Video card (7800GT) problem (I think)

[Matt_Smi]

This is an issue that has been going on for a while now. Look at the links below to see pictures of what my computer will do once it has been playing a game for a few minutes, after it gets to this point if I quickly close out I will be fine, other wise the computer will lock up and reboot itself. It seemed like this 7800GT worked fine for around three months, then I didn’t play games on my computer for a while so it hard to pinpoint when it started. But when it first started happening I noticed my temps were pretty high, for I figured it might be overheating and bought an aftermarket Zalman cooler. Everything was fine for a few days, I was playing games for 2 hours with no artifacts or lockups and thought the problem was solved.

But it started to get progressively worse again, first after maybe a half hour of gameplay, now I am lucky if I can play a game for two mins before it goes crazy. I have tried several different drivers, older and newer and have the same issue. I would like to try hooking up another power supply to see if that fixes it, but I doubt it will. My system is dead stable otherwise, I never have random lock ups, crashes, or BSOD, only issues when gaming so I am pretty sure it is the graphics card itself. I am hesitant to RMA it because on the evga forums there are many stories of people getting a card back that has other issues worse than their original problem. But take a lot at the pictures, do you think anything else could be causing this?

http://memimage.cardomain.net/member_images/7/web/439000-439999/439698_163_full.jpg
http://memimage.cardomain.net/member_images/7/web/439000-439999/439698_164_full.jpg
http://memimage.cardomain.net/member_images/7/web/439000-439999/439698_165_full.jpg

[glc]

It's still overheating or the GPU is damaged.

[Matt_Smi]

It's still overheating or the GPU is damaged.

I am pretty sure the temps are normal now, it’s at around 110 F idle and hits around 150 F under full load. Before it was 130 F idle and as high as 175 F under load, I was told on the evga forums these temps are normal for this card and it should not be an issue, but I still got the new heat sink anyway. Also the game will start artifacting within a few minutes of game play before the card even hits 135 F so I guess I have a defective card. I suppose I will try my luck with an RMA, but if I get a defective one I will prob just buy a whole new card. You dont think this could be caused by my power supply not giving it enough juice?