Help with computer glitch

[Slickire]

Hello, not sure where i should be putting this question, but general seemed close enough.

Anyway, i keep getting screwy graphics on my pc, but only when it is booting up, or when im playing games. In windows, everything is fine - no glitches, movies play well and sound great.
Here's a couple of screenshots of what i meen:
This is normal windows:


This is for battlefield 1942, which was a fresh install:


anyway, im pretty sure its the graphics card, though i don't know why windows aint affected.
Are there any tools out there to determine where/what is the problem, or should i just get a new card? Oh, its an ATI 9800 pro 256-bit

 

[Sandman]

When did this start? Anything happen just before it started? (power outage, just installed the card, etc)

Without knowing for sure, I'd bet that the 3d pipeline is separate from the 2d pipeline, so if something is screwy on the 3d side it would be possible that 2d is fine. Maybe a bad transistor in the pipeline or in the memory system.

 

[xXaNaXx]

well, you didn't mention if you'd done it yet or not, but the first obvious step is to try the latest drivers.

it could also be a heat issue, i had an old GeForce 2 Pro that got hot as hell after gaming for a while, and it would start drawing strange stuff like that on the screen. i'd check to make sure that the heatsink is properly seated on the card, and i would probably even replace the thermal tape / thermal grease with some Arctic Silver.

and it's possible that the card has been damaged permanently from a previous overclocking episode / overheating issue. have you tried putting it in another computer to see if it does the same thing? or maybe borrow another video card to put in your system (the same card if at all possible) to help narrow down if it's a hardware or software problem.

 

[Canon]

I knew someome who had a Radeon 9700 I believe and he had a very similar problem.

We'd be playing with him and all of a sudden he'd say, "I can't see anything". It'd just start doing that at random times.

He replaced the card and had no problems.

He put the Radeon 9700 in another computer and hasn't ever had the problem again. It's very odd, almost like a slight chipset incompatibility or something.

You should really try running that card in another system to make sure nothing is wrong with the video card.