I honestly do not remember. But the driver crashes are the same on all three.

This card has been the least "stable" in my system out of all three, if I could I would go back to my original watercooled card as it didn't have coil noise or high frequency whines/chirping. I refuse to use the GTX 285 as the noise is so loud and irritating I can hear it over music, the air conditioner, and even the TV.

NVIDIA uses the cheapest components possible on their PCBs to offset their higher silicon costs, starting by removing the digital VRM to save more on production costs... they have cut way to far. All they seem capable of building are crappy PCB designs anymore. Not even the GTX 480 uses a digital VRM I believe.

Because of those artifacts, I guess we cannot say that isn't something wrong with the video card too.

The next step would be to test this video card into another computer for a longer period of time in FAH for example, or simply borrow another video card to see if the problems manifests itself again. All the symptoms point now to the video card as being the problem.

I used my old Q6600 based computer to test the card in when I first received it because of all the problems I was having with it.

The video card works fine in it, which was the only reason I did not RMA the card as bad. I tested it with an hour of Furmark and it passed, tested it folding@home and it worked fine.

When it comes to computer equipment, I hate enigmas...

There seems that is a whole website dedicated to this problem : http://www.nvlddmkm.com/

Do you also have other cards installed into the computer?

Nope, I keep it simple with just one card. Not that it's helped anything... ;)

Very interesting link! That website never turned up in my googling, curious. I'll give it a good read through.

Anything to help!

I read through the suggestions, unfortunately most were not applicable (Vista specific patches, or mobile-specific NVIDIA power software). I don't have any tuners or other hardware, just a basic video card.

Tried stock speeds, screen flickered then the driver crashed again. I don't know what to do, I've switched each of the hardware components already. This problem is specific to this computer in some way as the cards work in a non-Core i7 PC.

Edit:

Working on a theory. There are quite a few accomplished overclockers here... about how likely is it that two Core i7 CPUs won't have a fully stable Uncore at 3,200MHz? I can verify the uncore is unstable at or somewhere above 3,600MHz.... as I run 1600Mhz memory it's one of the few common factors I've not explored. Are there any tests that would actually show uncore instability? Again the system passes Linx/Prime, so I don't know. But I am seriously running out of options here...

Edit2: Still getting the crashes at stock 2666Mhz uncore... that driver version ya recommended is really unstable, usually it takes a few hours to a few days for it to crash before I'd know...

I have a hunch.... I've never replaced the Dell DVI cable that came with the monitor. Anyone think that might be it? ;)

Not really...I guess best bet is to try with other video card, from a friend or from a store.

your PC crashing because of VGA cable? Never heard of that before;)