hmm another thing...

i looked at that driverheaven review and realized something...
in a screenshot of the review you can see the thermometer and the overdrive gauge... when overdrive is off, the gauge reads zero
now on MY video card... the overdrive gauge is at 100% ALL THE TIME... it seems to be running at max overclocking even when the overdrive checkbox is OFF (mostly is)
this could very well be what's causing my somewhat brand new card to overheat
this is VERY weird... im gonna get to the bottom of this...