Strange lines in random places

[Wizend]

Every once in awhile my computer freses up and goes to vertical lines or various colors and sizes. the frexes happen in completely random places, even sometimes, the majority I guess, before it even boots to windows.

I just bought the Gigabyte GA-7VRXP and I have tried two video cards, both ATI, and have gotten the lines on both cards.

I am wondering if it is my motherboard, or my memory, or maybe even my CPU. I have an Athlon 1.4 and 512 of Crucial Memory, but my computer only recognizes it as 384 MB or something. I am saving up for new memory just because of the read error, but do you think it would be more inportant to get a new CPU instead?

Just wondering if any you guys have gotten similar errors in the past and have found a solution.

Thanks

 

[Insidious]

Check your BIOS settings of the MoBo. Be sure that the 2x/4x setting matches your video card capabilities. Disable fast writes and side band addressing for the video. Disable Video cacheing or shadowing (called something like this). Also, make sure you are getting the video card seated all the way and do not power up your monitor until after you have connected it to the video output port. Also make sure your power supply is AT LEAST 300 Watt.

try all this before replacing anything.