I have an EVGA 8800GT I bought, Open Box.

It's been working thus far, no troubles, playing 2 games I want with full settings. The Sims 2 and Myst 5. Not too graphically heavy apps.

Today, I turned on my PC, and started up the apps I normally use for downloading, (uTorrent and PeerGuardian 2). Aside from Avast being up, there was only the nVidia driver tray running on my computer, which is always normal to see in the system tray.

Turn off the monitor, go back to bed as this was early in the morning. Hear a system beep; the POST Successful single beep. Okay, it rebooted itself, no idea why. But Windows wouldn't start. And there were multi-coloured dots on the screen.

Reboot and see them on my BIOS screen, everywhere, multi-coloured dots. Finally boot into safe-mode, download the initial BIOS release for my motherboard, set it up, and still, nothing was fixed.

Like I said, this all started with a sporadic reboot, when no graphical apps were even open.

Any ideas? I did a Virus scan with Avast, and Ad-Ware scan with Ad-Aware. No spyware scan, SpyBot wouldn't work in safemode.

System Specs:
(All stock speeds)

Intel e8400 CPU (Recently replaced cooling fan with Thermaltake)

ASUS P5N-D Motherboard (Problem started when running latest BIOS, not resolved when reverting to original)

2 GB Kingston RAM (2*1GB Sticks)

Generic 500-Watt PSU (Still working from my previous machine, so I decided to use)

Seagate 500GB S-ATA HDD

nVidia 8800GT latest drivers (Open Box when bought, assured no problems)

And like I said, everything was fine last night. I'll try to get working on screenshot to see you, but the dots are Horizontal blocks or multi-coloured dots with spaces between each block.

Yes, your guess is spot on. This is called artifacting, and every instance I've seen of it has been caused by the video card. To test this theory, getting your hands on another video card as a cross reference would make for a nice, empirical test.

Okay, thank you!

Is there any chance at all that this could be anything else? Motherboard par chance? I'm honestly a bit nervous, this will be the second part I return from this build :\

Okay, uninstalled my nVidia driver, so now, no driver for my 8800GT. NOW it boots into XP fine, at a looow resolution, 800*600 (1650*1050 by default). I'm not changing it so I can maintain stability. The dots are still here.

Yeah, (obviously) the driver could explain any Windows issues you are having but is unable to effect what you see in your BIOS. So we know you definitely have a hardware issue.

Could it be the motherboard? Could it be the CPU? Could it be your RAM? You know, it could be anything. Considering everything done on your computer touches the motherboard, CPU and RAM in some way, it is probably not impossible. With these components as complex as they are and so interconnected, you could come up with some really far-fetched possibilities that are theoretically possible, yet so improbable they aren't worth considering.

So the answer is technically yes, but for all practical purposes, no. I'm sure things are clear as mud now.

Alright, you've really cleared a lot up Rick, thanks!

I'll be returning the card today or tomorrow, and probably picking up a NEW (Not Open Box) BFG or XFX 8800GT.

For interest's sake, here's a screen shot of a rather bad bout of the artifacts.

http://i321.photobucket.com/albums/n...untitled-1.jpg