Need help pinpointing the source of my troubles!

[culex]

I've had this problem for a while and it just keeps getting worse and worse.

Basically, I can't play anything D3D or OpenGL related. I would load a game... ANY game that uses one of the two and the system would crash the moment it loads anything 3D rendered.

It used to crash with vertical lines, now it just flickers like it's changing resolution and goes dark. Drivers aren't the problem because I had this with Catalyst 3.6, 3.8... I just did a clean XP install and installed a 3.4 to see if it was the driver (3.4's worked fine months before...) It still does the same exact thing. I've narrowed it down to 4 things...

DirectX9, my Radeon, the PS, or the motherboard...

Here are my specs:

XP2100+ Tbred-B
Windows XP
Radeon 8500 retail (no OC, no bios update...)
Epox 8K7A mobo
512MB PC2100 DDR RAM CRUCIAL
Antec 350watt PS

I'll probably format again soon to see if it's the same under DX8... but i really don't know what's the problem.

Sometimes when it crashes, I can't even boot into XP because it would crash right when it changes resolution when booting into XP. Help me plz.

 

[Brian48]

Have you tried the card in another machine? I've two 128mb R8500's and I've noticed that they're very sensitive to low voltage on the +3.3v rails. You might want to check what you're reading in the BIOS.

Also, while you're in there, I find that if you set the AGP aperature size to no more than 128mb, that usually solves most AGP issues with the faster cards.

 

[culex]

It looks like the 3.3v rail reads at 3.44 and the vAGP reads at 1.59