I probably should have posted my pc specs with the original post. Sorry about that.
CPU: I7-3770.
PSU: Thermaltake tr2 700w.
MOBO: Asrock z77 extreme4
RAM: Patriot 16 gb
256 toshiba ssd
1 tb toshiba hard drive
windows 7 pro 64 bit
I did remove the drivers for the previous card, but catalyst control center just does not want to go away. As for the problems I'm having:
Artifacts
Constant crashes to reboot when doing anything from playing skyrim, to running a render test, to trying to refresh my WEI.
General card instability.
The thing is, this was a micro center open box product, which means it was tested (or at least should have been) for proper functionality.