Problem displaying text OS X

Hello

I have quite a peculiar problem with my mac. I bought my G5 2Ghz 20" Tiger four years ago. I had two major crashes (tech tool diagnosed a Volume Structure problem, and not being able to correct it, I had to reinstall OS X), and another one just a week ago (same story). But let's start from a few years ago.

As far as I remember, the problem started after a few years, probably after the first time the Mac crashed.

Basically, I started seeing glitches when displaying text in OS X. When I would open a menu in Finder, some of the options would appear with little vertical stripes, usually light blue, instead of the usual consistent black... This didn't bother me much, so I just got used to it.

After the last crash however, the thing assumed a different proportion. I reinstalled OS X, and everything seemed to be back to normal, but I noticed that now every line in the Finder menus has this glitch, and Safari and Firefox started having the same problem. Some pages would display the page text in inconsistent colours. As before, the letters are displayed with small vertical lines of different colours in them. This was an exception before, but now it has become the rule, and it sure isn't reassuring.

I've tried Tech Tool and Apple Hardware Test, both say everything is OK.
I've also tried searching the net for someone with the same problem, but haven't found anything.

Can anyone help me, or at least tell me what the problem is?

Thanx

It sounds like maybe a graphics card issue. I believe (according to Mac Tracker) that your machine uses an AGP 8 nVidia Geoforce FX 5200 ultra graphics card. If you're handy and not afraid to open the machine, I suggest trying to swap that card out for another and see if the problem clears up.

I'm not sure where you can find another card but perhaps an on line search or eBay search may turn up something inexpensive enough for you to buy.

Regards.