7900 GT XXX edition Artifacts

[stiffhardy]

Hi guys,

Woot first post n00b!:icon_tiphat:

Anyways, I have had my 7900 gt for around 20 months now, in the last month or so I have noticed while playing COD4 and pretty much any other 3d app my card has started to display artifacts and tears across the screen.
I have tried the card in a friends Pc with the exact same results. Its temp seems to be pretty good- GPU at 46 when idle and no more than 60 when the problems occur. I have never overclocked the card past its already factory OC'd state.
I have read that these particular factory OC'd cards have been known to have problems?

Cheers

[Scott]

Sounds like you may want to take the card out and blow the dirt out of the fan. It may also be a bad memory chip. But make sure the fan is cleaned out good. You may try down clocking the RAM a little also to see if that helps.

[stiffhardy]

Yeah, first thing I did was check the fan. Down clocking it seems to help a little- it takes longer for it to start artifacting and its not quite as bad.

[stiffhardy]

Any ideas? How do you go about RMA from outside the US? (New Zealand)
Soz for the double post.