big trouble please help

[hexum]

i dont know what happened. today when i turned my comp on... there were distortions appearing. they are only a few pixels thick and they run across the monitor horizontally, appearing every 10 seconds or so.... its like a thin band of monitor gets shifted to the side a few pixels, then returns to its normal position in a flash.

ive completely reformatted since then, to see if that would fix it somehow, but its still here!

also, at the same time this happened, i had a significant reduction in the performance of 3d applications like games.

these are my real sys specs below

overclocked: cpu, video card, RAM and recently ive been cranking the monitor frequency (old, crappy monitor)

AMD 1800+
Epox 8hka+
GeForce 4 4600
512MB PC 2100 DDR
40GB Western Digital HD
WinXP

 

[engjohn]

My guess is that you have damaged your Vid card by o/c too far or undercooling.... I do not think that it is the monitor because you said the decrease in performance in 3D apps....

Bummer....

 

[Krusty]

Sounds like one of two problems:

1. Your monitor is funky and could use replacing. This is, unfortunately, less likely the case since you mentioned the reduction in 3d performance

2. Your video card is crapping out. Are you overclocking the video card at all? Do you have good airflow in your case? Is there a significant amount of dust collecting on the gpu heatsink or ramsinks? Is the fan on the video card functioning?

 

[ThePerfectCore]

Your video card is F-ed. Time for a new one!

 

[hexum]

yup.. its the video card alright...

 

[cursor]

Hey, look on the brightside--it's a great excuse to upgrade to a GF4 Ti4200!

 

[JimmyG]

Try the old swap-a-roo with another computer. Try the monitor first, then the video card. Then use it as an excuse to buy a whole new computer!.......LOL