Not all monitoring programs report everything correctly for every motherboard.  Please check with Nvidia System Tools as it is for these chipsets.  Post back the results.  If it still shows 117c blow out any dust in the system and try with the side panel off to confirm no air flow issues in the case.
 
If it is possible try the card in another system to rule out a card issue as well due to the artifacting and BSOD issues starting when installing the card.
 
If it still gets to 117c contact us at 888-881-384 24/7 or e-mail me at mattm@evga.com and we can review the warranty options.

Thanks for the tip. I installed nvidia system monitor and it shows my mobo temperature at 31 degress celcius, just like BIOS says. Looks like the third party tools were not detecting the mobo temperature properly. 100 degrees celcius is the boiling point of water....if my mobo was consistently operating at that temperature, I would think my entire system would have been fried a long time ago.
 
Considering the XFX GPU is the only new component I added to my PC in the last year, and that I am seeing artifacting, I am fairly certain it's the GPU that is the culprit for the BSOD. I made sure all my drivers were updated, latest BIOS, memtest, etc. The fact that all the AMD catalyst driver versions I've tried suck so bad (compared to my experience with nvidia drivers), does not help.
 
I also want to take this opportunity to thank EVGA for your top notch customer support. 4 years ago, I bought another EVGA mobo and discovered it had physical damage when I opened the box. The retailer I bought it from wouldn't accept returns or exchanges for open box items with physical damage, only units that are 'defective' (that policy still doesn't make any sense to me...). A friendly EVGA representative actually called me long distance (I am in Canada) to set up the RMA. Turn around time for sending and getting the mobo back was something like a week and a half. I hope you guys are still like that. Meanwhile, I can barely get XFX to acknowledge and respond to my support ticket. If I paid $10-20 more I could have gotten a comparable performance EVGA GPU and EVGA support....eh..
 
 

Yeah, I did clean un/installs of the drivers using Driver Sweeper. I also updated to the latest version drivers for the motherboard (chipset + LAN), Realtek audio driver, and even flashed the BIOS to the latest (http://forums.evga.com...?m=50031&mpage=1), memtest the RAM for 8 passes, Furmark to stress test the GPU (and could not reproduce the BSOD that way....), and got a power supply tester to make sure my PSU was not failing.
 
The funny thing is, the BSOD only happens after a long gaming session (30 - 45+ minutes, although sometimes I can go for more than an hour without the BSOD), and only with Skyrim. What's even funnier is that I recently removed the 'High Resolution Texture' DLC pack, and I haven't experienced a BSOD since. This leads me to suspect that VRAM is going bad. But since I am no expert I can't say for certain. Now I am trying to decide if I should RMA the GPU. The problem is I don't have another machine I can test the GPU in, or another comparable GPU I can test in this machine. :(
 
Someone told me it might be that the driver for the nForce VGA controller is too old and might be causing issues with catalyst drivers or my new GPU. Possible?
 

I have the crash dumps from the BSOD. The recurrent error is "VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE (116)
Attempt to reset the display driver and recover from timeout failed."
 
The fact that I am seeing artifacting before the BSOD is what led me to suspect bad VRAM. I only have Skyrim installed right now so it's the only 3D game that I've tested the new GPU with. I don't game that much so I don't have any other game that will stress my machine like Skyrim (maybe I can try GTAIV with ENB and see how that goes :) ).
 
I also spoke to soon about not seeing BSOD after removing the Hi-Res DLC pack. I have now experienced 2 of them, over the span of 2 days, but it's less frequent (after 3 - 4 hour sessions) than when I had the Hi-Res DLC (where I was seeing the BSOD several times a day, usually after 45 minutes). VRAM overheating would show a spike in temperature in MSI Afterburner, right? In my case, the GPU temperature never went above 66 degrees celcius (the fan was working extra hard though with the hi-res dlc), until just before the BSOD when the artifacting occurred (at which point it would spike slightly), and was normally around 60 degrees celcius.

I wanted to post back and thank everyone for their advice as well solicit more assistance, because I am still experiencing the BSODs during Skyrim. Here's what happened since the last time I posted:
 
- I RMAed the GPU to XFX. They tested it and said they found nothing wrong with the card, but sent me a replacement GPU anyway. After I installed the replacement GPU, I was still experiencing BSODs with the same 'TDRx116' error: FAILURE_BUCKET_ID:  X64_0x116_IMAGE_atikmpag.sys (it's always the same error).
 
- So I posted the Windows crash dump to a few sites where people would help diagnosed the issue, ran a bunch of log collectors and got some general suggestions. Nothing helped but they all suggested that I update my motherboard BIOS, to which I replied that I do have the latest BIOS for the EVGA 750i Sli FTW, even though it's from 2009. :(
 
But here's another thing that's funny: I installed 'Assassin's Creed 3' a few weeks ago, and finished it over the span of 2 weeks, without seeing a single BSOD. I though the BSOD problem was mysteriously solved. Then I started playing Skyrim again, and then the BSODs started happening again! So right now, my BSOD seems Skyrim specific, which is just mind-boggling. The 'pattern' I am seeing is that I would experience the BSOD, either during Skyrim (anywhere from 5 - 40 minutes of play) or after I quit Skyrim and immediately launch Firefox (it couldn't be Firefox...could it?). It would be persistent, as in I would keep getting the BSOD for a couple of days, or until I switch to another Catalyst driver version, and then my system would be stable for a week or so, then the whole thing would repeat itself. Does anyone recognize these 'symptoms' as indicative of anything?
 
Just to recap, here is what I've done so far to try and isolate the cause of the issue:
- tried every version of Catalyst driver (stable release as well as beta) from 13.1 to 13.5 beta 2.
- flashed BIOS to the latest I could find for the 750i (from 2009) and updated all drivers (chipset and audio).
- installed MSI Afterburner to monitor my GPU and CPU temperature during Skyrim (all within normal parameters).
- Furmark 3D and MSI Kombuster to stress test the GPU (both the one I purchased and the replacement from XFX).
- memtest the RAM sticks (8 passes with no errors).
- got a power supply tester from a friend to test my PSU to see if it might be failing.
 
The only thing I haven't been able to test is the motherboard, and I am not sure of any utilities that can do that. What would one test for anyway? I know Diff mentioned that the VGA controller has backward compatibility, but....nvidia motherboard + AMD GPU, could it be something there?