[wizinoz]

Video glitches appear seemingly at random. Sometimes, just a dot or a few pixels...at other times, bars, triangles, rectangles "shoot out" from the edges of objects while playing a video game. Have cleaned heatsinks and fans throughout the machine, seemed to help. Seems like a temp-related problem, as it generally doesn't show up after the machine has been powered off for a period of time, and usually gets worse with more "enhanced" graphics (like the game Everquest). But once it starts, it will even effect the desktop and DOS-type low-level screens. Don't know if its the video card or the processor/motherboard, don't have the resources to just "guess" and replace an expensive part.

System is a 3-year old Alienware PC with an AMD processor. Video card is a Radeon 9800 Pro.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance...

the WIZ

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Those sound like artifacts. Get ATi Tool from http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/. Go into the options and enable the temperature monitoring feature. Also, find an option somewhere to enable the log in the temperature monitoring section of the settings. Leave ATi Tool on and run a game for a while. When you have finished go to Start>All Programs >ATi Tool>ATi Tool log file. Check the highest peak of temperature and reply with the results here.

[FalloutYear]

Those sound like artifacts. Get ATi Tool from http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/. Go into the options and enable the temperature monitoring feature. Also, find an option somewhere to enable the log in the temperature monitoring section of the settings. Leave ATi Tool on and run a game for a while. When you have finished go to Start>All Programs >ATi Tool>ATi Tool log file. Check the highest peak of temperature and reply with the results here.