Question : Problem: Seeing dots when scrolling and randomly, screen "tearing" in game... video card failing?

I built my comp about 1 and 1/2 yrs ago and recently I have noticed screen tearing (not sure if im using that term correctly, but i see long lines and thin 2D geometric shapes occassionaly in WoW. Now my WoW is locking up as soon as I get into the game (even with the lowest graphic settings in game) I have done all that I can think of.  My roommate just went back home for the holidays so I dont have a video card or cables or monitors to swap out to find the problem by elimination.  Other than in WoW my computer runs well aside from small pixel lines and random "dead" looking pixels. So I updated my video drivers w/o any success.  The card has been working well with my comp for about 1.5 years so I did not think flashing the bios would make a difference.  I used DXDiag and everything checked out fine... I am at my wits end and not sure if there are other free tests I can use to see if my graphics card is failing.  

Thanks

Answer : Problem: Seeing dots when scrolling and randomly, screen "tearing" in game... video card failing?

not sure ...... it was only after we replaced all the other stuff that dell realised that it might be the CPU, was strange because it worked most of the time, but would go crazy when playing wow or other games - I guess when it was stressed.

Luckily it was still under warranty so I didnt have to pay for the parts.

In your case I would definitely try swapping out the vid card etc to try to isolate the problem before buying replacement parts.

You can get some utilities to measure the CPU temp from inside windows, I think alot of motherboard diagnostic utils have this feature otherwise "sisoft sandra" is a good program for it.