Oh sorry I forgot to tell you that the 7900GT was bad, and I rma'd it. I replaced it with an ati x1900XT.

Ohh ok.. well as to that 1900. It might just be the part of the mem not making good contact with the HS. What are the temps you get Idle/Load? If it allready artifacts at 60C then it's an RMA. That is ofcourse the last action to take. Asuming youve allready tried various drivers first.

I've already rma'd it. The dots do start at about 59ish. The new one should be here on tuesday.

Good, at those temps allready showing problems means its FUBARed ;)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16835118221. Will this fit an am2 socket?

Scratch that, figured it out. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16835118004How will this work?

Yeah thats the one, the black edition. Would work like a charm for your AM2.

Great, youve been a great help thus far and i always value your opinion. :)

Glad to be of some help :-beerchug

Just out of curiousity, what would be the temp for the x1900xt to enter the "danger zone"?

XT's are marked as XT for a reason ;) they arent the best OC'ers and i think that you'll find it that they perform quite adaquatly at the pre-programed speeds. Though going higher than stock would definatly mean you need to get an after market cooler like an accelero X2. Safe temps, well standard the ATI's get hot (for the a really excited user, Im NOT flaming ATI) id say, to stay reasonably safe keep it under 80c with load eventhough as per manufacturer specs higher is possible, i tend to feel a bit uncomfortable having a PCB running higher.

Thanks, I am thinking of getting an accelero X2 actually.

Try the stock speeds first thats all ill say ;) Overclocking that card is a little tricky, a little bit more confusing than an averge Nvid card. What you need is a tool called "ATI Overclocking Tool" NOT "ATI Tool" name seems similar but it is a totally different tool, and not "ATI driver overclock" which is pure garbage too.

Thanks, I dont plan to really overclock since the cpu is really what fs is after. I have another stupid question for you. What are the other dangers of overclocking besides overheating? It seems amazing to me that you have a 2.0 ghz cpu running at 2.8. WOW!

No question is stupid ;). Well the other dangers. The only real other danger is the user. Overclocking can do damage if one does not know what he/she is doing. One looses warrenty on the chip and for example, SATA is not too fond of overclocks, so when you push it too much it will quit working. However CPU's nowadays are build to perform a bit faster than stock speeds, how much more depends on the actual chip since no chip is the same. As for my 2.8 its the 3800, it's not for nothing called the overclock king of the AMD X2 line ;). Good Airflow, ThermalPaste and good HS does the trick. With another motherboard and if i use my water - or Phasecooling unit it will probally go even higher. But this is good enough for now since only for FS anyway ;)