Superfly,
My system has worked great until a few days ago. No vid card driver changes. But last night I went ahead and used driver cleaner and reinstalled both the latest ATI drivers, then a previous version of the ATI drivers, and finally as a last resort the newest Omega ATI drivers. No change.
Mando and everyone, thanks for the replies.
I checked my vid card fan, it is running and I can feel the air moving. As to whether it is running full speed, I don't know and don't know how to check.
It is perfectly clean, it's only 60 days old. It's a new system, runs very cool. I don't know what the vid card temp is, but the MSI software says the cpu is running at 38C when idiling and 40-42 C in 3D games. I have the Thermaltake Venus 12 HSF which is a great HSF cooler for the Athlon 64 3200.
I may get an aftermarket vid card cooler and give it a shot. I hate to rma the card for a couple of weeks at least plus shipping costs. The shipping costs would probably pay for an aftermarket vid cooler anyway.
It's strange it started all at once, and only in games. The desktop and standard apps work fine. Direct X reports everything is OK. The only other thing I can think of is I upgraded to the latest SB Audigy drivers at about the same time. I may remove the SB Audigy from the system and see if that affects the vid card problem. Seems unlikely, but PCs are pretty strange creatures.
Thanks Again,
Mosquito