Some rather irritating graphics-related problems

Hey everyone,

I was wondering if you had any idea what is causing a group of problems I have had ever since I got my new computer for Christmas last year.
My graphics card is an ATi Radeon 9800 Pro, and I've been having trouble with it since I got it.
I've noticed that some games (especially new ones) are somewhat unstable when played at higher settings. A friend of mine with virtually the same set up as me was able to play Half Life 2 with full settings; I am only able to manage medium settings at best, any higher and my monitor just goes blank usually. When it does this, I unplug it, plug it back in, switch it on and off etc. but I have to restart to get functionality again. Problem #1 , then, is that overly high settings down the pc without warning. Lowering settings in-game does help reduce the problem, but there must be another solution to the problem. After all, friends with similar set-ups have no problem.
Particularily annoying is Problem #2, which I find when I am playing a game on multiplayer. I will be enjoying a game which works perfectly offline, but when I play against others the computer occasionally does the same as in Problem #1; the loss of picture on the monitor. The difference here is that it takes place on games which I have no problems with on singleplayer. An example of this was last week, when I was enjoying the Battlefield 2 demo. The game works like a dream on singleplayer (although I do have to keep the settings at medium in case the game messes up), but the moment I go onto multiplayer I am prone to crashing, and I have no idea why. It's extremely fustrating.
The third problem lies in the occasional complete messing-up of the graphics. There is one level in SWAT 4's singleplayer that constantly causes this problem. One moment I'll be playing, then the game will hang, the picture will flicker and then be covered in blocks of corrupted graphics and be all scrambled. The only solution is to just press the restart button. Again, there must be some better way of combatting the problem.

In each case, the games I have mentioned in the examples have been patched up as much as they could have been, and nobody else was experiencing a similar problem when I checked support forums for those games. My drivers are not the most recent; I have found that the most current drivers for my card only worsen the problem rather than fix it.
A sense of how very dire the problem is comes from when I try to play Battlefield 1942 on full graphics settings with very few bots on singeplayer even. All I get is intermittent crashing. The problems are almost certainly interrelated, and I'm pretty sure its to do with the card and/or graphics. In fact, sometimes when I restart I get the whole 'your computer has recovered from a serious error', I send the report and recieve the feedback that it is a graphics problem.
My directx drivers at current.

My PC spec's are:

AMD Athlon 3200 XP+
768Mb DDR RAM
ATi Radeon 9800 Pro (Power Color, whatever that means )
17in TFT Monitor
DVD ROM Drive
CD Rewriter 52x32x52x
Not sure which motherboard (embarassingly ) although I know it is an ASUS one. I'll try and find the identity of the board in the meantime.

If you require anymore information to help me, just say, and I'll try and get it. I hope you'll be able to help me; you don't know how irritating this problem has been, and I'll be replacing the card and forking out £200 pounds (which I can ill-afford) for a new card if I can't find a solution. There's probably no need to do that, but that's how angry this problem makes me

Thanks for your time

 

Knowing the type of board will help determine the problem ran into this myself once the board type should be on the board right around the middle where asus is A7v600 for example

 

actually theres someone else with same problem posted today

 

If the board number has an n after the a such as A7N600 the board has built in chipset from nvidia which come out of the box pretty good quality suggest trying the on board graphics if the case is this.

 

first of all catbro6166, u can edit an existing Post (think its within 5min) instead of tripple posting


to me it sounds like u are experiencing heat problems. the reason y it causes problems at higher settings is because it needs to work harder at higher settings which leads to more heat being generated. what u need to do is check ur system temperatures especially those of ur graphics card. let us know what they are.

(by the way PowerColor is just the company that manufactured ur card)

 

Ok, thanks . I'll take a look at both and get back to you about them. I had suspected a heat problem, but was unsure.

In the meantime, any extra suggestions would be welcome