Display issue / possible video card problem but I'm not sure

Over the last couple of days twice now I've had this frantic burst of random shapes take over my screen rendering operation useless until a restart.
Take a look: http://i15.tinypic.com/6q94ufp.png
Yes, I have been able to take a screenshot as you can see.
It happens most often during space switching (via accessing spaces, and then clicking on a square I want to go to), as well as QuickLook activation, or video playing. Anyone want to help me sort this out so I can get back to normal with my Mac?
This Mac has also randomly shut down twice now, and this might be related, but I don't know.

I am linking my thread to this one:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6305391
Having exact same problem on iMac 20" which has different display chip (ATI X1600), which outcloses the manufacturer. Now when I think of it the problem usually appeared during Spaces desktop switching but I think once or twice it happened inside a windowed game screen (suddenly one object like a character puffs into random polygons, then it spreads to normal desktop windows too.)
I am currently downgraded to Tiger form Leopard to test if this was a leopard issue (never had this problem in tiger in the past.)
Also RAM on my iMac is the default that Apple shipped it with (2x 800MHz non-ecc 512MB so-dimms.)

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