Graphic artefacts.

[Supergoal]

My pc this morning started to screw up. Up until then it was fine with regard to the graphics card.

It boots up fine and loads up the OS fine but when I start a video or game I get all weird errors on screen. There's no system crash as I can Ctl Alt Del out of the game and it's still running in the background.

I've not changed drivers, installed new hardware or software nor overclocked anything.

Could this be a bad case of dust?
My graphics card is about 9 months old as well

[briareos_kerensky]

Bad video RAM in the worst case scenario. Dusting off the GPU heatsink is worth a try.

[Supergoal]

Doesn't sound hopeful does it?
Seems like the life span of modern graphic cards is getting shorter by the year.

[abigsmurf]

Is the graphics card fan running?

Check the GPU temp when running a windowed game to see if that's the cause. Get speed fan and have a look at the voltages, if the 12V is massively off, your PSU is failing or losing capacity.

[Supergoal]

Right, I just took the graphic card out and blew compressed air through and a smeg load of dust flew out. Plugged it back in and did a quick run through the Witcher 2 and some HD videos. So far so good.

I'm assuming if the card was toast it would be consistent with on screen artifacts from the start would it not?

I hope this just means that I need to have better air circulation and a regular dusting session.

Thanks for the advice guys!