lucky. Time to get it rma'ed. -sigh.... It seems that my cpu can only take 2 more explorer windows before it crashes. :dah: -Im deciding if i should flash the bios to the newest version as a last resort http://www.ecs.com.tw/download/l7s7a2.htm 1. Fix XP300+ & ATi9700 will occure the system unstabel 2. Add MB auto detect function -nvm, i geuss my bios isn't the problem.
a new PSU should be good for any future upgrades! so dont think of it as a waste of money! the 9800 could well be faulty, but I would try it in a different system if possible!
Odd colored dots/pixels such as you originally reported is usually the sign of bad RAM on the video card itself. I've never had it be anything other than that myself but I've spoken to a few people who have reported that some characterisitics within some BIOS's can cause this. PCI Concurrency issues and other odd things. You might try setting the BIOS to BIOS Defaults or the setting that your particular BIOS uses to set the BIOS to it's default values. A far out chance might be a upgrade to the BIOS itself but I would highly recommend you check the motherboard manufacturers site to see if a BIOS upgrade has fixed any issues related to AGP timing or similar issues for your motherboard. BIOS flashing isn't really recommended in most cases simply because it can introduce new quicks into an otherwise stable system.