9500np Broken or Mobo?

Okay, here's my story guys. Roughly six months ago I bought parts to build a new comp around a 1600+ AGOIA and a TI4200. I sold the TI4200 and 1600+ recently and bought a 9500np and 2500+ (BARTON BABY!) but I kept the motherboard because it isnt really outdated. It's the Gigabyte GA-7VAX with KT400 Chipset, AGP8x, FSB 333 support, and the list goes on and on lol. Anyway, I got all the parts in there and stuff only to find out that the mobo's IDE Channel 1 somehow is fried. IDE channel 2 still works tho (odd). I hooked the HD up to channel 2 along with a CD burner (HD-Master, CD-RW-Slave), installed windows XP pro and installed all the drivers for everything. IT WORKED!!! Beautifully I might add. I played UT2K3 and Black and White for hours up into the early morning. THen I napped and went to a party, but when I came home I started up UT2K3 and I had this horrible Artifacting. I tried formatting, reinstalling drivers, cleaning the connectors that on the card that go into the AGP slot, everything. THen I took my old crappy Rage 128 and popped it in there and it worked fine (other than the fact that that card is a POS and can't run hardly anything lol). I put the 9500np back in and it still has the artifacting. I would say, "it's the card" but another wacky thing is this... When I boot with the 9500np in, the POST is very crazy looking. Letters are replaced with other letters and numbers. Instead of saying, "Detecting IDE drives" it says "D2tacieng I#E drives". It's very weird. Almost all of the stuff is like that. Every once in a while you find one whole word. It doesn't do that with the rage 128. I think it might be the motherboard's stupid AGP8x support or BIOS or something. Then again it might be the card as well. What do you guys think? Here's a screen of the artifacting...

Are you using the latest 3.4 Cats ?

And just try uninstalling teh drivers and reinstalling them and teh control panel...

But if your getting some really odd stuff on your screen at boot... and it works fine with the Rage card you tried.. there is a high chance that tis the card man


But try cranking it down to 4x AGP if you think the 8x it causing probs, but it does seem like its teh gfx card..

Sounds like either a dead card or serious heat issue. I've had two cards do that to me - when the fan died on my GF4 MX440 it would make crazy characters like that, and after my old GF2 MX was overclocked too long without a heatsink it started doing that. My opinion is it's the card, as much as that sucks.

Bad News guys. It was the card !!! There is good news though. I've only had it for roughly a week so Newegg will give me my money back. I think I'm gonna just get my money back and order the 9600 Pro. The whole reason I bought the 9500np is so I could do the 9700 softmod but that's a long shot and I'd rather have reliable stability. Thanks for the help anyway.