Hi, been having some serious problems with my Dell 8200.  A few weeks back it seemed like 512MB of my oh-so-replaceable RDRAM fried, so I went out and got some CRIMMS to run on the working 512MB left.  Ran Sims2 and it was noticably slower so I tried to turn down the video settings and the machine crashed.  It's been acting screwy ever since.

 

Basically, from the instant it turns on I get vertical lines running down the screen where I can't see anything.  The lines move about and video is generally garbled.  Reformatted/reinstalled but Windows can't seem to do anything but run in safe mode at 640x480 at 4bit color.  Installed latest nVidia drivers and no luck (I'm running the nVidia GeForce4 Ti 4600, 128 MB).  Before I reformatted and tried to load WindowsXP normally, it'd crash and give me a blue screen "infinite loop" error.

 

I've been reading up, but judging from 1.) my video's screwy from the moment I startup 2.) a clean reinstall didn't work, I'm guessing it's hardware related and not software?  I'm really not comfortable w/ BIOS and all that jazz, so could someone please help me figure out how to confirm if I need a new video card?

 

Related question: if I need a new video card will http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814145076 do?  I don't understand a thing about mobo's either, so I'm scared of buying something not compatible for my 3-year old board.

 

Incredible thanks to anyone who responds.  Not having my main machine work is like trying to work without a right arm!