Screen flicker in 3d games, corrupt desktop, and rebooting drivers

militant atheist

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Feb 22, 2009
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Hello, fine folks. I have a problem (obviously) and I was hoping one of you fine gentlemen (or gentlewomen) could help. As I stated in the topic my screen flickers during 3d games, it creates artifacts on the desktop, and my drivers always crash (assuming I don't restart them manually) and restart (no BSOD or random system crashes, just the drivers). My first suspect was of course the graphics card (ATI 5830), so I messed with all sorts of drivers (official and otherwise) to no avail, so alas I sent it in for an RMA. When they received it they told me that they detected no problems with it, but would send me a new unit anyway. So I received the new unit only to be greeted with all the same problems.
My next suspect was the memory, but after running memtest86+ for 8 passes while I slept, the memory came up with 0 errors.

It also might be worth noting that my previous graphics card was a Nvidia 7900 GTX with horrible artifacts and tearing (in games, never on the desktop; symptoms pointed to bad memory on the card), the only components that these two cards have always shared (oldest bad configuration with 7900 vs newest configuration with 5830) are trivial things like the media readers and hard drives, all other components have been replaced (in addition to moving my computer to another room and thus another power outlet).

I can not for the life of me figure this puzzle out alone, and that's were you come in. I still have a few ideas on what might be wrong, but I'd like the opinions of people better than me with computers (because I sure don't know any in real life).

My specs are as follows:
CPU: AMD Athlon II 630 @2.8 GHz (used to be overclocked to 3.2)
Motherboard: GIGABYTE MA770-UD3
Memory: WINTEC 2x2 GB DDR2 800
Graphics Card: XFX Radeon HD 5830
Hard Drives: 1st Gen Raptor from WD, and another 650 GB from Seagate I believe. (Request clarification if believed to be needed)
Power Supply: Antec EarthWatts 650W (my next suspect, but the hardest to test)
If you need additional information, just ask.

Edit: Silly me forgot a few key details:
Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Dual-Monitor setup (same refresh rate, different resolutions; my second guess for the problem)
and a video: Some Desktop and Minecraft footage