6850 Artifacting
 

A co-worker of mine has a 6850 (I think it's an XFX) with a dual-fan cooler on it. After long sessions of gaming (BF3) he starts to get confetti-like artifacting.

This would be the card overheating, correct?

I told him to download MSI Afterburner and up the fan speed on his GPU. If that doesn't work, I told him to bring the card in and give it to me for an evening. I'll remove and repaste the heatsink, as well as do a thorough cleaning, then give it a good stress testing.

Any other insights? What else could cause artifacting like this. AFAIK it's stock clocked...

Check temps first,then tell him to update drivers,we never know... if it's stock clocks,i don't know why,but i know a few cards of a few brands that were said to artifact in BF3 for no reason...

Bought a 7970 recently. Suffered from what I thought was a bad core. Turned out to be bad drivers. Still not perfect. But close.

Right, I'll ask him to update his drivers to AMD's latest, too.

Just make sure because AMD has the crappiest install at times, that you use driver sweeper TWICE to ensure the garbage is removed before going to the latest and greatest.

-ST

Yeah, not sure he'll do that....He's not the most computer savvy person on the planet, unfortunately. He's a recent Xbox convert, and just wants a machine to play BF3 on.

I wouldn't be surprised if the card is over heating from the crappy default profiles most cards have along with I BET you anything he has little to no airflow in his case, meaning the stale/hot air is sticking around adding to the overheating.

Nah, his case actually has decent airflow.

He bought a new 7850 this evening. He doesn't think he has the receipt for the 6850, so he'll give it to me, and I'll take it apart and re paste it, stress test it, etc. and if I can salvage it he'll try selling it.

bake.

Could that seriously be a solution at this point? It's not even that old of a card...