Monitor flashes rapidly

I got a new video card from my in-laws over x-mas and it fried yesterday and reverted back to my old GeForce 8100. Everything started to work but in max resolution 1280X1024 (recommended) my screen flashes extremely fast when I swap screens, minimize, load a web page. Pretty much any command that changes the images on the screen.

I updated my driver for my old card, I checked the cables, I have restarted several times. I removed the broken newer card out of my computer. I even put a new monitor on and it was still happening. If I lower my resolution one tier, then the flashing/flickering stops, but any games or programs get an FPS of 2-4 which never happened on this card before ever.

Can someone please help

Check the power settings, IE; auto timed system standby settings, monitor turn off, hard drive turn off in your video card power option properties Doubtfull that any video card will hurt any decent monitor unless your Hz settings are set too way too high for an older monitor, just don't go past 85 and it should be OK. That said if your Hz is too high you will simply get a total display mess, and no blinking of the monitor LED showing it's a power setting issue, a 440 card will be hard pressed to go past 90 Hz. By the way, what is your computer specification and your model of the monitor?

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3 ghz
Samsung SDM-s71
Geforce 8100 video card.

The only refresh rate it lets me place it at is 60. When I go to the display settings it states the correct monitor under number1. However when I go into the advanced settings and click the monitor tab, it has a generic PnP monitor in there. I tried to install the .inf file for this monitor but windows 7 wont recognize it and leaves it as a generic PnP monitor.

Ideas?