I just bought a new Visiontek Radeon 4850. Everything works fine except that I get a significant amount of screwed up geometry in all games and other artifacting. I'm thinking it might be from the heat because it runs quite hot (82C last time I checked). I already update my motherboard and bios.

Specs are as follows

Intel Core2 Cpu 4400
Asrock 4coredual-sata2
2.00 g of ddr2 ram
audigy sound card

I don't know if the card is defective, incompatible with my computer or something else. I would appreciate any help you can give me.

its probably a defective card because if its at stock it shouldn't be artifacting... and the 4850s can and do get that hot

What PSU are you using?

a brand new 500 watt antec PSU, model EA-500

Not sure if there is a huge problem with VisionTek HD4850 cards but my first HD4850 was a VisionTek and it was dead out of the box.

Sent it back and now have had good luck with PowerColor Hd4850 so far. (a little over a week).

Couls also be a driver issue (ATI starts with some terrible/buggy drivers) or as feared it could be due to overheating (causing a "Partial crash" ). But if new drivers don't fix the issue, then it probably is a defective card.

my 4850 has random color dots in crysis after i game alot. my house it hot tho. get this cooler.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6835118037

im not sure, try to run atitool and scan for artifics. the heat shouldnt be a problem. coz it meant to handle it.

High Temperature is definitely a problem. 1 of my HD4870 was failed after I worked in Linux a long while without Catalyst support (so I cannot increase the fan speed to higher speed).

Did you speed up the VGA card cooling fan speed? There was a post to teach for modify Catalyst Overdrive Profile for higher Fan speed of stock HD4850 VGA cooling fan to avoid high temperature.

The 48XX series should have excellent thermal properties and be able to handle temps of 85C

This is the reason why:
The 38XX series was fabricated on what was known as A11 Silicone.

The 48XX uses the new and improved A12 Silicone which has a dramatically higher heat tolerance.

If a 38XX series card ran at 85C it would probably burn it up.

ATI clocked the RV770 cards hot because they knew the new A12 Silicone could handle it.

If your card is artifacting out of the box just call Visiontek. They have a lifetime warranty on their cards and should be able to replace it with out a problem. Sounds to me like you just got a defective chip.

Make sure you are using the 8.7 (not the hotfix) drivers and set your fan speed to 40% or higher. Here is one of many posts describing how this is done. As easy as creating a CCC Profile and changing 2 fields with notepad. Fan speed from Auto to Manual and Want from whatever it is to what ever you want it to be. Save the .xls file and reload the profile from CCC. Use GPU-Z to make sure the fan speed has been changed and your temps have been lowered.

Is your card overclocked? I run into the same corrupted geometry issue when I try and overclock my RAM to far. If the above dose not work, try lowering the RAM speeds in the CCC and see if your problem goes away. If it dose, it will be time to RMA.

If it's artifacting it could be the drivers, but unlikely, and don't bother with changing the heatsink fan, if it's artifacting on the stock cooler then send it back.

Defective cards happen, but you shouldn't have to add aftermarket cooling regardless of the chips ability to handle higher temps.

I got a different visiontek radeon hd 4850 and it does the exact same thing. I tried the drivers without the hotfix and atitool doesn't work with this card.

heats problem. really common problem in 4800 series

That's disburbing. I thought Visiontek was a good brand.

I would buy elsewhere. HIS, MSI, Sapphire

Get something like this:

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php? [...] &Itemid=65

That ought to keep it cool.

Look for more Non-Reference coolers like this to be coming out this week and next