OK I'm getting a lot of problems with my graphics system. For the last couple months. Part of the problem is that I dont' have another PCI Express system around to swap parts in and out of as per usual testing. This goes on for a bit...

OK so. A little over a year ago I got an A8N-SLI mobo. Along with it I got an Athlon 64 3000+ and a matched pair of 512 MB Mushkin V2L2 ram sticks. I powered it all with a Silverstone Zeus 650 watt PSU. Initially I used an older 60 gig IDE hard drive I had and a 128 MB 5200 PCI graphics card to gethings running. I put Windows 2000 on the system. Things ran smooth. No overclocking.

Then, around in October, my chipset fan died during an unattended session. I replaced the fan, hoping the chipset wasn't damaged. Things seemed fine for a while. But then bugs and stability problems started appearing. Eventually it became very unstable and I then found the 5200's fan had stopped turning at some point. So I replaced the card with a 512MB 6600 PCIe from XFX. At the same time, I upgraded the hard drive to a 250 gig SATA2 from Hitachi. On getting the new card in the computer, it would during the windows text scroll bar startup display odd characters across the top left corner of the screen. Things ran fine in windows at first so I let it go for a while. Eventually though, the startup issues would start locking up the system. I tried reinstalling the OS. No go.

I had heard of XFX getting some bad 6600's of that type. But still, having had the chipset fan issue before, I figure it possible the chipset had been a bit scorched and finally given out. So I RMA'd to Asus... and waited... and got back the same mobo with a new fan. I tried running it. No good. I decided that grpahics card issue might be the problem, so I got a second copy of the same 6600 card. (I thought if it turned out to be another issue at least I could SLI them.) Both cards gave the exact same result. Then Memtest (from boot cd) turned up errors in dual channel memory arrangements, but not in single channel. At this point, I figured the CPU must be the culprit... because individually the ramsticks checked out and of course the mobo had been repaired, right? So I got a 4400+ X2. Installed it. SAME problems. So obviously it must be the mobo... improperly repaired, right?? I notice it isn't turning the CPU fan quite as fast as it should according to itself... and was running the fan off the drive adaptor. Of course. SECOND RMA on that mobo. At this point, I'm getting pissed. Replacement refurbished mobo comes back. SAME problems!! SO... I go back to the video card issue. Figuring maybe lightning struck twice... they had been made within 30 pieces of each other... I get an RMA on both cards at once. Then2 brand new cards come back from XFX. Guess what? SAME problem! I'm getting a the end of my rope. It's been 2 motnhs trying to fix this. And I've already excluded the case; running it on cardboard sheets and the like.

So I go and test parts at a local store. I get the PSU tested. Passes. Get the RAM tested on their system. Passes. So... perhaps the mobo has the same issue, right? It was repaired by the same people who sent me back one with obvious issues... So I plunk down some cash on a new mobo. But this one is from MSI, just in case. It's a K8N Dimanond Plus. Guess what? SAME damn problem.

I'm at a loss about how to fix this. I've run extension cords to the surge protectors just in case it's a faulty outlet. Changed surge protectors. NOTHING WORKS. I get the same garbage characters whenever a windows tries to boot up. Either Windows 2000 or XP x64, doesn't matter. Even the setup routines run from cd with no hd hooked up get the garbage characters and bsods or missing files to stop setup.

I ran memtest on the new mobo. Picked up an error once, but not other times. So I'm trying to figure out... is this RAM or Video card??? That's all it can possibly be anymore. Well, that or a curse. It strikes me as strange to have had the RAM run fine for at least half a year and then go bad. Slowly. But getting 4 different vid cards and the same issue on all of them is weird too. Tomorrow I'm going to go back and see if any local store can trade around some components to see which it is. Any oher recommendations?

yeah... lets start with the basics...

heat... how warm are the procs and video cards? you will get issues with videocards like that when they are over heating...

next.. cut it down to a basic boot... just proc/memory/video card (remove all addon cards, any usb devices, and anything extra connected (like any extra usb/firewire ports)

if you are using a usb keyboard and mouse..swap them out for a ps2 versions for testing