Is my GTX 280 on its way out?

[CaptainFail!]

Hey guys, just after some views on these screenshots I've taken whilst playing BF3. I have a feeling my trusty GTX 280 may be dying

I'm not sure if the card is artifacting or if it's just a glitch in the game to be honest! Can anyone offer any opinions? In the last screenshot it shows a massive glitch which flickered and disappeared when walking towards it.

Card temperatures seem fine as it never goes above 85 degrees (these cards get pretty toasty I've read!). I don't really want to buy a new card as I want to wait for the next lot of new ones!

Any comments would be appreciated!

 

[CaptainFail!]

Give Furmark a run for about 3 minutes you will know if there any artifacts then.

I played BF3 again last night for a couple of hours and it was fine, I'll give Furmark a go and see what happens.

Had the same problems with mine, does yours only happen when you look a certain direction??

And as i recall for me only happened on 64player caspian, and usually starts after about 20 mins of playing,
One thing i didn't try is if your on win 7 drop your desktop apperance to the lowest possible settings this will free up vram or you can alter the bf3 config file to do this for you when you start the game, may work as the 280 is limited with its memory on this game. If this does not work try downclocking slightly.

The first time it happened (the first two screenshots) they seemed to follow the centre of the screen when I moved around. In the last one it disappeared when I walked or turned away from it. I've got a feeling it could be my drivers or just the game.

I have noticed when playing BF3 the memory usage is close to hitting the 1GB limit. I'll try playing on 64 player later and see if it happens again!

 

[CaptainFail!]

Is it overclocked?
My old 270 did that if I overclocked the ram too much.

Yep it's overclocked but nothing too silly (680 core, 1425 shader and 1200 memory). I've had it at these settings for about 2 years with no issues so far, until now obviously!

The drivers I'm using are the current 301.42 which I've been using for a while, it's been within the last 2 weeks I've noticed the card doing this. Could just be a sign the card is on its way out as I seem to remember these cards weren't the most reliable but mine seems to have lasted well considering.

I think I'll just run the card until new cards are released as I need to upgrade at some point anyway as it's the only thing letting my new system down now! I'm also planning on getting a 27" monitor too which I think will be a bit much for this card.