[cheetah]

Hi,

I purchased a Gigabyte 9600GT Silent Pipe last month and installed it in a Gigabyte GA-EP35 DS3R mainboard. Intermittently, I get artefacts (horizontal moving stripes) in the post screen and Windows. Sometimes they go away while Windows is starting. I tried a live Linux CD, same artefacts and even a completely corrupted screen using another mainboard (MSI P35 Neo2 FR).

A friend of mine bought the same card and he had the same issues, while the RMA replacement shows artefacts as well.

The only thing our mainboards have in common is the P35 chipset with PCI-x 1.0a (MSI) and presumably 1.0a Gigabyte (couldn't confirm this anywhere). In any case, P35 does not support PCI-x 2.0, which is the card's interface.

I understand that PCI-x 2.0 is usually backward compatible with PCI-x 1.0a (though 1.1 is less strict and offers more chance of success). In rare cases, however, this combination will not work.

Can anyone please shed some light on this issue? Are my friend and I extremely unlucky to have found 4 defective cards (I bought a replacement because I decided to upgrade another PC as well) or could this be a compability issue? I'm about to RMA one of my cards.