PCTech Forums

Ok, I've had this card for about 1 -2 years now and it's never really worked great. Although, it used to at least run somewhat stable. My current problem is one of the following each time.
- after booting normally the screen will just go black after five mins or so and the comp will go off.
- After booting after too much activity happens on the screen the monitor goes black and I get this message "Not Optimum Mode: Recomended Mode: 1280x1024 60Hz)
- Or all the letters will just scramble on the welcome screen and freeze.
It's an AGP Card and I believe the slots fine because I have my friends NVidia Geforce 5200 AGP card in right now and it works perfectly.
I've tried the sites drivers.
I've tried the CD Drivers
I've tried letting Windows automatically install it
I've contacted ATI and sent the card to them for repair.
I've replaced my power supply.
I'm basically posting this to get some opinions on whether or not this is the card(which I'm pretty sure it is) and if so, what would be a good video card around $200(preferabely NOT ATI)

Here's the rest of my specs:
AMD 64 2800+
AOpen AK-86L
550W PSU
ATI 9600XT AGP 128mb
1GB DDR

Thanks in advance for any help!