Visual distortion and lockup with Geforce4 4200

[LiquidNinja]

Hey guys, I'm having a weird problem where ill be playing games, or looking on the internet, and the monitor will change into random patterns and colors, and freeze up. I got the newest detanator drivers (30.30 beta, but i believe it was happing before as well), and can't seem to figure it out, its pretty random. I've asked around, and a lot of ppl have said I dont have a large enough power supply (300 watt).
I'm running:

Winxp pro
640m SDRAM
Gainward Geforce4 4200
AMD T-bird 1.2
2 HD's
2 CDroms

The reason im asking is because i dont want to lay down 80$ for a PSU, and not have that be the problem. If anyone has any ideas, i would really appreciate it.
One more thing, when i had my old Radeon LE, this never happend. So it's either not enough power, or possiable bad hardware?

Thanks.

p.s. I just tried copying something from a CD, and watching a movie, and the visuals and sounds will slow down a lot. This never use to happen, could it be the cpu not getting enough juice? or am I just paranoid?

 

[AnAndAustin]

Well even a branded 300W PSU will have probs running that hw, your Athlon1.2ghz will eat up as much juice as an AthlonXP1800+. I suspect your PSU isn't a known brand (eg Enermax, Antec, ToPower and Flower) and even if it is it would be a very wise investment given your config. Dual fan PSUs are best, but I would make 400W a minimum spec on a new PSU, and be sure to buy a branded PSU. If you really want to test the possible need for a new PSU out then simply unplug the power leads to the non-boot IDE drives, this should help you to see if the instability is caused by your current PSU. Another thing to try is checking out what your 12v, 5v and 3.3v rails are running at, try using the BIOS or a diag prog like SiSoft Sandra to find it out. Obviously resetting any o/c's back to defaults is ALWAYS a good idea when trouble-shooting.

Using any beta drivers is always a bad idea, ALWAYS stick to the latest release from either chipset or manu websites, only use an older driver if you experience probs but never those nasty beta drivers.

If you use Win9x then more than 256MB, certainly more than 512MB will nearly always give many hassles and gripes. Also many mobos dislike large DIMMs, 512MB should be fine but try unplugging the 512MB DIMM (if that's what you use) and see if you get the same probs.

A good thing to try is to ensure that all PCI & AGP cards are pushed home fully, try reseating them. Another thing to try is reseating your RAM sticks and possiblyt even your CPU+HSF. Finally reconnect all leads, it could be the monitor's cable is abit loose or a pin is bent!

Your old RadeonLE would have been very happy with very low power requirements, with speed comes the need for more juice. Try your old gfx card back in there and see if the problem goes away, many users find undeletable residue from old drivers often cause probs (esp when switching between Radeon and nVidia cards), a reinstall of Windows may be on the cards.