[cheetah]

No compressed air available I'm afraid ...

The problems keep getting weirder and weirder. I contacted Gigabyte by phone today and so did my friend. They suggested to him to try another PSU. So I went ahead and bought a EVGA 9600GT (active cooling) and he bought a Coolermaster 850W PSU.

I tested the EVGA on my MSI mainboard and used the only way I know how to reproduce the problem: running a Linux live CD (in Windows/post the artefacts are intermittent). With the EVGA I had the same problem as with the Gigabyte card, loss of signal once X server starts.

I then proceeded using the EVGA in my main computer with the Gigabyte mainboard. Kubuntu Live CD: same artefacts as with the Gigabyte card. I switched power supplies and used my friend's Coolermaster. The Linux problem only got worse: loss of signal (same as on the MSI mainboard).

My friend will test the Coolermaster on his own rig later tonight, but we seem to be out of options here. It's not a PSU issue, it would be too much of a coincidence to think we got 4 faulty Gigabyte cards and the EVGA is having the same issues. It's not temperature related as I tried a card with active cooling (noisy as hell BTW), which leaves compatibility .... I have ordered a EVGA 8600GTS, it should arrive within the next few days.

Or did I miss something?