Strange video card behavior...

I have four AGP video cards that I tested out, a Radeon 9800pro, Geforce 2 MX200, Geforce 5200, and Geforce 5900XT.
During the testing, I noticed some strange behavior from two of the video cards during games.
The 5200 and the 5900 both hang during games. It's not even the normal hang that I experience when I crash... about 15 minutes into gaming, the video will completely stop for a good 20 seconds. Audio will play just fine as if nothing is wrong, and the game will resume exactly where it locked up. That's not that bad for the 5900XT, because everything is fine after it resumes, but the 5200... it has very strange graphical glitches after it resumes. It's almost like an old MSDOS ray casting game. From a center point on the screen, a whole bunch of different color lines shoot out and extent to the edges of my monitor. Crazy thing is, only half the screen does it, leaving the other half to go on gaming like normal. Even stranger... moving around in the game changes the color strips. It's got me completely stumped...

Another thing is... the 5900 only seems to lock up on my machine, but the 5200 seems to do that on any machine I test it in. The 9800 and the Geforce2 I've never had any trouble like that...

Like I said, I'm stumped... I don't think it's drivers, because the Geforce 2 works fine. It could be hardware related... but why would the 5900 work in the other machine flawlessly?

Oh, and for those who may ask:
First, Primary, Machine
Pentium 4, 3.0GHz w/HT
D865PERL motherboard
2x512MB DDR PC3200


Second machine
Athlon XP 2400+
Some junk Abit board that has died numerous times
1x512 DDR PC2700

Nope, all drivers for ATI were removed when I tested the Nvidia cards...

as for the event viewer, I can't remember if I saw anything unusual. I'll check again when I get the chance.

I had the same ray problems that you are having with you're 5200 with a 6600 that I severly overheated. Would be fine for a little while or as long as I kept the side off my case and had a fan blowing on it.

Maybe the 9800 isnt working as hard/has better cooling/is newer or can handle higher temps or even just runs cooler

When you swapped the Nvidia cards, did you uninstall and reinstall drivers. Just because they are all Nvidia doesn't mean you can just swap cards. When the driver is installed it configures itself for the particular card.

Mike.

All video drivers were uninstalled each time before I installed the ones directly downloaded from nvidia's site for each card specifically. Like I said before, my computer case is well ventilated, but I suppose heat could still be an issue. But why would it cause a 20 second shudder and resume like normal? I've had cards overheat before, and it usually was a complete system lockup.

what?

hmm... I forgot to mention my PSU and OS.

I have a 450W PSU with Windows XP. I do not know what the amperage is on the rail at the moment, but I figured it should be sufficient for such an old card.

You're right about the PSU efficiency,Peffse. But you may need to download the latest BIOS,check your power supply and output sockets of your graphics card and MB's Southbridge and download the latest chipset driver for your MB.

If none of these worked out , just reply to this message and I'll do anything I can willingly.

Amin