BSOD, artifacting in BIOS

[itsgrandpa]

Win 7 64-bit
4870 sapphire vapor-x
920 D0
1TB caviar black
6GB RAM
850HX Corsair
P6T v2
Antec 902

I've had this build for almost 2 years now. This is the first time I've ever had any issues within 2 months. None of the hardware is OC'd and all are properly cooled.
All fans are running properly and the GPU was at 53C

So the problem first occured when playing SCII a couple days ago. I had a freeze, then switched to my desktop. After a few seconds of me alt-tabbing back in. It switched over for a couple seconds then froze. It later BSOD and automatically restarted. But in the BIOS it was still artifacting. It attempted to run windows 7 in normal mode but it BSOD and automatically restarted with artifacts in the BIOS.
I accepted safe mode. and the artifacts remained. I manually restarted and the artifacts disappeared. I updated my gfx card to the latest driver. Yet this did not affect the issue as it would artifact then freeze within a few seconds.
I checked the updated CCC and i ran 'tests at clocked speeds. Regardless of what I selected, it would continue to fail after a few seconds.

Unfortunately I believe my video card is giving up. Anyone know any reason why that would occur?
I would apprecaite if anyone would have any suggestions to resolving this without the purchase of another GPU since I do not have the financial ability at the moment.

 

[photonboy]

It does sound like your video card is failing.

Why? It's a complicated piece of hardware with many parts. Some cards fail before others.

To confirm you need to swap parts. The easies way is to place that card into another machine.

Unless it's simply your video card fan, you probably are out of luck.

If you do purchase a new card I highly recommend the Asus GTX560 Ti DCII.

 

[photonboy]

You should also run Memtest regardless of whether your video card is the problem:
http://www.memtest.org/#downiso

 

[photonboy]

You could attempt to remount the heatsink for the video card. I know it's a Vapor-X model so I don't know if that's possible or not.

Anyway, make sure to verify that it's the graphics card first.

I suppose you could try blowing a LOT of cool air over the card using a normal house fan to see if that helps. If it doesn't, it may not be a cooling problem and if so that's unfixable by you (it could be a capacitor for example).

 

[oxxfatelostxxo]

Best thing is to test what you can out first. Run memtest as suggested above. Though usually memory errors cause crashes and hangs. never seen artifacting, but ya never know.

If you or a friend has a computer you can use, try swapping the graphics card in to see if results are similar., or even more so try swapping in another card of similar or slightly higher power draw into your computer and see if it still happens.

I would also check to see if your card is under warranty. might save you some money.

 

[itsgrandpa]

So i kept the computer off for the night and it booted up just fine. This happened yesterday until I started to play SCII.




Here are some pictures of what I was getting yesterday.

When I boot up..



After a good clean reboot, all will be fine, then right before my system crashes it will start to pixelize.




edit:
Ran GPU-Z
then checked my clock through CCC, it ran for about 20 seconds then spent 1 minute black screened with the pointer showing it was 'busy'.

So far, it seems that my system is running just fine without gaming at the moment.


I just finished running memtest for a little over 12 hours, unless i was suppose to modify something, all seems fine.

My system crashes in the lobby, about 10-20 seconds after I've logged into my SCII account.
The readings in the above post , you can see that my gfx card temps are 42-47C, the highest being the memory. [I left the case open]

I'm considering picking it apart as I don't have the funds for a new gfx card any time soon.

 

[davcon]

Ugh! that's terrible!
Download GPU-Z to see what's going on temperature wise.

 

[itsgrandpa]

I get this windows report when I do successfully boot into windows. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks guys.

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033

Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: 116
BCP1: FFFFFA8007798010
BCP2: FFFFF8800400740C
BCP3: 0000000000000000
BCP4: 0000000000000002
OS Version: 6_1_7600
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 256_1

Files that help describe the problem:
C:\Windows\Minidump\042511-23602-01.dmp
C:\Users\Beamer\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-35942-0.sysdata.xml

Read our privacy statement online:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=104288&clcid=0x0409

If the online privacy statement is not available, please read our privacy statement offline:
C:\Windows\system32\en-US\erofflps.txt


===========================================


edit:
I think my gfx card is overheating. All the fans are work just fine.
Here's the set up
<a href="http://imgur.com/H6TqN" title="Hosted by imgur.com">http://imgur.com/H6TqN.jpg</a>

I first tested all the fans on blast: had a small house fan centered on the card. A small 80mm fan sat between the Vram and cooled the top side of the GPU. The gpu fan was set to 100%.
temps sat around 50C
I lowered the gpu fan to 40% and temps raised to high 50's, low 60's.
I lowered the house fan to the lowest setting and within 10 minutes, my computer crashed.

I should note that I cleaned my computer of dust about 3 weeks ago. I noticed a lot of caking on my GPU, I took the plastic shroud off and was able to clean about 80% of the dust out.

Here is my computer idling with all fans on 100% with the exception of the GPU fan at 40%.

Anyone have any suggestions?