What are the signs of a video card going bad?

A friend of mine is having problems playing cod2. He gets weird graphic anomalies. Does this mean his card is going bad?

 

What sort of anomalies do you mean? Can you be more specific?

If it happens in other 3D games and in regular Windows then that is a possibilty. Has he tried adjusting the video settings in CoD2? Try downloading the latest drivers as well.

 

If it's just playing COD2 (and other graphics intensive games) then it is possible the graphics card is going bad (overheating cards often result in on screen 'artifacts'). Normal windows use shouldn't cause it unless the card is really messed up as this won't cause the card to overheat.

I suggest downloading Everest from this site, playing COD2 until they start, closingthe game and looking at the temperature of the GPU as a start.

Finally if the card has been overclocked then it is much more likely that it's overheating so stop overclocking or turn it down a bit and hopefully you can catch it before the card is toast.