Is this artifacts or what?

[KuJaX]

Pictures say a thousand words.

I have a buddy that has three monitors in conjuntion with two ATI identical video cards. He recently has been getting blotches or green dots (pixels) in ~30 pixel clumps on his monitors along with text and other stuff disappearing, not being aligned, etc.

Could this be a video card issue such as artifacts within Windows or is it posible this is a software/virus type conflict? I would really like to help him out, but I also don't want to push him to a last resort of formatting and reinstalling everything (just in case that may not work). Any applications or anything you would recommend that I have him text?

 

[Mr.OppressoLiber]

Well go ahead and have him run a virus/spyware/malware scan to rule out those types of infections. If that doesn't work; uninstall and reinstall video drivers and use drivercleaner to make sure to get rid of all traces. Check and see what the cards temps are run at.

If you still have those artifacts it might be overheating or possibly the video memory is failing. If you have another video card to put in the machine to test I would do that to rule out any other hardware as the culprit.

p.s. I always like to think that formatting should always be a last resort. omg the pain of reinstalling everything.

 

[KuJaX]

Well go ahead and have him run a virus/spyware/malware scan to rule out those types of infections. If that doesn't work; uninstall and reinstall video drivers and use drivercleaner to make sure to get rid of all traces. Check and see what the cards temps are run at.

If you still have those artifacts it might be overheating or possibly the video memory is failing. If you have another video card to put in the machine to test I would do that to rule out any other hardware as the culprit.

p.s. I always like to think that formatting should always be a last resort. omg the pain of reinstalling everything.

What program would you use to check the video cards temp? Do you think this is definitely a video card issue? He hasn't changed the video card drivers and this started happening.

 

[drizzt81]

What program would you use to check the video cards temp? Do you think this is definitely a video card issue? He hasn't changed the video card drivers and this started happening.

atitool
systool
ati CCC
mbm
speedfan

 

[Mr.OppressoLiber]

I would bet that it is a video card problem. All those programs drizzt81 suggested would work great. You can also use ATITool to scan for artifacts which would also tell you if you have problems.