A month ago i bought a msi fx5200 (AGP) to replace my pci gf4 420 card. Installed it and used the drivers on the cd. Immediately i noticed the screen refreshing at random intervals. I did the usual troubleshooting, lowering the refresh rate to 75 - 72 -60 and also the res and colour bits ,etc. This made the problem worse, so i sent the card back and got a replacement from another site. I did fresh intall of XP, installed the latest DX9b(also have used 8.1-9.0b) and used the drivers from the msi website 44.03(also used up to 45....), updated my agp drivers to the latest on the gigabyte site. The problem was still there with the different card. I then spoke to the shop where i got the card and they suggested i do the above and also flash my MB bios, which i did. This has not solved the problem. However this problem only affects my desktop and micro$oft flight sim 2002. When i play wolfenstein, CS, SS,MOH,Ghost recon etc the screen is fine. The only way i can stop the screen refreshing is to disable all acceleration on the card for day to day use and enable it for gaming. The only things that i can think of causing this problem is that my MB is agp 4 x and the card is 8, but the manual says its supports 4 x and is seen to do so in the agp utility i've got or the agp slot on the MB is damaged but why is it ok in intensive games?
specs are for this pc
P4 2.4 @2.4
msi gf FX5200 td 128
gigabyte ga-8sr533p MB
512 pc2700 generic ram
2x 80GB drives
ricoh cdrw
etc
Maybe there is a compatibility issue somewhere
cheers
mat