Not Exactly Sure What's Wrong

[HipFly]

Okay...

Until yesterday I've always used a GeForce 6200 OC PCI card, but recently decided to upgrade to
a PCI-e 7600GT, and boy, am I having issues. First installation of the card went alright. I went into Device Manager and uninstalled the 6200 drivers, turned off the computer(I never actually unplugged anything, so that might be relevant), took out the 6200, and popped in the 7600GT, and booted up the computer. After installing the drivers given to me on the disc, I did a little gaming to test out the card. Everything worked perfectly. The next day, 15 minutes into Oblivion, my screen gets shot with artifacts and my game locks up. Huh. I thought a simple restart of the system would do the trick, but it the card didn't display anything on my monitor. "No big deal" I thought, I could exchange this card for another at Microcenter. And so I did. I install the new card, but this time when I install the Disc Drivers, my screen gets artifacts again, but no crash. I had yet to complete the restart required for installing drivers, so once again, I assumed a restart would fix the issue. Wrong. This time the card shows the start-up process, but when Windows XP loads, the monitor goes into sleep mode. After this point I reinstall my old PCI 6200, and see if everything works correctly. It does. I also noticed that Windows device manager reports the installed 7600GT as "Working Properly". I figured another clean install of the card would fix the artifacts, but no luck. It artifacts while in VGA mode now, unlike before. I also noticed changing the resolution and color quality fails. After updating my VIA 4 in 1 chipset, I tried everything over again. FAILURE . I decided to go back to the store and pick one more replacement, but this one is doing the exact same thing as the last one, only it started artifacting before I first installed the drivers. My last gambit on my own was to switch out of DVI mode for my monitor, but when I do that, I get the same results, but my picture is now tinted yellow. I called EVGA after that, and let me tell you, they're freakin' useless. All they did was marvel at how much bad luck I had. On the 5th try on contacting someone competent, an EVGA tech support guy told me my Power Supply *might* be sending out too much power to my PCI-e slot. I asked him if there is any way to edit how much power a PSU sends to each device. He said "yeah", then hung up on me. D:

What do I do now?

Specs:

Celeron 2.7ghz
VIA p4m890 Socket 478
1GB of RAM
Windows XP Service Pack 2
500w PSU
Drivers tested: 9x.xx series

[blue60007]

What brand is that power supply? If it's not a solid quality unit it could be doing just the opposite - not providing enough power to the card. Yeah, I doubt you would get that many bad cards all in a row.

[HipFly]

It's a x-Ultra Connect VS. I've had it less than a year, and when I checked the BIOS the voltages looked very stable. Is it possible my PCI-e Bus could be damaged? Or would I be experiencing different problems if that were so?

[HipFly]

No one? (Bump)

[TimPoet]

There have beens loads of bad eVGA 7600s, you may have one. I bought earlier this year and eVGA replaced it handily.

Lemme search the threads and see if I can find the one I started here re: this faulty card.

EDIT:
Oops, it's the 7900s that were faulty. Nevermind....

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=174393

[bd1886]

I have the X-Connect 550. Having said (no...admitted) that... the units aren't too highly thought of because of "perceived" stability issues. There are enough bad units out there to warrant this reputation though. I have a good stable one (that has performed well) so you won't hear any complaints due to performance from me. But...still hold a level of mistrust due to It's track record.
Apparently the issues have been corrected and most likely we skated and have a later model. BUT...See if you can find a more comprehensive diagnostic tool to run it though it's paces or cut to the chase and buy a psu that has a better rep. and be done with it. Lots of good ones to choose from.

Edit: I don't know if the "VS" models were a part of the fray.

[bd1886]

I have the X-Connect 550. Having said (no...admitted) that... the units aren't too highly thought of because of "perceived" stability issues. There are enough bad units out there to warrant this reputation though. I have a good stable one (that has performed well) so you won't hear any complaints due to performance from me. But...still hold a level of mistrust due to It's track record.
Apparently the issues have been corrected and most likely we skated and have a later model. BUT...See if you can find a more comprehensive diagnostic tool to run it though it's paces or cut to the chase and buy a psu that has a better rep. and be done with it. Lots of good ones to choose from.

[HipFly]

I was able to test the card on a friends computer, and it worked fine.

I'm just wondering now if it's certain it's a Power Supply issue. I really have no other way than checking the BIOS Voltages to test my PSU, so I'd like to know if what I'm experiencing is a PSU exclusive issue, or is the PSU just the first thing I should check out?

[HipFly]

Problem solved(I think, as nothing has gone wrong yet). It seems to have turned out I DID jsut get 3 bad cards. Huh.