Is my 4850 fried? (pictures inside)

[soggychicken]

I bought a Diamond HD4850 last week. It works great overall, but I am getting little graphical glitches that makes me think there's something wrong with the card.


The Problem:

Some textures in Bioshock and Team Fortress 2 has this weird green static pixel effect over it. It occurs infrequently but is very noticible when it does. For example, it would only happen to player models in TF2 in certain rooms on the map. These locations remain consistent even after restarting the game or joining a different server. I suspect the pattern appears when the card is trying to draw a certain kind of effects. These two screen shots shows the problem well:



Besides the static, there are also one or two places where textures flicker. Again the places remain consistent. There are always certain walls or doors that flicker when I get close to them either in the game or as a floating spectator.


What I have ruled out:

- Temperature: CCC and Speedfan says that my card doesn't get above 65 degrees C. when under load. My system and CPU temperatures are also pretty normal. I don't think this is a thermal issue as the problem happens right away after I start the game and doesn't get worse the longer that I play.

- Power: Check my system stats below. I don't think that I am underpowered at all. I am not doing any OC on my system either.

- Drivers: I have tried the latest 8.8 Catalyst as well as 8.7 and the hotfix. As far as I know, those are the only versions that support the 4000 series. I haven't tried the Omega drivers yet.

- Game Bug: I spent the whole night googling but I couldn't find anyone with a similar problem as I do.

- Artifact Check: I ran the artifact checker tool in ATItool but it shows no error after 10 minutes.

Although the problem is not that bad right now, I am worried that it's caused by a bad memory unit on the card. I want to get some opinions from you guys before I RMA it. Speaking of which, is it more worthwhile to try and get a refund from the retailer (shipping and restocking fee) or talk with Diamond and get it repaired / replaced? Is there another diagnostic program beside atitools that I should try to replicate the problem?


System:
Intel Duo Core E8500 with stock cooling
ASUS P5Q Pro
2x2gb OCZ DDR2 1600
Diamond HD4850
Corsair TX650W (52A 12v rail)

 

[Cerulean]

I'm wanting to think that perhaps some sort of developer debug command is enabled?

If not, that's probably a memory/core artifact. But even then I'm a bit unsure of this. :\

 

[Wolfkin]

That's the type of artifacts you'd get when the card (GPU?) is clocked to high. If you run at stock clocks return it to the shop.

 

[purgatory]

Red, Blue or Green artifacts like that are from your cards memory. Underclock it and see if they go away, if their still present RMA it.