6800 xt doesn't like any drivers other than default windows driver

[skeen]

Hi,
I got a XFX 6800 XT on ebay recently and I think I got a bad card. After several reformats and reinstalls of WinXP, I came to realize that the random freezing I have started happening only after I installed an nVidia display driver. Everything would run fine right up until the driver was loaded. With the driver loaded I also get random artifacting on POST and on the desktop. I've tried several from each of the 6x.xx, 7x.xx, 8x.xx, and 9x.xx series with identical behavio from each one.

The RAM is from a known good system, but I ran Memtest86 over night on it anyway. Its fine. The cpu is new, an Opteron 146 but it doesn't seem to have any bearing on this problem. The motherboard, a Biostar Tforce6100-939, is also new but it seems stable and there's nothing in the Device Manager that seems out of wack. I thought it might be the psu but I checked each rail with a digital mm from boot to desktop and the rails were right on with just minor flucuation of +/-0.1v.

Any ideas?

[Quick420]

Need more info on the machine,have you tried a different 3D card? Perhaps even try underclocking the card if it artifacts at stock speeds.One more thing,pop of the stock cooler and clean everything up,re-apply Arctic Silver or equivalent and see if the artifacts disappear.The heatsink may have been applied poorly at the factory.