Artifacts in game.

[zax]

Hello everyone, this is going to be a lengthy post so just sit tight. It's going to be very detailed.

The first paragraph will explain the problem that I had about 5-10 months ago that was very closely related the the one I am having now.

About 5-10 months ago I was experiencing problems with my computer, I was receiving artifacts (texture ripping, small blue and yellow lines appearing all over my screen) in World of Warcraft. It was VERY small, you could hardly notice it at first. About a week passed and then it got very bad. To the point I couldn't even do anything in the game because the textures were stretching across the screen. Me and my dad quickly went to work and tried to figure out what the problem was. We ended up figuring out that the graphics card fan on my PC was not working properly, and the thermal paste (glue that doesn't try, transfers heat from the graphics card to the metal piece surrounding the fan that the fan then cools off) was burnt off basically. This was a result from me leaving my computer on ALL the time, shutting it down maybe once a week, maybe even longer. I stupid move on my part. So we bought a new fan, a Zalman. The one with the copper blades surrounding the fan. And got thermal paste with it and set everything back to where it then began working properly.


I have now been shutting my computer off every night, and shutting it off usually when I leave the house. Everything has been working perfectly, and as it should be.

Just this morning I turned my computer on and everything looked fine. I got on firefox to check my mail and I immediately saw yellow lines going all over my screen in rows. Which I knew from experience was artifacts. What I did first was just turn my computer off. I started it up and what I saw first was the windows logo with the little loading icon. I noticed I had artifacts on the windows logo as well. Even when I left my computer off for a long period it still did this. So my reaction to this was that this couldn't be the graphics card overheating could it? I told my dad and this and we started the computer in safe mode and deleted all the drivers. Then started it up normally and reinstalled them. Worked FINE! I thought we had it fixed. I went updated adaware/spypot and scanned with both. They didn't find much. I started to defrag my computer and I got a txt from someone to check my mail so I did so and then closed it out and shortly after that the artifacts appeared.


So whats going on here? I am completely lost at this point. Right now I think the graphics card is just shot. It's a Radeon 9800 pro. Had it for 3-4+ years.

I need some opinions on what also this could be.

Thanks in advance!