This would be my suggestion as well... It sounds like it could be GPU related or general dust build up or install related... It's amazing what a quick clean and reformatting can do... The fact that the system restore didn't fix it and you are using messenger to get here makes me think it's not solely a graphics issue... But I could be wrong...

Good luck with it Stew, I know these things can be very frustrating...

well I have decided my new card will be http://www.ebuyer.com/281704-his-6970-ic...hdmi-h697qt2g2m What do you think Darren? Good choice?

I will be working with an engineer who will be checking my machine over as well as installing my new card and also installing win7 to make things dual boot. I also have another hard drive which will be installed and will carry the win7 installation. If it was just a simple installation of the card with no other issues I would probably have done it myself but when you take into consideration all the other issues that arose along with the added complication of installing an unfamiliar OS, I feel much more comfortable using the services of an engineer. Hopefully should be back up and running in time for the next SCES race.

The 6970 is an awesome card Stew. The reason i didn't mention it earlier was that it's a little overpriced considering it's only slightly quicker than the 6950. Personally i'm not convinced it's worth the extra, but if you want the fastest 6xxx single GPU solution then go for it. You certainly won't be disappointed with the performance

Of course at that price you are bordering on 7950 territory if you can put up with ropey drivers for a bit....

Most 6950s have the possibility to unlock the shaders (changes bios )to allow it to have nearly same performance as
the 6970. I have unlocked my card and it works very well. Have not bothered to overclock it further though.

With the 7000 series released and lowered in price, the 6970-50 will give you a good bang for the buck right now.
I think you can get it dirt cheep as second hand also. And then perhaps the 6950 is allready unlocked.

Well the 6970 has been ordered and should be here on Monday. I am hoping all will be resolved by next weekend!
I hope I dont have another week like this one lol. Aart from my computer troubles,my roof started leaking and my gas fire decided to keep going out! Well they say troubles come in threes so I hope thats my three for a good while. Good news is that i should be able to use this old P4machine to race this weekend if I can get things organised by then. hope to catch up with you all this weekend. thanks for all the advice guys it means a lot to know everybody is ready to help each other out in this group. Great bunch of guys at SimHQ!

You're welcome. I'm like a bear with a sore head when my PC goes down so i know how it feels. The P4 should handle things OK. rFactor scales quite nicely on lower end hardware.

You'll be very pleased with the upgrade, and changing to windows 7 will increase your PC enjoyment considerably. It's a great OS.

Can't wait to see what you think

^^ What he said, im stuck on crappy Vista on my gaming comp, but Windows 7 on my laptop, much prefer 7 to Vista, hopefully gonna upgrade OS sometime, hopefully when i get a job! then i will probs be asking the same things and what i need to turn my comp into a beast! Well hopefully your problems will be solved soon Stew

Darren, would you happen to have some links or details on 7xxx problems with older titles? I'm up for a new card in summer (currently 4890) and loss of my 2006-2011 'slightly older games' is my biggest worry. Or maybe go Nvidia, they seemed to have the better drivers back up to my 9600GT.

Sorry for the late reply Col, i only just spotted this. There are no specific 'problems' as such, but on the two 7xxx series cards i tested i found DX9 performance to be very variable. At best it was still slower than last gen, at worst it was almost a slideshow. These days it seems AMD are concentrating on pushing forward at the expense of legacy support. No doubt a lot of this is down to drivers which are still immature, and also specific game support from the developers - rF2 for example is known to have problems with the 7xx series. I'd like to think the situaton will get better as support and drivers improve but, but i do have concerns about how much effort they will put into fixing it. My guess is that the 5 and 6 series will remain the sweetspot for older games.

On the flipside it slaughters DX10 and 11 stuff.

But then the GTX680 is quicker, quieter, smaller, more efficient and works fantastically well with everything - not to mention the fact NVIDIA had a rock solid WHQL driver ready on release day. it took ATI 3 months to manage that and it's still buggy as hell.

I was left with the overriding feeling that the 7xxx cards were seriously rushed to market. Great hardware but still needs a few months to grow into itself. This is of course, only my experience. Your Mileage may vary

Thanks for getting back to me at all, much helpfull.

I involuntarily switched to ATI on the last built as Nvidia wasn't deliver GTX285 anymore, and I always had the impression that the ATI drivers were not as polished, and not as legacy-orientated (i.e. newer releases known to crack older game support).

I've never heard this or had this with Nvidia... and as I play mostly older games this days I really need to be careful when upgrading.

Thanks!