Severe(and strange) issues with my 7600gt.

Hey there, first time poster so I'll have whoever replies know I'm not all that experienced with graphics cards, or computers for that matter.

I've had several weird problems with my xfx 7600gt for about a years time now, but I never bothered looking much into it, but when I did nothing worked anyway so I sort of gave up with it and just accepted defeat, but I've now decided to look for help.
I've tried updating drivers, tried changing hardware acceleration, tried adjusting game/image settings up and down with no luck, even refresh rate but nothing helped.

More to the point:
The card is rock solid stable, it's never let me down in terms of performance, that being said, I don't push the card beyond it's limits and I've never clocked my pc(or card for that matter) at all. The fans work, the drivers are up to date, it should be getting enough power aswell.
Still, I'm having artifacts, tons of them, in all shapes and sizes, in all the games I've tried so far. I run my games in windowed mode, and whenever there's artifacts on the horizon I just resize my window and they go away for a short amount of time, then come back. They seem to origin from models, well, textures on models to be exact, and I have no dea what's causing the problem.

Also, I'm having tiny dots of different colors, visibility depending on the background, at first I thought what I was seeing was dead pixels but when I took a black background image and dragged it back and forth on my screen, they made trails all over it, and I have no idea why.
example

The short version: My xfx 7600gt is acting a wee bit strange, and I'd like to know if it's possible to any extent to fix the problems I've described. I'm 100% sure it's the card messing with me, 'cause I tested a 6600gt or so in this pc and it caused me no problems.

Regards,
Kchostrae

bouncing between 65-75*C while running games, heat has never been a problem, as far as I see it, but you be the judge.
I've had the same problem during winter, and I got my window open all year(don't ask), so I honestly don't know. Think I'll go for faulty card explanation.

I'll try another cable if I can get hold of one, though.

Agreed sounds like a dodgy card to me.

Mactronix

Sounds like the card is dying. It is a bit old, after all. Can you afford to buy a new card, and probably a new power supply too?

What kind of case and PSU and motherboard do you have?

Edit: I hadn't seen your reply yet. OK, what kind of case and PSU do you have? And give us a URL where you can shop.

Don't worry about SLI, you don't need that for WoW or Oblivion.

Your MB supports PCI-E 1.0 at x16. Your case has two 120mm fans, which is acceptable IMO for a single card even if it's hot. A 500W PSU should be enough for a card like 8800GT or even HD 4850. Finally, your case is big enough even for 8800GT or GTX, according to some newegg reviewers, so we don't have to worry about cards not fitting in it.

Some options:

Asus 8800GT, 1300kr, i.e. 161 euros.
http://www.komplett.no/k/ki.aspx?sku=342177

Asus 8800GTS G92 512MB, 1600kr, a bit faster.
http://www.komplett.no/k/ki.aspx?sku=343732

Gigabyte HD 4850, 1300kr, even faster.
http://www.komplett.no/k/ki.aspx?sku=361818

I'd pick that Gigabyte card. Just download and run Driver Cleaner, or reinstall Windows, to switch properly from your current nVidia drivers to ATI drivers.

Edit: there's also HD 4870, even faster than those other 3 I listed above, but it's 246 euros and overkill for Oblivion. It is nice though because it has a better cooler.

Just curious about one thing.

What's the difference between pci express 1.0 and 2.0? what difference will it make when using a 1.0 compitable motherboard with a 2.0 compitable graphics card as opposed to a motherboard with 2.0?