How to tell if my graphics card is broken?

[Cleeecooo]

I have a 6970, 2 weeks old and all of a sudden, it stops in a game and the game stutters, lags and crashes. Then, the fan goes to 100% and i have to end all my games in task manager. Also, in many of my games, if i walk into light, the whole screen lights up as if someone is shining a torch at me from inside the screen (don't know if that makes any sense) and these are problems i have NEVER had before. Is there any way to tell for CERTAIN as i don't want to be without my card for too long.

Thanks

 

[Cleeecooo]

so what exactly do i do?

 

[Cleeecooo]

I have a tJ07 and there is nothing restricting the airflow

 

[Cleeecooo]

OK. 60 degrees idle. give e a couple of mins and i'll have a look at in game temps. How exactly do i monitor the temps whilst gaming?

 

[Cleeecooo]

managed to et idle tems down by putting fans to 100% for a while but temps went straight up again

 

[Cleeecooo]

removed all overclocks and drivers and am now getting new drivers off AMD site. Anything else i should be doing?

 

[Cleeecooo]

Won't reseating cooler void my warranty?

 

[Cleeecooo]

How do i monitor my temps in games though? i want to be sure the card's faulty before RMA'ing it

 

[Cleeecooo]

ok. downloading afterburner. will come back in 1 hr after testing all temps and doing some benchmarks

 

[Cleeecooo]

my findings so far:
HAWX: 74degrees
20-33 FPS

Flight sim X: 72 degrees
10-24FPS

What do you think. Any other games i should try? I will be back with some more data

 

[Cleeecooo]

Alien swarm
75-80 degrees
59-60FPS

 

[Cleeecooo]

unigine heaven:
Started at 65 degrees and kept climbing until it levelled off at 79 degrees.
7/8FPS but sometimes went to 20

 

[Cleeecooo]

3DMark 11 basic
80 degrees throughout
15FPS - then the program stopped working on the final GPU test

 

[Cleeecooo]

So can anyone tell me if my card is broken and whether or not i can RMA it for these reasons?

 

[Cleeecooo]

Current idle temps are between 50-60 degrees but are more around the 60's.

 

[Cleeecooo]

The idle temp is way too high, should be around 40c from what I've read, but strangely the load temps aren't excessive. However those game Fps seem very low and the heaven score should be way higher than that, see the Heaven thread for 6970 scores.

I'll try the benchmark again because my idle temps have now gone down to 36.

EDIT: Just checked temps again and they are 50. Is this an OK idle temp?

 

[Cleeecooo]

I use chrome. core clock 880 mem 1375. Actual are between 880/275 and 880 250 respectively. Current idle temp is 55.