Well, figure I have some sort of bragging rights to a fairly extreme, ATI driver horror story. 
In truth that is pushing things a bit, since it was *probably* coincidental 
, but still, I had a crash installing the 8.7's, & at the same time holes did burn through 2 of the motherboard’s MOSFETs. So it was with a new, spare motherboard in hand that I updated the ATI Vista drivers to 8.8...
While the driver installation app reported newer T550/650 drivers for 8.8, it lied. Installed it before the CCC package, & it shut the system down too - talk about your feelings of Deja Vu!
After thankfully no odor of burning/melting silicon, restarted the system, installed the CCC drivers, & then re-installed the T550/650 drivers just in case, all with no problems.
OTOH, just to prove I couldn’t get away completely unscathed, the video preview for Avivo in the CCC control panel is broken for 8.8 - going to the de-interlacing setting, a Vista warning pops up that “Program Files\ATI Technologies\ATI.ACE\Graphics-Previews-Common\MMACEPrev.exe” has crashed.... I need to remember to set de-interlacing from the all Avivo settings page of CCC. And in case anyone’s wondering, the 8.7 copies of the files in that folder don’t work either.
As far as the MOSFETs go, seems a problem with the design of early AM2+ boards with the ATI SB600. Newer designs are out, as is the SB700 south bridge, but not yet available at the egg last I checked - now you have an excuse to get a Crossfire board after all.
Meanwhile I’ve got heat sinks made (cut down from an old CPU cooler), & should have the glue any day now from Hong Kong.
In truth that is pushing things a bit, since it was *probably* coincidental , but still, I had a crash installing the 8.7's, & at the same time holes did burn through 2 of the motherboard’s MOSFETs. So it was with a new, spare motherboard in hand that I updated the ATI Vista drivers to 8.8...While the driver installation app reported newer T550/650 drivers for 8.8, it lied. Installed it before the CCC package, & it shut the system down too - talk about your feelings of Deja Vu!
After thankfully no odor of burning/melting silicon, restarted the system, installed the CCC drivers, & then re-installed the T550/650 drivers just in case, all with no problems.OTOH, just to prove I couldn’t get away completely unscathed, the video preview for Avivo in the CCC control panel is broken for 8.8 - going to the de-interlacing setting, a Vista warning pops up that “Program Files\ATI Technologies\ATI.ACE\Graphics-Previews-Common\MMACEPrev.exe” has crashed.... I need to remember to set de-interlacing from the all Avivo settings page of CCC. And in case anyone’s wondering, the 8.7 copies of the files in that folder don’t work either.
As far as the MOSFETs go, seems a problem with the design of early AM2+ boards with the ATI SB600. Newer designs are out, as is the SB700 south bridge, but not yet available at the egg last I checked - now you have an excuse to get a Crossfire board after all.
Meanwhile I’ve got heat sinks made (cut down from an old CPU cooler), & should have the glue any day now from Hong Kong.