Graphics Card Failure

[Martonias]

Hello,

I have recently been experiencing problems with my graphics card. When I boot my comp, it loads into windows fine, but after about 30 seconds my display goes gray or blue and I need to reboot.
Note that I have not given the system a "cooling down" time, and have just been rebooting it repeatedly.

Specs:
965 BE @ 3.9GHz w. Venomous-X
8GB DDR3 Corsair RAM @13XX
Asus M4A89TDPRO/USB3.0
500 GB WD HDD
DVD Drive
750 Watt Zalman PSU
Sapphire 5870 Vapor-x OC Edition

I had been fiddling with my graphics card clocks recently, and I accidentally set my effective memory speed to 1250 MHz instead of 5000MHz. The system instantly crashed, but then everything was fine on reboot, and had been for the last couple of days. I have not been doing anything graphics-intensive, just some Portal 2 and HoN/LoL.

Any advice would be appreciated, and I would be very disappointed if this proves to be a persistent video card problem as I cannot afford another card any time soon.

 

[shin0bi272]

did you reset the video card to stock speeds and/or check to make sure its running at them now?

Not that this is your problem or anything but I was playing counter strike source about 3 or 4 years ago (not too terribly graphic intensive) and my screen locked up on me all of a sudden it went green and pixelated and I was like crap there goes my gfx card! Turns out it was my power supply that went bad... If you can swap out either of those things try that and see if it fixes it.

 

[Martonias]

I do not think it is the PSU, as it is very new, less than 4 months old. The GPU is currently at 900MHz, and the VRAM at 5000MHz effective.

I tried to boot it today after elaving it off for the night, but the problem persists. I am now thinking it could have been the RAM or CPU, because the night it occured I was changing the fans on my CPU cooler and I was bumping the RAM etc. It may be the RAM, because it happens just after everything loads up after I login. The thing that lead me to believe it was my graphics card was because when it happens it sometimes get lines on the screen, but far more often the screen goes black (screen is still showing input). I booted in safe mode, and the error did not occur. Any more ideas out there?

All my parts are <6 months old, with my graphics card being the oldest component at approx. 7 months old.

 

[Martonias]

An update, I can boot into safe mode with networking and watch youtube videos. I think watching youtube videos is more stressful than looking at Windows on 1080P. Thus, I conclude that it is not a physical problem with my graphics card. I also checked inside the case to see if anything was out of order, but nothing was. I am starting to wonder if it is a program that boots on start-up that kills the PC. At the moment, (I'm on it at the moment in safe mode typing this) my RAM usage is about 800MB, but normally it is around 1.5GB. I wonder if there is a "bad section" in the RAM or some such.

Again, any advice will be appreciated.

OK, so I booted my comp normally............and it is fine. I'm downloading the latest catalyst driver (11.4). However, my TrndMicro internet security constantly says "Starting your protection..." normailly it finishes"Starting" within 10 seconds of boot-up.