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help, i'm getting visual artifacts

D

dson

n00b
Joined
Feb 15, 2009
Messages
55
I have a GTX280 about half a year old and I'm starting to get visual artifacts whenever I play some semi graphic intense games. Once I get the artifacts, my computer will crash and I'm forced to manually restart. The video card was getting pretty hot so I took my side panel out and tried to fan it with a small house fan and lowered the graphics, hoping that would fix things. I'm guessing it did for a while until it got to the point where I got artifacts when I started the game. After my usual manual restart, I got the artifacts again just as soon as things were loading on the desktop.

This was yesterday. I tried turning on the computer again just now and it seems fine so far. I don't want to try running any games though. I'm not tech-savvy as most of you though so could anyone give me any advice on what to do? Could it be caused my something else other than the video card?

The idle temperature of the graphics card is about 50 C and when I play games it can get to the 80s.

Edit: I just ran 3DMarks. Not sure if it helps though. Here are the results:
3DMark Score
15572 3DMarks
SM 2.0 Score
6053
SM 3.0 Score
6978
CPU Score
4985

OS Microsoft Windows Vista
CPU Intel Core i7-920 Processor
CPU Speed 2678 MHz
GPU NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280
Memory 6144 MB
 
Last edited:
80c really isn't hot for a video card.

but usually that artifacting is caused by a video card going south.

happen to have another one floating around, or you could borrow, to plug in to your system to test?
or know somebody that has a system you could test your card in?
 
dson said:
Would it matter if a friend's computer has an ATI card?
Click to expand...

Uninstall the Nvidia drivers, shut down, replace card with friends, boot, add drivers, test system. As mentioned artifacting generally means the card is on its way out.
 
just wondering are you overclocked at all? if so try resetting it back to stock and see what happends.
 
Thanks for all the replies so far. I'll be heading back home for winter break so I will be able to test if the video card's faulty then.

I don't have anything overclocked either.
 
I RMA'd the card and got another card back on New Year's Eve. Just today, I got visual artifacts again... Is it another faulty video card or could it possible be due to something else? I don't know anymore. Any help or thoughts would be greatly appreciated. I'm thinking about going through the whole process over again...
 
go with the RMA process again then if it still gives artifacts then put that thing in the oven :D
 
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