Hello, not sure how to start off this post but in the past few months I had been having issues playing games to the point they were unplayable and figured i had a failing video card. Never had issues playing videos or just using my computer for regular tasks except playing games which would give me all kinds of weird colorful artifacts and textures. Come about 2 months later, I can't even play videos and sometimes when just using my computer I get strange artifacts on my screen. I make sure it's not the monitor by using a 2nd one and not to mention I was able to print screen which showed it wasn't hte monitor. Computer starts to become unusable, I lose signal to my monitor and try starting my computer up but nothing to the monitor. I pull out my soundcard and it boots up again, sound card has a bent resister and figured maybe it was causing something to short out.
My brother lets him use his Radeon 9600 to see if it's my video card, I swap it with my radeon 9800 pro and everything seems ok for a few days until I start getting strange artifacts on the screen again. I remember he had a similar problem but claimed it was his monitor so I figured maybe his card was bad too. Today, the problem gets worse to the point my POST is printing weird characters and the windows bootup screen is acting all glitchy, I get my old computer out of my room and swap the Radeon 9600 with a GeForce 2 MX.
So today, no artifacts at all, can play games fine and using my computer all day without a issue with the GeForce 2, figured it was probably the video card. That is until I'm chatting with some friends and i'm going through pictures on my computer to post on my website and my monitor goes completely black. Someone was talking in voicechat and my voice just cut out as if my computer just died, 5 seconds later it comes back on and I hear the person talking again. I figure "that's wierd", restart my computer and the problem happens again when opening google talk. Computer basically restarts. I open NOD32 and my monitor goes blank and I manually restart. I went to play a video and no problems so far but there is clearly something wrong here and I am trying to figure out what could be causing it.
Possible causes I can think of is maybe a PSU going bad? Perhaps not enough power and causing stuff to restart? My other guess is my MOBO or CPU is going bad? Any suggestions because i'm lost at this point.
My brother lets him use his Radeon 9600 to see if it's my video card, I swap it with my radeon 9800 pro and everything seems ok for a few days until I start getting strange artifacts on the screen again. I remember he had a similar problem but claimed it was his monitor so I figured maybe his card was bad too. Today, the problem gets worse to the point my POST is printing weird characters and the windows bootup screen is acting all glitchy, I get my old computer out of my room and swap the Radeon 9600 with a GeForce 2 MX.
So today, no artifacts at all, can play games fine and using my computer all day without a issue with the GeForce 2, figured it was probably the video card. That is until I'm chatting with some friends and i'm going through pictures on my computer to post on my website and my monitor goes completely black. Someone was talking in voicechat and my voice just cut out as if my computer just died, 5 seconds later it comes back on and I hear the person talking again. I figure "that's wierd", restart my computer and the problem happens again when opening google talk. Computer basically restarts. I open NOD32 and my monitor goes blank and I manually restart. I went to play a video and no problems so far but there is clearly something wrong here and I am trying to figure out what could be causing it.
Possible causes I can think of is maybe a PSU going bad? Perhaps not enough power and causing stuff to restart? My other guess is my MOBO or CPU is going bad? Any suggestions because i'm lost at this point.
