Please help me with something that's been bothering me for 3 years

Ok, I'll be brief.

I have a XFX 7800 GS AGP Extreme Edition. If I use regular or forceware drivers, my screen loses its signal after an hour+- of gaming. Pretty annoying. I have to use the special NGO custom drivers with compatibility mode to prevent this from happening.

NGO don't seem to make modified versions of the new drivers coming out for windows xp, only vista. So as new drivers are released, I'm falling further and further behind, which affects the framerate of course.

Any way to fix this issue permanently so I can use regular drivers like everyone else? Anyone else had this problem with the 7800 GS? I remember when loads of people complained about the card on the XFX forum, XFX simply answered by shutting down the forum.

I would try to contact/email XFX about your driver problem.

You are a patient person.

In the mean time uninstall all the 7800 drivers. Go to the XFX support and get the latest driver for your card.
http://www.xfxforce.com/web/suppor [...] erial.jspa

or Nvidia:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_175.16_whql.html

I would suggest downloading and saving the new driver to your desk top before uninstalling old driver. That way you will have it ready after uninstall and reboot.

I agree with Grieve, buy a new card. You'll have less headaches and be amazed by the gain in performance.

Well, installing the 175.16 seems to have done the trick!

I wonder what's different this time. Either they have improved the drivers so that they no longer cause errors, or my card can't handle forceware drivers. I always tested the forceware drivers, because I wanted to overclock a bit in nvidia control panel, but never the official drivers. But it seems the official ones do not cause a signal loss. Oh man... should've figured, or at least have tested it, haha!

Played Mass Effect for hours with no signal loss, and it's a pretty demanding game, so if the signal loss could have been provoked, it would have happened in Mass Effect. But it didn't.

Thank you all! And yes, I will probably upgrade soon, maybe even get a totally new rig. Thanks again.