Graphics Card Starting To Have Issues...

[westy159]

I have had my Geforce 6800XT 128mb AGP since Xmas 05. It has served me very well although with games such as Oblivion it is starting to show its age. And I do not just mean with handling the graphics, the card is having issues with Anti-Aliasing. Oblivion will not play for longer than 2 mintues with AA enabled and other games such as Hitman show parts of the screen in darkness. Is this a sign of coming death? I was planning to not upgrade this computer but build a new one once DX10 and Vista became the main line stuff.

Card is normally 8 pixel pipelines, 4 vertex shaders, 325Mhz core, 700Mhz memory. I use to have it at 12 pixel pipelines, 6 vertex shaders, 350Mhz core, 800Mhz memory but decided to put it all back to stock except the vertex shaders, have not tried that at the normal yet.

[Doono]

have you cleaned the card fans recently? because it sounds like its just over heating. The darkening is more of a sign of a failing monitor than a failing graphics card.