Artifacting or not?

[rustynator]

I have had no problems with my graphics card, since I bought it about 4 months ago. The other day I installed an nv silencer 5 on the card. I modified the cooler by cutting off the parts of the copper base of the silencer which covered the memory modules of the card. I then placed individual OCZ ramsinks on the memory modules along with some AS5. Everything seemed to be fine...benchmarks showed good scores and no artifacting....however when I play one particular server on the game trackmania nations, this is what the game shows up like:

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b236/rustynator/artifacts/Trackmaniaaftifacts.jpg

Is the black area a sign of artifacting?

The clock speeds on my eVGA 7800GT are at their default settings of 470/1100, and my core temps are 38 idle and 55 load, so I dont think OCing or the core is the problem. Do you think the memory is the problem? Are the ramsinks I installed insufficiently cooling the memory modules of the graphics, hence causing artifacting?

Could it possibly just be a problem with this particular server (I have never had anything like this on other servers/games/benchmarks) or a driver issue?

[rustynator]

Right....the problem is definitely not driver related as I have just installed the latest 84.21 nvidia drivers and that server is still the same as before.

I have tried 3DMark03/05/06 and non of those show any strange black shapes (as above) or any artifacting. The problem is only really on that particular server....all the other servers/tracks show no signs the black shapes.

Any ideas? Is this a problem with only this specific server, and not a graphics card related problem? Or am I going to have to rethink my memory cooling on the graphics card?

[Micketh]

why dont you try it at 400/1000 and see if it helps.