Is this due to overheating, a faulty video card? Artifacting?

I've been trying to fix this for quite some time. It wasn't so bad finishing the single-player campaign (I would just save frequently), but it's gotten really annoying playing online.

I read online reviews for the videocard I got and they mention something about artifacting that occurs due to the card overheating. "Red ants" was what someone called it. When I contacted tech support, I was told that the card could handle temperatures of around 80 and the game, being so old, couldn't push the card that hot.

So I downloaded RivaTuner and setup a profile to adjust the fan speed depending on the temperature, and still the same problem.

Any ideas what I can do? Any help appreciated.

If the card was clocked too high it could have caused damage regardless of the temperatures. Before saying it is faulty though. I would open up your case and clean it out and re-seat the card.

If you don't mind me asking what video card is it?

This one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150254

Also, here are some of the product reviews on Newegg. Am I encountering the same problem?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16814150254&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&Pagesize=10&SelectedRating=2&PurchaseMark=&VideoOnlyMark=False

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16814150254&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&Pagesize=10&SelectedRating=3&PurchaseMark=&VideoOnlyMark=False

Other Thoughts: thanks to other readers who had similar issues and posted work arounds for the situation. found temps were 90 c after a few minutes of gaming and 60 at idle. set fan speed through riva tuner and now they stay around 60 during gaming and no crashes. to the other guy i agree the product should not recieve exceelent scores when major problems exist on the card. making my pc artifact then restart every 10 minutes i consider major.

nine

I would follow this guys advice and just set it at 60-75% while gaming at all times, not just when it gets to a certain temp. By that time it may already be getting too hot, and once it does the artifacts probably won't go away until you exit the game. If that doesn't solve it, RMA that crap. It's a pre-oc version so it's perfectly plausible for it not to be stable, especially if you've permanently damaged it from overheating, which could be likely since you were saying it happened so often. XFX has an awesome warranty, so use it if the fan doesn't help.

Here this should be a simple test:

Download and install ATI tool: http://www.download3k.com/Install-W1zzard-ATITool.html

Open it up and hit the "scan for artifacts" button. This will do a stress test on your video card. It will have a timer that goes until it detects an artifact, and reset the timer if it does. You should be able to go through at least 5 minutes without it resetting. If it just starts detecting artifacts like crazy and resetting the timer every couple of seconds, you'll know it's overheating, or not stable to begin with. It also has a gpu temp monitor built in so you can see that too.

Cool, but does it matter that the software is for ATI and I have a Nvidia card?

Would you say that it's definitely a GPU issue? Or can it be case of bad RAM or anything else that doesn't involve the video card?

Doing what I said to test for artifacts is fine with a Nvidia card, I would not use ATI tool to overclock though, at least not using the find max buttons. Rivatuner is better imo.

It looks like a video card issue to me. If it were ram or cpu, the game or your computer would just crash or freeze most likely. Does this happen in other games though?

It's funny, I've only encountered this problem (artifacting) in Dawn of War, Company of Heroes, and the stability test in Nvidia's Ntune. I haven't encountered (yet) in Team Fortress 2, Half Life 2, or World in Conflict (I haven't played more than an hour of World in Conflict though).

I had a little trouble in running the ATI artifacting test, but it finally let me. Things were going well until 9 minutes and 6 seconds. I see a tiny off color spec/pixel in the picture and the computer just crashed. CTRL-ALT-DEL doesn't seem to do anything. The temp on the card steadily rose and stopped at around 69-70. I was told by the XFX rep that the card should handle 80 with no problems. Eventually, the computer just rebooted on it's own after about 10 minutes.

Does this confirm that it DEFINITELY is a video card issue. XFX advertises that they have a lifetime warranty on this card, so if it is video card issue I think I'm due a new card (hopefully). Unfortunately, I'm not the only one and it seems others have just sold it on Ebay or scrapped it altogether. And, they had far worse issues than mine; they couldn't play hardly any games without the system crashing.

I think I'll just purchase another video card from Best Buy to make sure it's the video card, just to be sure. Dumb question, even if I get another brand of 8800 GT, do I still need to reinstall all the drivers?

It's funny, I've only encountered this problem (artifacting) in Dawn of War, Company of Heroes, and the stability test in Nvidia's Ntune. I haven't encountered (yet) in Team Fortress 2, Half Life 2, or World in Conflict (I haven't played more than an hour of World in Conflict though).

I had a little trouble in running the ATI artifacting test, but it finally let me. Things were going well until 9 minutes and 6 seconds. I see a tiny off color spec/pixel in the picture and the computer just crashed. CTRL-ALT-DEL doesn't seem to do anything. The temp on the card steadily rose and stopped at around 69-70. I was told by the XFX rep that the card should handle 80 with no problems. Eventually, the computer just rebooted on it's own after about 10 minutes.

Does this confirm that it DEFINITELY is a video card issue. XFX advertises that they have a lifetime warranty on this card, so if it is video card issue I think I'm due a new card (hopefully). Unfortunately, I'm not the only one and it seems others have just sold it on Ebay or scrapped it altogether. And, they had far worse issues than mine; they couldn't play hardly any games without the system crashing.

I think I'll just purchase another video card from Best Buy to make sure it's the video card, just to be sure. Dumb question, even if I get another brand of 8800 GT, do I still need to reinstall all the drivers?

Gorf_basic

Wait your computer just rebooted for no reason after 9 minutes? It might be a CPU issue as well then, not only is your card overheating your CPU maybe as well. Are your fans offering enough air flow inside the case?

his computer locked up because of the vid card over heated. How long have you had the card? I would suggest you just RMA the card and get a new replacement.

It seems like you never even overclocked it too since u dont know about ati tools and you just downloaded rivatuner to adjust the fan speeds. You should be able to have fine working vid card at stock speeds.

Hmm, I wish I could RMA it, but it's already been 30 days and I don't think Newegg would take it back. Still haven't heard from XFX about the lifetime warranty, but I have yet to press the matter with them. It's disappointing the games I'm really into right now are the ones that cause it to crash, but it could be far worse. The card's not DOA at least.

I think I'm going to try to reduce the clock speeds. It's the overclocked edition and I read in the Newegg customer reviews that that is probably the reason the card is crashing. I believe the stock speed for a 8800 GT is just 600, but the one got came at 670.

Can anyone provide a good link on overclocking for noobs? Can I just use Riva Tuner? I guess I can look online, but I don't want ot learn about overclocking and changing your clock speed from A to Z, I just want to find out how to safely reduce the clock speed (speeds? more than one to adjust?) for my graphics card.