Live CD Not Working

[Tee Jay Rosene]

I'm trying to see how 6.10 will work on my machine, but when I put the
CD in the drive, the Ubuntu splash screen looks all weird (sort of
desaturated and blotchy) and then everything just freezes as soon as the
Ubuntu splash screen becomes "normal" looking. When I boot back into XP,
however, things are peachy (well, relatively peachy, considering I'm
running XP!) 
Anyhow, I have a feeling this might be because I have a pretty high-tech
ATI graphics card, an after market add-on. 
Is there a solution to this dilemma? Even more importantly, if there is
a solution, will said solution cause damage to the hardware? 
I have an AMD 64 bit chip, 3800+. Not to make my life too complicated at
the moment, I've decided to boot using the 32 bit Live CD instead of the
64 bit; the reason is that I've heard there are some media issues
(codecs, etc.) when people try to go 64 bit. 
Nonetheless, maybe I should try the 64 bit route? Maybe the problems I'm
having stem from booting a 32 bit CD on a machine capable of 64? 
Originally, my machine came with an Nvidia card, but I subsequently
upgraded to an ATI for better gaming, etc. Maybe there's something in
this that's also causing the problem of booting the LiveCD?