For the last couple of days I'm seeing strange artifacts on my PC. You'll easily spot them on the screenshots. They appear all of a sudden while doing nothing special on the desktop and they go away when I reboot. Happens about once or twice a day. If I start LFS after the artifacting has started it looks like on screenshot 2. It hasn't actually happened while playing LFS though, so it's not GPU temp related.

Anyone seen this before? My GPU's broken, right?

Screenshots:

corrupted drivers? you tried reinstalling or updating to the latest drivers for the video card?

Not yet, no. I'll try drivercleaner next. Will take a couple of days before I can confirm if it did anything though.

Quote from J.B. :

Not yet, no. I'll try drivercleaner next. Will take a couple of days before I can confirm if it did anything though.

try updating the drivers and also blow all of the dust out of your PC, your GPU could be overheating

Quote from J.B. :

Not yet, no. I'll try drivercleaner next. Will take a couple of days before I can confirm if it did anything though.

Only took 5 minutes: I just got artifacting when there wasn't even a driver installed, with the standard Windows driver.

Quote from Ku-sama :

try updating the drivers and also blow all of the dust out of your PC, your GPU could be overheating

Already done that, temp is 60°C, which is very low for a 6600 GT.

Time to check the warranty, methinks.

and installing windows again ?? if you still have that problems after that then is your gpu dieing :P

Quote from LightStar :

and installing windows again ?? if you still have that problems after that then is your gpu dieing :P

I don't think it has anything to do with Windows. But if the card is broken (which it seems), you can try to fix it - as stupid as it sounds - with a hot air gun! You have to be quite careful though, because you just want to melt the tin on joldering joints a bit, not fry the whole card.

But there's really nothing to lose, man. You either get it working or not.

Does anyone think that these kind of artifacts could be caused by faulty RAM? I removed a stick and haven't had any problems since.

frokki:
What exactly would I be trying to fix by heating up the card with a hot air gun?

Quote from J.B. :

Does anyone think that these kind of artifacts could be caused by faulty RAM? I removed a stick and haven't had any problems since.

Everytime I have had problems with bad RAM my computer has usually refused to boot. Blue screen of death.

You could (if you dare to put the RAM back) run some memory tests to see if it really was the ram that was faulty. I'll grab a link in a sec...

EDIT: linky http://www.memtest86.com/

Quote from J.B. :

frokki:
What exactly would I be trying to fix by heating up the card with a hot air gun?

When graphics card overheats (on long term), the tin on the soldering joints may melt a little, causing a "cold joint" (dunno if that's the right term in english) or if one existed from the factory, making it worse, that may distract electricity flow. When appearing of those artifacts is random (like you have), this may well be the cause. Melting the tin again with a gun may fix the cold joints. 250°C should be enough. Remeber to cool the card carefully though.

edit: I don't think it's RAM either, it shouldn't cause problems like that.

Well two things:

-The artifacts still haven't reappeared since I removed one of the RAM sticks.
-The RAM I removed does indeed fail memtest!

So by the looks of it these artefacts were caused bay faulty RAM. I wouldn't have thought this to be possible myself. Thanks for the help guys, if anything new happens I'll report.

Are you sure it's the stick and not the slot on the mainboard that's causing trouble? I'd try to switch slots and restest, just to be safe.

I replaced the faulty RAM this morning and just finished a league race without any problems so, yes, I'm pretty sure now that it really was the RAM. Thx for the hint though.

.....

DAMMIT! Just while I was writing this post the artifacts came back! ****in PC's! How the hell am I going to find out what the problem is! I'm gonna do another memtest right now and if it doesn't fail I'm getting rid of the GPU.

sorry to be the spoil sport but. Demo racer on AS3?

He IS licenced, thrust me.

J.B. is known to have an S2 account, he just doesn't sign in with it.

And for the hundredth time, stop accusing demo racers when they show licensed content (that goes at everyone). Ask how they got it but not from the stance that you're expecting them to be a cracker, it just doesn't seem polite or keep the forum tidy. When any evidence comes up, report the post and don't type anything (nor fill a thread with flaming bananas). Forum members could at least treat the matter somewhat professionaly.

This is getting ridiculous. I let memtest run on my brand new RAM and it failed at 5 passes out of 11 after running for about 6 hours. I think the the only reasonable assumption for me to make at the moment is that both my RAM and GPU are broken. I guess I need to return my "el cheapo" RAM again and pay more some more to get RAM that actually works at it's specified clock rate and replace my GPU while I'm at it. This is really annoying me and I don't understand why there is no software that can automatically tell me which part of my hardware exactly is failing!

Well I'll report on how this issue continues and thanks to the people in this thread who didn't convict me of being some kind of cracker/hacker just because of the specifics of my forum account. BTW, how did you know I raced at AS3?

Quote from J.B. :

BTW, how did you know I raced at AS3?

Look again at that image you attached in the first post, J.B.

Quote from Bob Smith :

Look again at that image you attached in the first post, J.B.

lol, that's track knowledge!

Quote from J.B. :

This is getting ridiculous. I let memtest run on my brand new RAM and it failed at 5 passes out of 11 after running for about 6 hours. I think the the only reasonable assumption for me to make at the moment is that both my RAM and GPU are broken. I guess I need to return my "el cheapo" RAM again and pay more some more to get RAM that actually works at it's specified clock rate and replace my GPU while I'm at it. This is really annoying me and I don't understand why there is no software that can automatically tell me which part of my hardware exactly is failing!

Try different memory slots. Maybe your old RAM was fine, and the mainboard is just having problems with one or more slots.

Quote from J.B. :

lol, that's track knowledge!

Perhaps you still haven't spotted the minimap in the corner.

Quote from Bob Smith :

Perhaps you still haven't spotted the minimap in the corner.

*me hides, ashamed

Few tips I found when I googled this:
- check if the fan on the GPU is spinning. If it is not spinning the core may still be at 60C but the memory may be a lot higher
- check your ram settings:

Quote from http://www.computing.net/cpus/wwwboard/forum/12996.html :

n some case, artifact in video card is not only caused by high temperature, but also releates to RAM timing too slow, not enough voltage to operate at such frequency or even damaged graphic card. My suggestion would be try to lower ur frequency in 10Mhz step until u reach to the point where no artifacts display on the screen...

Notice that he is talking about the RAm speed on the GPU. Basically he is talking about overclocked GPUs so if you haven't touched the GPU speed settings there should be no reason to tweak these
- is the psu ok?

Good suggestions, I think Fan, RAM clock and PSU are OK. I'm now using an older 6200 GPU and will wait for about a week to see if the artifacts are gone.

Often you can cure memtest errors by changing the RAM timings in the bios. They don't cause huge slowdown, but going from cas2 to cas3, or putting some other latencies from whatever they are to a few clicks higher can do wonders.

Most gfx cards have at least a 2 year warranty so there might still be warranty on your card.