Screen is still going black for a few seconds

[MichiyoYoshiku]

In hardware I posted about how my screen will go black for a few seconds.

I updated my drivers for my video Card (gforce FX 5500) and it was still happening.

I go the new frost wire and it seems to not happen anymore when I run that.

However when I use DIVX and Windows Media player to watch videos it flashes and just now I got a pop up ad and my computer flashed black twice. I never use Real Media but there aren't any flashing issues with Real Player like there is with DIVX and WMP.

Yesterday my system rebooted after several flashes.

Is this a Memory issue? Driver/software conflict could my mother board be on the brink of Falure?

I have no idea what to do now.

I have a Gig of Ram, Gforce FX 5500, XP Pro running with a 3GHZ Pentium 4.

Besides these flashes of black everything else seems to be ok.

 

[EricB]

sounds like a bad video card

 

[MichiyoYoshiku]

Yeah on top of the random flashes I get a "book tear" effect when I use Emulators like MAME and ZSNES. Genesis games run horribly.

Think I should call the guys that built my System and see if I can have a new card switched in?

 

[KSoD]

The card sounds bad. See if you can get a replacement or a new one. With the system specs you listed you should be able to use something more than a FX 5500 though. Espically if you are a gamer.

 

[MichiyoYoshiku]

I'm not much of a PC gamer. I do all my gaming upstiars (mouse and keyboard aren't my thing)

So how much should a new Graphics card cost us?

2-300 for card equal to the FX 5500?

Should we go ATI? this is the 2nd time an Nvidia card has gone bad on us.

 

[KSoD]

nVidia cards are actually the better now. ATi after they were bought out from AMD have gone down the drain. At least IMO.

It all depends. What capacity are you looking for? 128MB, 256MB?

 

[MichiyoYoshiku]

256mb would probably be best

A capture card would be nice.

 

[EricB]

256mb would probably be best

A capture card would be nice.

those are 2 separate things except in the ati allinwonders.

microcenter sell 256mb nvidia 7800 cards for 80 bucks. if this one goes out, get a new mobo

 

[MichiyoYoshiku]

alrighty thanks I e-mailed the guys that built my system and see what they think.