8600gts help

my card seems to be runnign hot 55C. is this good or bad im using speed fan to monitor everything.

idle. its always at 55C accodring to speed fan, and nvidia monitor.

stock cooler and it always at 55C at load at idle and them soemtime it goes reall hot whiel running games

I'd say anything under 85C for graphics cards is fine, especially if you have a SLI/Crossfire Setup.

it hovered around 77C and highest was 79C but it errored for the 20 seconds getting all these bright yellow cubes somethign similiar to what i get wen playing stalker

Could you post a screenshot of this error you're talking about?
From the sounds of it, it might be artifacting, but you're description is not really clear.
80C doesn't seem exceptionally high for a graphics card, though.

That's called an artifact. It means you video card can't handle the clock speeds or it's overheating. I'd say it can't handle the clock speeds, so lower the settings down a bit. If you lower it below stock settings and the problem disappears, RMA the card.

Uh, running that program is exactly what you are doing, overclocking it. That program steadily overclocks your GPU. You watch it and when it starts artifacting like it's doing, the program has pushed your GPU beyond it's limit.
Do you not see that the core speed of your GPU is overclocked in that snapshot to 824Mhz, and the default core speed is supposed to be 720?

Is the card overclocked when you're gaming as well? Is ATItool always on when you're playing?
If so, end ATItool. That should bring back your speeds back to stock.

You can also underclock the core back to stock (720Mhz) by simply bringing down the sliders accordingly then clicking "set clock", if you want to keep ATItool open.

jlpilkey - By the looks of your screen shot you've got a core overclock of 104 Mhz. That is probably why those boxes are appearing. You have pushed your card too high and simply need to back off a bit.

You can have Atitool find your highest overclock which is the easiest way to overclock. Let Atitool overclock until you see artifacts then lower the Mhz of your overclock and test for 10 minutes. If there are no artifacts then you are done. If artifacts appear then back the OC off more until there are no artifacts after 10 minutes of testing.

You can do the same with the memory as well, since according to your screen, you are just OC the core right now. When you are done OC the core then try OC'ing the memory.

If you find artifacts appearing at stock speeds then you should RMA your card because there is something wrong.

ok no more artifacts no i get slight graphics glitchs and game crashed on me. and i cnat return my card i lost my reciet and voided the warranty by loosing the box also

Probably driver issues. Did you install the latest patches for the game and the latest driver for the video card?

You are either overclocking too much or you are having heat issues.

824 core is pretty high.

i reset everythign to stock setting i still have problemes im really confused by whats happening

that my plan im bringing it to get looked at tongiht