Gtx 480 issue or Crysis being buggy ?

Had a glitch in Crysis running on a gtx 480, and
Wanted some opinions on whether it is the card failing
Or simply the game glitching.

This gtx 480 was bought 1-3-2011 and replaced another
Gtx480 that was bought earlier the same day but was defective.

I was in the level Recovery, in the big swamp after you climb
The cliffs next to the waterfall.
I died in a firefight with several Korean soldiers, and pressed fire
To load the last save.
When I reloaded I was in an area of the map I had not seen yet.
I went to the load menu and reloaded a save from when I first
Reached the waterfall (after you kill the 2 tanks).

The waterfall area looked completely normal except that the water falling
Down the cliff was not being rendered. I could see the rocks behind where
The falling water should be, all the surrounding vegetation was there, there
Was just no water coming over the cliff.
The water in the river leading to the waterfall appeared to be rendering properly.
I didn’t see any image corruption, missing textures or odd colored dots, artifacts
Or any other sign of video card hardware trouble.

I reloaded the save several times, with the same result – no water in the waterfall.
Finally I quit the game and rebooted it.
When I reloaded the save this time the waterfall was normal.

I am running XP Home, I5 760, 4 gigs ram and pny gtx 480.
Cpu and Gpu are at stock speeds.
I am also running the hi-resolution foliage mod, and very high
Effects for XP mod.

The card displays a minor artifact a few seconds after the XP boot logo appears
When the pc is booting. It is 3 pixels, blue, white and red right next to the XP logo.
It happens at the exact same during boot, every boot,
I tested the card with ATI Tool scan for artifacts mod for 10 minutes and got no errors.
I also let Furmark run for 5 mins or so and got no artifacts.

So does this sound like a hardware problem or just Crysis being buggy?
It is worth noting that I have put several hours into Crysis on this card before
Last night with no issues.

I already had to exchange the first gtx 480 I bought because of severe screen corruption
On the desktop when windows booted, and would rather not go through the hassle again.