All games causing glitches, bluescreens and crashes - damaged video card?

I was playing Left 4 Dead 2 earlier today and had to leave for a few hours. I left it running paused and went out.

I came back about 4 hours later and it had minimized for some reason. So I full-screened it and the game was glitched to hell, not responding, graphics unviewable and stuff.

I assumed it was simply because it had been minimized and then maximized and so I rebooted and tried again.

It started Windows fine and then Steam and then the game, but it crashed and suffered horrific graphics glitches once the game was started.

Curious if this was a Left 4 Dead 2 issue, I tried Plants VS Zombies and the same thing happened (not exactly the same, but after playing a level for a few minutes, the screen develops lines and a tearing effect, text disappears and is replaced with gobbledygook).

Even more curious if this was some kind of malfunction with Steam, I then tried a non-steam game I hadn't tried for quite a while (Earth 2150 to be exact) and once the game loaded and I was in a skirmish map, the game glitched out - patches of ground went weird colours and patterns and the screen kept flickering.

My display seems to work fine as long as I'm not in a game. Also, I highly doubt this is a driver issue since all my games worked fine before I left and then they suddenly don't.

I'm not sure how to tell, but does this mean my graphics card is gubbed? If it isn't, what else could be the problem? I've already re-installed my graphics drivers and I've checked I've got the latest version of DirectX but nothing works.

 

Your card could be overheating. Is it a laptop, or desktop? I would check for dust in the heatsink of the video card if it is a desktop, (go ahead and check the other heatsinks while you are in there). Clean them out, start the computer, and make sure the fan on the video card is spinning (if it has one.)

If that does not help, you might have a Hardware issue, post the specs of your computer, and problems in that Forum.

 

I would agree with fred it sound like over heating or try cleaning your tempory files and freeing up space as some of my games glitch when i am low on hard drive space.

 

Well I got a new card and all the problems went away. My old card, when checked, had quite a bit of caked-in dust which I brushed away with a wee brush, but after I cleaned it out, it still had the same problems.

On the brighter side, my new card is much better, plus I had an excuse to replace my power supply.