An alternate workaround for X800 Windows XP Artifacting Issue
 

My name is Kevin Keenan. I’m a network system admin at Digital Networks North America. Also known as Rio Audio, ReplayTV, Escient, Marantz, DENON, McIntosh Audio. We were also formerly Sonic Blue and the infamous Diamond Multimedia. Anyway onto the story…

I’ve been reading several threads and articles about people with ATi X800 Pro/XT and other cards who experience severe artifacting when Windows starts to load. In most of these cases there is no evident artifacting or visual anomalies while the BIOS is going through its POST routine. While the new ATi drivers are supposed to fix this problem, many still have the problem even after that. Numerous suggestions included, turning off fast writes, write combining, changing AGP from 8X to 4X, ATI drivers, BIOS settings, and even ATI bios flashing. But for some this still doesn’t work.

I’ve stumbled across a workaround with quite pleasing results...

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33792694

Source: Warp2Search