Graphic Anomalies
 

I have:

Core 2 Duo
Asus P5 Mobo
2 x 2GB G.Skill RAM
XFX GTX 285 PCI-E
Creative SB Fatal1ty Platinum
Corsair TX750 PSU

Recently I've been seeing graphical anomalies, namely green dots and sometimes waves of green dots when I play 3D games (I can see a few green dots even on the desktop).

The graphics card was just put in 2-3 weeks ago, the RAM a few months before that, and so was the power supply.

I encountered this problem before when I ran the 8800 GTS but I assumed it was due to overheating because it was running into 50's during gameplay. I have improved cooling since and the anomalies went away until now. As I am typing this, Asus probe sees:

Vcore 1.14V
+3.3 3.26V
+5 5.07V
+12 12.09V
CPU 34*C
MB 33*C

I checked it again shortly after running a game and it was in the 40's.

And to top off the problems, it seems my sound stopped working. There are no sounds coming out of the speakers, but when I plug in the headphones into the front panel, I can hear fine.



Does this mean my mobo is gone? Is there anything else I should try before resorting to changing the mobo?

Sound like your video card is overheating. If any worst it could be dieing. Do you know which version of driver you use for your video card? I know one version can cause the video card fan not working properly. Try install evga precision. You can set your fan speed to a permanent level and provide better cooling. however, if you are happen to be using 197.13 driver. There is a bug in there that disable the auto fan speed up when your video card are heating up due to 3d application being use. I heard a lot of people had their card fried already due to that driver.

Same thing happened to one of my old video cards. It was dead. Upon visual inspection, it was clear why it died - Bulging capacitors AKA Capacitor Plague

Okay, I will check my driver version when I get home, but this happens even when I'm not running 3D games. I could be just finishing loading windows and I see a few green dots on the desktop flickering.

if thats the case then it is definitely a defective video card. You should be able to RMA it since xfx provide life time warranty.

I checked the driver version, it was at 196.21 and now I've updated to 197.13. Even before the update there were very few anomalies. The update didn't seem to make the problem go away. I'll monitor it some more to see what happens.

This still doesn't explain why my sound stopped working (except for front panel headphone jack). Coincidence?

The only connection I can think of between the two is mobo/CPU/RAM... Can those things cause graphic anomalies?