Strange sparkles on gtx 670

[Galdorf]

I have a customer that brought in his machine only during games he gets the strange sparkles the start as points and expand as octagons never seen anything like it before.
If the video card was defective usually the windows desktop would also be effected but it does not only in some game not all games?.

 

[Diggs]

Gaming is what really stresses a video card and is when you expect to see artifacts start showing up. Doesn't surprise me a static Windows desktop looks great. The card is not doing anything. Shaders aren't working, etc.... Gaming will max just about any GPU as frame rates continue to rise with the capabilities of the card.

 

[MDD1963]

Artifacts such as little tiny asterisks being seen are typical for memory overclocking to far, or, possibly just some tiny memory failure...; you can try underclocking the mem to see if it goes away, but, I'd be looking to see what the warranty is on the GPU in question!

 

[seedubya]

Try stressing it and see what happens.
Caveat: you might kill the GPU if it's already failing.

 

[Skyhooker]

A while back a friend I gamed with online reported what he described as "black snowflakes" while gaming, but only while gaming. I suspected overheating, and that's what it turned out to be. In this case, I think the replies above might be more on-target. First thing I'd check is the warranty - sounds like a good candidate for an RMA. If it's still in warranty, make sure you don't try any hardware repairs to the card itself. Even removing the heat sink & fans will be enough to invalidate the warranty, and most manufacturers put anti-tamper stickers on the screw heads of the heat sink.

 

[HCHTech]

Try stressing it and see what happens.
Caveat: you might kill the GPU if it's already failing.

Just had a card killed by a customer from this. Weird video artifacts was the original symptom, he googled graphics card test or something and downloaded Furmark. "It ran just fine and the temp was only 115!" Guess that was celsius (!). after a reboot, no video. Yup. One graphics card - check.

 

[TAPtech]

It would be a good idea to check the heatsink and fans. Also, double check to see if there is a driver/firmware update as sometimes they change the fan profiles.

I actually had that card in my CAD rig before I ponied up for a Quadro 4200. It barely got hot at all, always was very quiet. It had a huge radiator on it and two large diameter fans.