Is my 7900gt on its way out?

[Mojo3k70]

Well, a few days ago I started to recieve a few minor artifacts (black shards / checkerboard patterns) in a few of my active games (WoW, Fear, C&C 3 and even speckles in Diablo 2). As a result, I started to fiddle with drivers and even went through with a total reinstall of windows (reformat). This seemed to have cleared the problem for a limited amount of time, but the artifacts returned. I have monitored my temps constantly, and at no point does the gpu go over 68C (even when using rthdribl demo).

What is also odd, is that when I tab out of a game bfriefly that is artifacting, It will clear it up for a set amount of time (10 -30 min) then return to its previous glitched state.

I should also note that I can see spots and miscolored speckles in my bios and boot screen.

Card again is a BFG 7900gt Pci -e

Edit: my system specs are as follows:
Asus A8N sli se
BFG 7900gt pcie @stock
Athlon x2 3800+ 939 @ stock
1.5 gigs Kingston value mem
Enermax 535w

Here are a few shots I have taken to illustrate my issue:

 

[digital_exhaust]

That looks like a card preparing to die.. at least that's what it looks like to me....

 

[repoman0]

Yes, get ready to RMA. A good way to make sure is to underclock the card 100MHz or so on the core and memory and the artifacts should take longer to appear or go away.

 

[jkrafcik]

This is a known issue with a lot of 7900 GTs. I had the same problem with my evga 7900 GT. You can Google around for it, but the bottom line is you have to RMA. Short-term fixes include adding cooling or underclocking. Long-term, the car will be dead in 3D and if I recall correctly also 2D.

After I RMA'd my card, this issue has not yet returned. I received a refurb of a different board revision, so I am not sure if the issue was with the board or the GPU. I hope the problem does not reappear.