Those members in the Northern Hemisphere have probably not seen this issue yet as they are in Winter, however those like me in the Souther Hemisphere are seeing a new type of Video Hardware Issue!
If you have a relatively new Motherboard AND a PCEI Video Card you need to be aware of the GPU overheat issue that is now imerging most on an Installation where we demand the greatest prolonged demands of the entire PC.
Whilst most all newish Motherboards take good car of the CPU temps there is a new emerging issue.
The GPU in your PCIE Video Card may well overheat during install or other prolonged demand of your Video Cards.
The issue is further complicated by some new BIOS’s having the ability to ramp up the GPU but take no notice of its temperature and up-clocking may be the default in you system BIOS.
If your PC is not in a controlled temperature environment you may well see GPU overheat which starts to corrupt the Video and has implication on the total operation of your PC.
If you suspect some type of overheat issue with your Hardware don’t always blame the CPU Frequency Management and Cooling Policy.
It may well be that your BIOS is enabled to up the clock of your Video GPU with devastating system wide issues.
Make sure you Hardware case is very well equipped to change the total volume of air within the whole case, via multiple cooling fans. If you are running a Quad64/Dual64/Dual32/Quad32 CPU you are already creating a great deal of heat within your PC case.
Even with a purpose Video driver a PCIE card can and will overheat under normal non GPU frequency and particularly if you BIOS default is to permit overclocking of your GPU.
The first type examples of GPU overheat may include freezing of the display, changing the display palette and an install only configuring you PCIE card at poor resolution and poor colour depth - In some situations SAX may fail in starting an X server.
I suppose the moral of the story is that we all need to keep a more careful watch over the TOTAL; cooling policy of your hardware.