Asus EAX800 Pro giving me troubles
 

I got this new computer since early March, and ever since it's been giving me problems with games.
It started with HL2, every once so often ATI's VPU Recover would kick in, either making the entire PC hang, or kicking me back to the desktop. I thought it was a problem with HL2.
I got WoW a few weeks back, and the same thing happens. VPU Recover kicks in after 5-10 minutes. Sometimes it recovers once, and works for hours without a problem. Other times, it kicks in, and keeps kicking in untill the whole system hangs (me looking at a static WoW screen, nothing moving or anything) or the driver telling me it switched to software rendering because it couldn't recover.
Its behaviour is not consistent. The one time it works without any problem, for hours straight (did nearly a whole day of WoW yesterday), and other times it just keeps recovering and crashing.

I've put in a new PSU last week, an Enermax 420W PSU. I thought it might be the power consumption of the card that made it go down. But it didn't help. I even disconnected all USB devices just to make sure I wasn't overloading the PSU.
I also tried switching drivers. I started out with the 5.2Catalyst drivers, then switched to the latest (5.6 I think) Catalyst drivers. When that didn't help I tried the unofficial Omega drivers. No improvement either. I'm now on the 4.12 Catalyst drivers, but the problem remains.
Sadly, Asus' smartdoctor doesn't seem to recognise my card, so I can't tell if it's a temperature problem. But the fact that it sometimes runs OK for hours straight seems to indicate it isn't.
I've searched google for pointers with this specific card/motherboard, but I haven't been able to find anything so far.

I remember playing BF1942 on this PC too without any problems. But since I only played it once or twice I can't be sure, but it could indicate a DirectX problem, since both HL2 and WoW are DX9 games and BF1942 isn't.
I haven't installed Windows yet

Any suggestions as to what it could be or I should do/try?

I'm running the following config:
AMD Athlon 64 3500+
Asus A8V-E Deluxe (PCI Express)
Dane-Elec Memory 512 MB, PC3200
Asus EAX800 Pro /2DT 256 MB
Two SATA HD's

Windows 2000 Professional
DX9.0c
4.12 Catalyst drivers
Onboard sound/LAN drivers

Re: Asus EAX800 Pro giving me troubles
 

Are all the fans working ?

Sounds like a heat problem to me.

Or maybe dodgy ram. My IBM suffered many different random failures before I twigged on of the 256mb dimms was playing up.

~Vaio~

Re: Asus EAX800 Pro giving me troubles
 

I finally got a monitor proggy running, and temperature, while gaming, does not rise above the 55 degrees.
I read some other forums/articles, and a lot of them state that this is most likely a hardware conflict between ATI and the VIA chipset on my motherboard.

At this point I can choose:
1) get a new video card...
2) get a new MOBO...

Considering that the card was three times as expensive as the MOBO, the choice seems obvious.

Re: Asus EAX800 Pro giving me troubles
 

How old is it?
It sounds like something that should be dealt with by an RMA to me.

Re: Asus EAX800 Pro giving me troubles
 

I ordered late Januari (took me two months to receive it and even get it working, but that aside).
If it's a chipset conflict, is this covered by RMA?

Re: Asus EAX800 Pro giving me troubles
 

Well there's nothing to indicate it's a chipset conflict that I can see.

In these situations it's best to just act like an average PC user:
"Uh, yeah, I bought this graphical thingy but it keeps crashing. I think it's faulty, can I get a replacement?" etc.

Re: Asus EAX800 Pro giving me troubles
 

I could do that. Though I'd need to get me a second PCI-E or PCI card from somewhere else I can't use my PC.