Dodgy ATI Card? (corrupted in dos)

[Bone Head]

Ive just been given a second hand Saphire ATI 9800 Pro 128mb, on a try before I buy basis.

Ive installed it on my DFI Lanparty NII rev b motherboard and when I boot the pc the very first screen is fine (has the lanparty post graphic) then when the next boot screen comes up the upper part of the screen has lots of characters that shouldnt be ther mainly coma's ,,,, ,,,,, ,,,,, ,,,,, ,,,,,, like that.
If i go into the bios page that too has corrupted grahics showing, more random thatn the main dos screen.

it boots into windows and that is slightly corrupted too but the plain desktop has bands running down it maybe 2 inch wide and 2 inch appart.

The fact that it looks coblers in dos makes me think its pretty seriously borked. Is it worth trying to flash the bios on it, asuming I can read the bios instructions when I come to do it.

TIA

 

[Bone Head]

Thanks for the reply, yes it has been oveclocked in the past but looking at it with radlink it has the stock setings, my mate who owned it before said it worked fine 3 weeks ago.

I have tried various settings in the bios including voltages and 4x AGP. Do you think flashing it might help things.

It is a wierd problem and something I havent seen before and I have been round pc'c for too long

Thanks
Bone

 

[Bone Head]

That all confirms what I thought thanks guys.

Ill let him try reflashing it back to factory