Display getting permanently garbled since patch

Hi. My specs are:

ATI RADEON 9700 128MB
Athlon FX-51 64 3200
Windows XP
1024 MB DDR RAM

5-30 minutes after I start SL my display becomes garbled, sort of like red green and blue static, i can just barely make out the image of the screen underneath it. This has only been happening since the last patch. I have to restart my entire computer to ungarble the screen. I have the latest drivers for my video card. This makes SL basically unplayable. I did not change any graphics options since the previous version.

Thank you for your help.

kinda like rainbow snow in the screen? woha.. last i heard of this was on my bro video card that was physicaly broke. is it new ? (dont know anything about ATI)

Candle, try playing another game that has heavy 3D load (lots of polygons). See if it does or doesn't happen there also.

If it goes snowy too, it's the vid.

Most vidcards separate 2D and 3D rendering so one can conk out without the other getting affected.

other games work fine. before the patch this never happened.

after it happens i try changing screen resolution to see if it goes away, but it doesn't. the only thing that clears it up is a full restart.

also, my computer doesn't have any problem with SL normally, i get a pretty good framerate in it, so it's not like it just barely fits the requirements to play SL and this patch put it over the hump.

well anyways, thanks for your help.

I had the same problem with my Radeon, and the things I found helpful were as follows:

Power usage. My Radeon doesn't play well with my computer's power saving features, so in order to finally eliminate the problem, I had to disable the hibernate/power save feature on my computer. In essence, the video card would not reinitialise properly after waking from hibernate.

Similar problem was caused by a loose connection (check the AGP slot/PCI slot/Whatever slot and ensure it's fully seated - may be necessary to unplug and replug it)

Make sure your machine is getting adequate ventilation/cooling.

Make sure your machine doesn't have computer crud buildup (dust bunnies = thermal inefficiency = issues). Canned air, ten bucks, blast the dust away.

This is not comprehensive and what you do with this information is your own responsibility. I disclaim any and everything aside from sharing my own experience. YMMV. Offer Not valid in Gorean sims.

this only is a problem in secondlife, and only a problem since the last patch, so i don't think it could be a generalized video card problem, or it would be affecting the computer in more than one area. also, i can make this effect happen about two seconds after EVERY time i take a snapshot, something i just discovered. in certain cases the VPU recover of my video card catches it and manages to reboot my video card system, so i only have to restart SL. in other cases it doesn't catch it and i have to reboot my whole computer.

i just changed my video card drivers in an attempt to rectify the problem and the same thing still happens. i've tried the most recent ATI drivers and also a third party omega driver, both have the problem, but at least the ATI drivers have a VPU recover that sometimes catches the problem.

Update, solved the problem, all I had to do was check the AGP box in the second life preferences.