"Chipped" PCI-E pins causing artifacting?

[Red Hawk]

I've been experiencing light artifacting in several games on my new 7870 at stock clock speeds, most notably in Skyrim. I'm considering RMAing the card, though I can't do so immediately. I pulled the card out of my system to have a look at it, and I noticed that a couple of the PCI-E pins seemed "chipped" --

The chipped pins are not lined up. Could these be the source of the artifacting?

 

[Viper GTS]

Completely normal.

Another example:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/PCI-Express-graphics-board.jpg

Viper GTS

 

[notty22]

It's normal. TPU reviewed that card. They have HI REZ pics of the front and back of the card. They are a match to yours.
front, back

 

[Red Hawk]

Ah, ok. So that can't be the cause, thanks. Anyone have any idea of what's causing the artifacting and how I might remedy it without RMAing the card?

 

[KingFatty]

Does the artifacting correspond to high temps? Maybe your GPU or something else is getting hot? Check the temps, and see if they are high. Maybe you can remove the heatsink, and re-apply the thermal paste?

 

[Red Hawk]

I have checked the temps using MSI Afterburner, the artifacting occurs anywhere between 40 and 60 degrees celsius immediately after starting the games. The artifacting also still occurs if I underclock the core and memory by 10%.

 

[peonyu]

I have checked the temps using MSI Afterburner, the artifacting occurs anywhere between 40 and 60 degrees celsius immediately after starting the games. The artifacting also still occurs if I underclock the core and memory by 10%.

Artifacting as in dots, messed up textures, or do you mean the screen moving all over the place ? Skyrim has some issues out of the box with some system configs, I have seen the "screen going crazy" bug a few times and at first thought it was my card [not saying your card is fine mind you]. It turned out it was the game and I had to do some googling to fix it.

Have you tried other games or apps to verify the issue ? Even a simple app like Furmark will help you to know if its the card or not.