EXTREME videocard artifacting

[Beerdude26]

Too lazy to take pictures, but my new nVidia 6800 GS (by Point Of View) (3 days old) is starting to artifact like crazy.
The temperature was around 70-75° C, but it played Oblivion for hours on end without any problems whatsoever.

Then I go play Call Of Duty 2 on everything high (except resolution (1152X864)). After some time it starts artifacting slightly (little white dots that appear randomly on screen) and then suddenly it starts breaking up the textures of the British tanks D:

I went back to play Oblivion, and it had it too. I then took off the side hatch from my comp, which lowered the temperature to 60° C when it's rendering Oblivion, but after some time it STILL starts to artifact D:

Do I need better cooling or is the card simply teh suck?

EDIT: Hasn't done this in Empires (HL2 mod) btw

 

[ComradeBadger]

Has it always been 70-75 degrees?

 

[The Brick]

70+ is like ehm.. HOT

If taking a side pannel of causes a 15 degrees drop, you have a serious cooling problem.

 

[skarrob]

Might be bad card or fan on card.

 

[Beerdude26]

Yeah, I'm going to buy a ZALMAN fan. By keeping it open, the artifacting has stopped for the most part, but I doubt that even that little artifacting is good for my card. :|

 

[3ssence]

A card shouldn't even be artifacting at 60-65 degrees. In fact, most cards can take over 70 before they'll start to artefact.

:\

Personally i'd rma the card and get a replacement, sound like this card could be on its way out if it keeps up the artefacting at 60-65 degrees.

 

[ComradeBadger]

If it started out at 70 Degrees DEFINATELY RMA it.

 

[Laivasse]

Dunno if this is connected or not, but I only started overclocking my old Radeon 9800 SE recently. When I did that, Oblivion started to corrupt and artifact like mad after a short time. Having turned the overclock off, it still does it. Maybe an Oblivion specific issue?

 

[ComradeBadger]

Try letting the card cool down. 9800SEs can be very tempremental, especially if they're softmodded.

 

[3ssence]

In some cases, once a card has been overclocked and has begun artefacting, due to overheating/over-ambitious overclocking, the card may become damaged and may not revert back to normal once the overclock has been removed.