Difficult video adapter question

[TDeacon]

I may have an old AGP card laying around yet. Doubt very much though if its more then 256 ram though.

I'll dig though my junk boxes later if you want.
And no I wont want anything for it but a good home.

Thanks; I'd be interested, depending on what kind it was.  Let me know.   My pitiful 250-W Dell power supply probably couldn't handle anything more than 256 MB RAM anyway.    

Otherwise, I think I'll try to pick up a used 9800 Pro on Ebay (slightly worse performance than the 9800XT apparently, per the Internet).  The mid-90s card I'm using now is hopeless for any of my beloved XP games, though it works for Visual Studio, and even (mostly) for Photoshop CS2.  Anyone know if the ATI driver uninstall software is reliable, or should I find a 3rd-party driver cleaner?

MH

[TDeacon]

The temperature reading you get when the system boots is likely a probe near the GPU and not the VRAM. If the thermal material is no longer doing its job for the memory then the temperature could spike immediately. If you have turned the system on several times since you noticed the problem it is probably too late but the cost of a little time and thermal compoud could also bring your system back online.

If you did experience an electrical shock to the system then you would be better off using another system to recover any important data before you go in any other direction. I cannot stress enough how important it is to note that once something like that affects a PSU that you have only a limited time before more trouble appears. This could very well end up being the end of everything in the case.

OK; maybe I’ll try the Arctic Silver idea.  I think I may have some lying around, and I already took the card apart once about 5 years ago.  

Also, as stated above, I have permission from my spouse to put together a new system, and will be posting my parts list to this Forum for comments. 

MH