Artifacting GeForce 8600 GT

I recently got some parts shipped to me from some very nice people I've known over the internet for a while now. They sent me a new Motherboard, CPU, RAM and GPU. Everything was installing great, got windows xp 32bit going. I installed the chipset driver, then the display drivers. Installed LOTRO (Lord of the rings online) Played for about 10 minutes before I got artifacts and a lock up. I re-booted and this is where my problems began.

I now have artifacting when I boot, before my system loads the OS so it can't have anything to do with drivers right? I can make it to my desktop (640X400 resolution 4bit color) I cannot install any new drivers what so ever, about halfway through the process my computer locks up. I have been doing some google research for about a week now and found this picture. The first picture in this link is exactly what is displayed on my screen.

http://www.playtool.com/pages/artifacts/artifacts.html

Is there a program out there I can use that will test my GPU's RAM? If indeed that is the issue.


Side note: my mobo's BIOS will sometimes be reset when I reboot, not every time but enough to be annoying.


Any help will be greatly appreciated thanks in advance. -Verlo

e-Geforce 8600 GT 512 MB DDR2 GPU

Asus A8N-SLI NVIDIA Socket 939 ATX Motherboard

Corsair TWINX Dual Channel 2048MB PC3200 DDR 400MHz Memory (2 x 1024MB)

AMD Athlon 64 processor 3200+ Socket 939

I have never overclocked any of my machines I am too chicken.

Oh sorry, brand new 500 Watt Rosewill

Temps are good, nothing is over-heating. I will run memtest in the morning.