4850 driver/screen corruption weirdness

[EliteRetard]

New system with an AMD Ph2 X3 720 Gigabyte UD3H MOBO 4GB DDR3 Corsair 550watt Vista Premium 32bit. Video card (4850) was moved over from old E6600 system with 4GB DDR2 Thermaltake 450watt PSU Gigabyte DS3 MOBO and the same OS. Everything was fine in the intel system...but the new system is having a flash of garbled graphics then black screen of death (the monitor just loses signal and says check connection) Have to hit the reset button to get it back.

I was unlocked/OCd on the X3 so I thought maybe that was it (prime 95 stable), but I set it all back to stock and still have the issue. Ive recently seen it recover from the glitch and a message popped up that said the display driver stopped responding but the system recovered. I tried updating drivers didnt help. Put the video card back in the old system and everything seems fine (its back to XP & 88GTS320)...doing the same thing as the AMD.

I dont get it...tried reinstalling windows and used the drivers from the CD (kinda old now) same issue. What the heck is that? Really annoying, cant game for more than like an hour max (often 30min or less). The MOBO is Xfire capable, so it does have another slot (card is in the top right now)...I guess itll only take a second to try it. It wont do anything bad will it? Ive never had a MOBO with more than one PCI-E. Ive heard recently that AMD cards have been having issues (5 series) with screen flashing and stuff...sounds kinda like what Ive got but mines a 4 series and didnt have the issues before the AMD system.

Any ideas? Ive been holding off on upgrading because video card prices are just stupid right now. I got the 4850 for around 80$ like a year ago...4870 was ~100$ and 4890 for 130$. Now the closest performance to my card costs 150$+ and Id have to spend like 300$ to get anything better. RAM prices are just as stupid. I upgraded to 4GB in the intel system when the prices were like 30$ for a kit. The same stuff is now literally three times the cost. What the heck is going on?!

 

[RallyMaster]

Yep, welcome to a market where RAM is three times more expensive for the same thing as a year ago, NVIDIA stopped producing the GTX260/275 because they were bleeding money, ATi getting to charge whatever they want for the HD5700/5800/5900 series while drivers are still somewhat flaky, and Intel still selling chips at ridiculous prices because AMD isn't catching up any time soon. IMO the computer market has been relatively stagnant for a few years. No big innovations are being made (unless you count SSDs). Intel is just taking their Core i7 architecture, watering it down and then selling it in the form of the i3 and i5.

I'm intent on getting a GTX260 Core 216 soon to replace my HD4850. I just don't feel like ATi's drivers are up to snuff. Every time a new game comes out, ATi's drivers are bad enough that they require hotfixes to even run the new game properly. That's really sad and I find that a hassle.

 

[NoQuarter]

Try your old PSU in the new PC?