Video card artifacts?

[Makkah]

I fell asleep the other day with Dragon Age at the death screen. Got up y-day morning and there are all kinds of red and green artifacts that keep popping up on the screen. Most application fade them away (like the PC... it's such a bright background, hardly any show up at all). Dragon Age still runs very well with very little artifacts in-game, but my desktop is ugly as shit. The pics we have rotating as our desktop are littered with the dots.

Is it safe to assume I semi-fried the video card and that is what is causing all of this?

[Ashlander]

Sounds like it though you may want to hook the monitor up to something else to be sure.

[subzero]

Some of the GeForce 500/600 series cards have been having a lot of issues with artifacting. I think a number of those problems are due to some driver kinks they haven't worked out yet. Not sure what you're using, obviously, but if you've got one of those newer GeForce cards, might be worth poking around their forums.

[Makkah]

ATI Radeon HD 5570

[mgoddess]

I agree with Ashlander... try hooking the computer up to a different monitor before you go messing with the video card, just in case.

[Inspire]

I was surprised it wasn't Nvidia, their cards always seem to crap out.

I would check your cabling, then another monitor. You may want to open up the box and spray out the dust bunnies too.

[Delias]

I was surprised it wasn't Nvidia, their cards always seem to crap out.

I would check your cabling, then another monitor. You may want to open up the box and spray out the dust bunnies too.

Funny, I hear the exact same thing about ATI. I primarily use ATI, for the record. Everyone has their favorites, and their real reasons are normally "because I'm used to them".

[Makkah]

Interestingly enough, the artifacts have all gone away. Must have just temporarily burned out the video card... i dunno. Thanks for all the responses.