Radeon 9700 Pro - weird problem

[dmcgarvey]

Rcently changed motherboards. Went from an Asus A7S333 to an A7N8X-X. When running just about any game, (Call of Duty, Return to Castle Wlfesntein, UT 2003 etc), experiencing what can best be described as black dots up and down the screen...sometime they're not always black. The game plays fine in the background, but these stupid dots are there and I can't seem to get rid of them.

Running a Radeon 9700 pro, AthlonXP 2800+, 1 GB of PC 2700, the lastest Catalyst drivers, (in fact I've tried 3.8, 3.10, and 4.2), the latest NForce drivers from Asus, WinXP SP1..tried disabling fastwrites in the BIOS, increasing graphics aperature to 128 MB, disabling FSAA and anisotrpoic filtering, syncing the refresh rates in Windows with the games.

It only does it inside games, not at the desktop, not even at the main menu of the game. Seems to me like a software problem. But I don't know what else to try besides the latest drivers. Did not have this trouble with the previous mobo. At this point, think if switching back. But it makes no sense. Any ideas?

[Flyfsh]

Possibly a heat issue. I had the same type of problem with my Nvidia Ti4200 (I realize yours is a ATI). I put an aftermarket heat sink & fan on my VGA & stoped the problem.

[robjw]

You are experiencing what is known as arifacts. The early radeon 9500's were very similar to the 9700, the only differnce was the 9500 had 4 piplines open, so people made software mods to open these ports, but companys had just simply thrown in some real 9700's with a dodgy pipeline or 2, as it would not matter. If you have tried overclocking your 9700 this may happen, or also, you can get drivers that supposedly do the aem for the 9770 fora 9700 to 9800, but this can aslo bring artifacts. I'd check your drivers, and if your overclockign it, lower the ammount until this stops.