Getting artifacting weeks after overclocking and going back to stock

[merxthis]

Hi guys,

About a month ago now I bought a Galaxy (KFA2 here in UK) 660 TI 3Gb OC. It comes with Xtreme Tuner. I did however download the beta Xtreme Tuner from the Galaxy website on seeing Hardocp website using it.

http://www.kfa2.com/GTX660_ti_exoc_3gb_x.shtml

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/08/21/galaxy_geforce_gtx_660_ti_gc_3gb_overclocking_review

For 2 weeks I didnt overclock. Then 2 weeks and 1 day ago (I checked the modified date on the XT download) I did.

I tried overclocking the memory, then the core, then both at the same time to try and improve my performance in Skyrim. However it seems more CPU bound than I thought, and its my i3 that is struggling.

I kept a close eye on temperatures, and never played the game for more than a 10 minute stretch (mainly sub 5 minutes as I walked around Solitude and Whiterun). Temps never hit above 50C.

So, upon seeing it was CPU bound, I decided to go back to stock settings. (I cant remember if I did a quick run of Battlefield 3, if I did, no longer than 15 minutes)

Anyway, it wasnt massivley overclocked. Maybe 80-100 on core and 300ish on memory. Not even close to the 800 on memory like the hardocp and other sites got the same card to.

To summarize: No faults, artifacts or high temperatures at all during the what was no more than 1 hour of trying to overclock. Realising I need a new processor I set everything back to stock where it has sat ever since.
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SINCE THEN, I have played about 15 hours of Fallout 3 with High res Textures and graphical mods. About 6 hours of Natural Selection 2. 10 hours of Skyrim. 15ish hours of Starcraft 2. 5 hours of Oblivion with High Res textures/graphical mods.

Thats 51 hours of gaming. In the event of me overestimating, its certainly no less than 40 hours of gaming.


All without incident.

Then tonight, when playing Starcraft 2, any Terran Ore refinery had massive triangular artifacting flashing across the screen. I tried to capture it in screenshots but it doesn't seem to have shown up. Happened in the second of 2 games and did not repeat when I watched back the replay straight after.

I havnt played any games since because its nearly 6am!

I am using the latest WHQL Nvidia drivers.

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So what I want to know is this:

a) If damage had been done, I would have seen something before now or not?

b) Should these problems continue (I will update tomorrow when I have stress tested it futher) can I return to manufacturer? Will they know I overclocked? Even if they did, could it just be a faulty board?

c) Could this just be a one off?

Many thanks for any replies in advance.

Cheers
merx

 

[rdc85]

Try to tune down the O.C. to stock see if there is still had artifact...

it will answer your question, if it fine at stock setting (default factory O.C.) then mostly u cannot return the card... (the card is fine and working as it intended too)

for third, u must know that each card different one from each other some will hit good O.C. some cannot O.C. at all (artifact usually because bad memory O.c.)

 

[merxthis]

Try to tune down the O.C. to stock see if there is still had artifact...

it will answer your question, if it fine at stock setting (default factory O.C.) then mostly u cannot return the card... (the card is fine and working as it intended too)

for third, u must know that each card different one from each other some will hit good O.C. some cannot O.C. at all (artifact usually because bad memory O.c.)

Thanks for your reply.

To be clear: This artifacting happened at stock settings. It has been at stock settings for 2 weeks.

 

[rdc85]

Since it also happen in stock setting, and only happen with starcraft my suspicion goes to driver issue...

If u can try to roll back to old drivers or try the one that came with the card (for testing purpose / rule out driver issue)

 

[abbadon_34]

I wouldn't see this as a problem until it pops up elsewhere, or at least more random.