X1950pro AGP woes! Say it ain't so.

Hey everyone.

I finally saved up enough money to but myself a second hand (2 months old) x1950pro for my Skt 754 system hoping for a nice leap in performance only have it start freezing mid-play or to lose picture altogether during game sessions.
I tried removing the Catalyst drivers and using driver cleaner pro, then re-installing the latest driver from the ATI website, but to no avail.
I've tested the card with Stalker: Shadow of chernobyl, Doom 3 and Oblivion and it froze on all of them within 5 mins of play.

Do I have a duff GPU? I'm guessing yes, but please put me out of my misery with some advice (yes or no).

My current setup:
Athlon64 3200+ (@2.2Ghz)
2 x 512 meg sticks
Powercolor 256meg x1950pro (previously x800xl)
Zalman 460 watt PSU (34 amps on +12volt rails)

Cheers all.

just use something like rivatuner to see what card you have.

lock ups dont nessarily happen just because of your GPU, it could be a whole host of things.

Though in this case it does seem like a card fault.

I get my hardware of ebay sometimes....but i make sure the guy selling it has a return policy and has over 500 positive reviews before i even consider them. no problems so far. all the faulty products were replaced by them for brand new ones, no questions asked.

I got my E6600 off ebay for £150 when it was still worth over £200 online. so yeah, you can get some really good bargains, but you have too keep your eyes open and never ever buy on impulse (like there is 2 mins left and you think, crap this looks good...lets get it), thats a very bad idea. always read up on the sellers and the products to the minute details.

I'm sure you've already done this - perhaps the GPU cooler isn't mounted properly. Does the card lock up all the time, or is it just during games? If it's just during games, you might want to check that heatsink (heatsink - gpu connection. The reply about the power supply was a pretty good one also. What you PSU rating?