That usaully indicates that the card is at best overheating (check that the fan on the video card is spinning) or at worse, the memory is failing. When playing games the GPU's are basically running at 100% non-stop which creates a lot of heat. It also uses most if not all of the memory on-board the video card, which if there is any failing, can show up as "noise" on the screen, bluescreens, crash to desktops, etc...
The easiest thing to do is throw another video card in it and see what happens. If that is not an option, I would get a decent temperature monitioring software and see what you can do about cooling it down (add fans, make fan ducts to increase cooling effect, etc...). Once the card has been confirmed as running cool (40 degrees celsius to 80 degrees celsius during maximum usage would be acceptable but the lower the better), you can then focus on the stress testing of the card. If it's still having issues, replace it.
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by: webwolf_3000Posted on 2008-05-26 at 10:04:28ID: 21647246
As much as it pains me to say it - I believe you may have found one of the few drivers that still is not vista compatable, based on what youve tried, which is pretty much all I could suggest ( other than running the dxdiag tool, which would probably kill your computer in 30 seconds flat based on your questions )
I assume Start-Run "dxdiag" still works in vista.
Other than that, it could be a faulty Graphics card, make sure its properly seated in your motherboard and your fans etc are running as normal. last resort would be to try dual booting to XP and seeing if the issue replicates ( if it runs ok in XP, I'd say it's verly likely a driver hates vista issue.
Good luck.