Anyone else have their card start artifacting randomly?

[imported_whatever]

I have a vmodded 9700 series card, that has an ATI Silencer on it (the copper ones). I have been running it without touching the cooling or vmod since late last year, and just last week, it started artifacting a LOT - even in 2D. I first tried turning down the clocks on it, fearing that it had lost some of its OCing ability. Nope, still really unstable. I then tried pulling off the HSF and replacing the thermal paste. Still no luck. Finally, I turned DOWN the vmod on it, and it stopped artifacting. For some reason, it had become a lot more sensitive to heat.
Any ideas what would have caused this? (the fins aren't clogged or anything)

 

[Washoe]

I have a question - what is artifacting? Can anyone describe it thanks

 

[rise]

artifacting is caused by heat resulting in video corrption, usually large triangular patterns.

OP, i'm not very familiar with vmods but when you say it is vmodded and you didn't touch it for a year, does that mean its modded to accept more voltage but you never used them?

sorry if thats a dumb question, just trying to understand the process.

 

[BFG10K]

Heat is only one of the many possible causes of artifacting.

 

[xtknight]

yes, my friend had this happen with his Radeon 9800 XT. It didn't artifact for 35 days straight or so, then it started getting bad and both his 2D/3D artifacted. I told him to turn his PC off for the night. Next morning it was fine. The temperature was at about 82C idle both times. I consider him lucky. This all happened when he was trying to set a computer uptime record for himself. His video card is fine to this day.

I think artifacting happens when the video RAM gets corrupted (from heat which is usually caused by unstable clock speed or voltage settings). Either that or the video RAM contained corrupt data beforehand. Can anyone clear this up for me?

 

[ScrewFace]

Artifacting happens when your memory core clock is to high. Usually when a GPU or CPU overheats your computer crashes and you must reboot. Also, a core clock that's to high will also crah your computer.