Horizontal Artifacting

So I finally recieved all my compy parts (All 4 Gigs o Ram were DOA ) So right now I am borrowing my rommates RAM till he comes back from vacation.

The HD3870 is being a pain in my buttox right now. I installed the drivers that came off of the Saphire cd, reboot, and all of a sudden (after the Windows boot logo goes away) I get wavy horizontal lines!(Not a "feature" I care for ) Thats on the native res 1680x1050 on any refresh rate. If I take it down a notch 1440x900 its perfectly fine. Depending on other resolutions it does or doesn't do it. I dont know what to do, I hate this res, it hurts my eyes and Im going to QQ if this is not fixed promptly.

And yes I did go to ati.amd.com and downloaded the latest drivers, no dice.

Thanks,
-Goober

Can you show us what it looks like?

Install those drivers that you downloaded and you should be good

*Awaiting a snappy comeback*

Warning, I typed out my thought process below. You are entering a dimension that could alter your outlook on life.
(Can we tell someone is bored at work?)

First thought was the drivers, so we know the drivers are good. Second thought was the refresh rate, but you addressed that as well. It could be some of the manual settings on your monitor maybe? That's the only other thing I can come up with, but it shouldn't be that because the lines appear after the boot logo not before which also eliminates the possibility of a bad video card.

Are you sure ALL of your video settings are correct (hardware acceleration turned on, you have your monitor selected and not the windows default, etc.)

I know...too much rambling, not enough solution.

Let me think on it a bit and I might be able to come up with something other than P.E.B.K.A.C.

I dont think I can show it, I'd have to install my cellphone software which can be a bit of a trick if I dont do it right the first time. (So I can take a picture, screen shot doesnt work)

I doubt there is any PEBKAC, nor any ID-10T errors, maybe I should try using more RAM fluid... -.-'

And my lovely X800XT was able to display the 1680x1050 just fine (sadly crashed when ever it pleased in 3d apps)

I'll see if I can discribe it a bit more

Its like wavy horizontal line but blocked up in colums, its mostly see through, just makes the top half (or mid half, depending on what it wants to do) blurry and gives me an effing headache. It does it in games too. /cry

Oh and I have tried the ATi 7.10, the ATi 7.11 and the Omega 7.10 drivers.

I have my Viewsonic cd and am going to try installing the monitor drivers...

It might be a monitor problem-are you using the DVI cable, or just the VGA connection?

I'm thinking it is some sort of software problem (hopefully installing the monitor drivers will do the trick) because the problem is not there initially and does not appear until Windows takes over.

Initially its probably running at 800x600 or something equally low resolution

Yeh it doesnt happen at 800x600 which should be XPs navite res. ATM I am using a vga cable with a dvi to vga adaptor. (one of my ex roommates stole my dvi cable )

No the monitor drivers did not help, Im going to see if using the other dvi port will work.

Well here is the DL, I pluged my vid cord into my second vid out and viola! Dunno why, how, who, what, here, there, where, or anything, but it works. I would like to find out the mystery behind that. Any ideas?

EDIT: I take that back, I was playing CSS, got out and BLAMO! I thought my eyes were going bad! So Im really stumped now.

Got it fixed!

Went out and bought a DVI cable no problems now! 1680x1050 yippie!

Whats weird is that I put my fan up to 100% and the artifacting almost completly went away with the vga cable hooked up with the dvi converter, but that was very loud. Any ideas on that?