Hi all, newbie to the site, and already looking for some help

Right then....

On my previous computer i was having graphics card issues where i would try to play a game and i would either get an effect where the screen goes black and then you kinda start to see white merging into the black, then merges back to black and so forth, or i would get lines and distortions in my graphics.

I decided to buy new computer parts and a new graphics card, now when trying to play call of duty 2 (as i did on my previous comp) with my new graphics card i get the same blurring effect as soon as i start the game (can hear the music in the background). World of warcraft plays perfectly. I stuck my old graphics card in today to see if it made any difference and it did slightly. World of warcraft plays perfectly still and call of duty 2 will load, but..... i can not play it on 800x600 resolution and when enabling some graphics options in game. 640x480 is just too poor to play and other higher resolutions are too much for the card to handle.

Every cmputer part was changed from my old computer, so nothing is the same and it seems just a bit of a coincidence that this same error has happened twice, with different hardware.

Current graphics card is an ati radeon x850, previous was an ati 9800 pro.
Current mobo is an MSI MS-6728, Previous was an Abit kv-85 (i think).
1gb of pc3200 ram on the old comp, 1gb of some better stuff on new one.

If u need any more info for you to possibly assist me with my problem please say.

Hope someone can help me, rather frustrating and confusing me now

Thanks all

Nik

Hi --welcome to PCHF...

number one-- I am not an expert gamer, but

The 1st thing I would check is -- what's running in the background--?
If you are running XP-- you can "strip down" or disable all unecessary apps --using Msconfig-- and then save that as a 'user profile'. This is easy using ATI's Catalyst control center.

I have had success using this tool (freeware):

ATITool - Overclocking utility for ATI cards

it allows you to test your video settings... and then test "overclocking" them for the most performace. It takes a while to set your limits with this app-- but then you can 'save the overclocked profile-- so you can immediately switch back and forth. It works great...

Welcome to the forum!

First thing...is not to overclock (sorry ih8bills )
Whenever troubleshooting a graphics problem...you drop everything back to default. Make sure your memory is at default settings, CPU and graphics card both at default settings.

Secondly, check your temperatures for everything (CPU, chipset, graphics card) and the amount of dust in the graphics card.

Thirdly, make sure you have the latest DirectX installed (which is DX9c)