Artifacts on 3870 means shot memory on card?

[meadowlands]

Everything was working fine on my new build up until I started to play test TF2. After that, I get artifacts etc followed by "the device driver has stopped responding and recovered" then it goes back to normal. I do get artifacts as well while booting up sometimes and if I do I get the above error then everything goes back to normal.

 

[Onus]

What is your GPU temperature? Other system specs?

 

[meadowlands]

GPU temp is about 35c idle, 42c load.

Q6600
Vista 32 bit
Gigabyte p35 mobo
2 gb crucial ballistix ram
Rosewill SLI ready 550 watt ps

 

[leon2006]

Video artifacts is a common sign of bad memory...Should not see it in normal condition (Normal or Games)

Un-expected reboot is another HW related problem

 

[derek85]

How many watts is your PSU?

 

[derek85]

Nvmd, didn't see your 2nd post. It does sound like a gfx memory problem then. Either they are clocked beyond stock speed or are defective.

 

[h2oman]

This could very easily just be your video card drivers. I see you have vista which I have as well and for a while before I installed this latest round of drivers for my card I would have similiar issues (mine are Nvidia drivers) heck I couldn't even play some games at all on vista because of the video drivers however now I can without issue. One exception I have recently noticed is that I can still have issues and get the message you get if I allow vista to go into sleep mode or what ever it goes into when you leave it for an hour or so. When I try to game after that I usually have issues. A shut down and restart clear it and then no more issues. But vista definately still has sleep issues.

 

[meadowlands]

Everything is stock. Gonna try and under clock it to see if it fixes it. I'll swap it out for my 7800 and see if it happens with it. Most likely it will be an RMA and off to micro center for a 8800GT.

 

[Shadow703793]

That PSU is cr@p. get a top tire PSU listed here:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=108088