ATI Radeon, Soyo, XP Problem... Help!!!

[MBear]

All,

I am building a pc for a friend and have run across a problem.

First of all, here is the configuration:
Soyo 7VTAPro Motherboard (current bios)
AMD 1.4ghz, 233 FSB processor
512 meg Cas3 RAM (Kingston)
ATI Radeon 7000 32 mb, AGP (with ATI drivers loaded)
IBM 40 gig ide hd
3Com 3C50X nic
Windows XP Pro, with all current service packs
Extra cooling, cpu runs at about 114 degrees f, with the box closed.

Here are the problems:
If I set the AGP to 4X mode in the bios, the pc boots to about where XP
would load the video drivers and hangs. It will run in safe mode at 4X.
If I move to 2X mode, the pc will boot but has the following issues: runs
at 800x600, when I try to go to 1024x768, I get a nice calleidoscope of
random colors (it doesn't work). It also shows 800x600 and 1024x768 as my
only two options for resolution. It also will just randomly reboot. If I
change to a lower amount of screen colors, it seems to fix the random reboot
issue. I am not caching the video bios or any video memory in the system
bios.

Here is what I have tried:
Swapped video card with same model
Swapped RAM
Swapped CPU
Swapped motherboards with another 7VTAPro
Tried both ATI and XP video drivers
Moved the 3Com card to another slot
Tried another nic card

There are no conflicts listed in sys info, and everything other than the
video card seems rock solid.

My question:
Is there known issue with this ATI card? Is there a comparably priced card
that has been tested with a configuration similar to this one? Or, should I
go with an ATI 7500?

Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated!
M

 

[paparazi]

Have you manually set the monitor refresh rate? if so it could be too high? set to default.
Has the monitor plugged and played? (if you go into display property settings is the correct display adapter and monitor model posted)?????????? If not then either the Radeon drivers are not properly loaded or the monitor is not recognised in the driver database and set to low default settings.
Are you using XP's generic driver for the display card?
(did it plug and play? and load it's own driver?)
Or have you forced the supplied driver to work?
Sorry I carn't be more specific. Martin Vote if you found this post helpful please!!