Graphics card problems, artifacts on a 4850

[stash9876]

My roommate just set up his new system and is getting some artifacts that look kinda like snow when he tries to run Starcraft II. I read around a little and it looks like most of the time this is caused by an overheating card or just a dead card. The weird thing is he's encountering this problem on Starcraft's menu screen so it's not like he's in an actual game making the card work hard and overheat. It also seems to work fine on the desktop and browsing the web if that makes any difference. Any ideas on what could be causing this problem or what he should be looking at to find a solution?

 

[buwish]

Is the card brand new or has it been used before in a previous system?

 

[jsc]

The first step in solving a problem is to know where it is.

Monitor the card's temperature. Then try it in another computer with SC and do what you can to drive the temps up to or a little past the original computer. That will tell you if the problem is the card or the computer.

Right now, you don't know if the problem is the card or the computer. Granted, it's probably the card. But you don't know.

 

[wa1]

Check the card temps first with HW monitor or GPU-Z, it possibly an overheating.
Make sure the card is free from dust and re-apply the thermal paste could help a lot.
Tried the other games as well?

 

[stash9876]

It's a brand new card, hasn't been used before. It was odd because the problem seemed to go away for a little while but then it came back again just the other day. I'll have him check the temps to see if that's the cause.