severe graphic corruption

[m0053.Hunter]

Ok, In the last few days my computer has been having some interesting problems. When I run it for a long time or play some system heavy games I get weird video anomolies. Its like I get little spots of pixels that are black and pink and orange (among other colors) doting the screen. Almost like a texture is not being rendered and random colors are filling its place. Also, in several games I get weird jagged polygons across the screen ( this isnt a very good description but its hard to explain). Its kind of like sheets of various colors that criss cross the screen. On several occasions the games have crashed to the desktop and on one instance the desktop was visually corrupted(odd patterns, lines, squares, etc).

I dont know if maybe my video card is dying a slow and painful death or if its just overheating or maybe its a totally different problem than my gpu. Ideas?

Setup:
AMD XP 2000+
1 GB PC2100 RAM
Radeon 9700 All-in-wonder
MSI KTV4 Mobo
80GB and 160 GB Seagate HDD
Windows XP Pro
4-60mm case fans

 

[BandwidthHogg]

Those are artifacts, generally seen from pushing a card too far when overclocking. Are you overclocking your 9700? If not, it looks like its time for a new video card.

 

[m0053.Hunter]

Well, I bought this card from a friend who might have overclocked it but i have not done so myself.

You say this is a sign of a dying video card though, is it from age and use or could it be overheating? This card is farily old.