Getting artifacts in games. Bad card, or overheating?

[bamacre]

Spec's...

Pent D 930
2GB Corsair VS DDR2 533
Gigabyte NF4 SLI board (forgot which)
256MB 7900 GT (91.47 drivers)

Getting stuff like this in COD2 and FEAR

Temp (taken right after COD2 play)

Those are pretty much the only higher-end games I have played lately. I don't get them when I play TFC (HL1 mod).

I've been running this system for a while, and this did not begin until a couple of weeks ago. Has my card gone bad, or do I have some over-heating going on?

 

[CKXP]

Are you OCing your 7900GT?, if so back down on the clocks, also if you have Rivatuner, use it's hardware monitoring to check your temps while in play...your temps can easily drop several degrees within seconds once you exit to desktop.

 

[flexy]

how savvy are you with the card ? can you measure temps *in* game ?

I would apply Arctic Silver on the core and reapply the heatsink....but that's kinda involved.

 

[bamacre]

Originally posted by: CKXP
Are you OCing your 7900GT?, if so back down on the clocks, also if you have Rivatuner, use it's hardware monitoring to check your temps while in play...your temps can easily drop several degrees within seconds once you exit to desktop.

Card as well as everything else is at stock speeds. I'll check out RivaTuner and re-check the temps.

Originally posted by: flexy
how savvy are you with the card ? can you measure temps *in* game ?

I would apply Arctic Silver on the core and reapply the heatsink....but that's kinda involved.

I won't do that. I'm never tried messing with the HSF on a video card, and really don't want to start.

 

[ethebubbeth]

The same thing started happening on my 7800gt after about six months of use...

The card was at stock speeds and would never overclock 1mhz on core or memory and remain stable. I think I was sold a lemon that couldn't even handle stock speeds properly.

Eventually, after about a year, the card would have random stuttering and frequent lockups. It finally died, going to bluescreens on startup. Thankfully it died 2 days BEFORE the warranty was up >_<).

No clue what exactly is wrong with your 7900, but those were the same kind of artifacts I was getting on my card.