How bad is a bulging cap on a video card?

[Tiger-Heli]

I bought a refurb Powercolor ATI Radeon 7000 64Mb DDR video card from www.newegg.com.

Having some driver issues, but otherwise the card works great for what I got it for (mostly 2D text and Train Simulator).

However, one of the capacitors on the card seemed to be bulging a little bit.  Not split open, but not flat across the top either, and this concerns me.

Also, unlike my refurb mobo which never looked like it had come out of the box before, this was just a bare card in a white box which makes me wonder if someone else had problems with it and sent it back.

I have a week to decide whether to keep it or send it back for a full refund.  Any advice?

Also, if I exchange it, any idea how much difference the 64M DDR makes with Microsoft Train Simulator or similar games?  Would a Radeon 7000 32M DDR be much worse?  I previously tried a 16M TNT2 and 32M Geforce 2 GTS with this game, and they didn't work nearly as well as the new card does.

Thoughts?

P.S. - Driver issues - I can change the refresh rate on the card, but the refresh rate on the monitor doesn't change.  The driver wanted Direct X 9 and I only have 8.1, though.  Also ATI's site said this could be a problem with older monitors and XP or 2000, but I'm running 98SE.

[Ken Layton]

If it's bulging then it's going to fail soon. It may have been subjected to a power supply problem before, too.

[SirPeale]

Yep!  Send it back for replacement.  The same thing happened to my motherboard.  Now my baby is dead.

I upgraded to an Asus A7N8X, and it won't boot XP.  A few people on the hardware groups seem to think it's my power supply.  Strange that I can run Linux on it just fine (I am now) but XP crashes on load.  But what they say makes sense.  Even though I've got a 400W PS, it's only got 12A on the 12V side, and should really have 16-18A.

[tom61]

Yeah, 'refurb' on New Egg usually (almost always) means 'returned'. I presume they tested the card at least (check; it works).