Why do I get artifacts?

I have my 7600GS at 440 core and 375 mem but if I go ANY higher I get artifacts! and the weird thing is it only gets 55c while playing Half Life 2 or CounterStrike Source. Im using RivaTuner because thats the only oc'er I could get to work on Vista. I really want to get it to GT speeds I had it at GT speeds before it was at 57c under load but games were just artifact riddeled!! What I want to know is how can I get it so that there arent any artifacts and is NVIDIA MoniterView acurate? Is RivaTuner acurate? I always thought artifacts were caused by heat but 57c is not that hot! The rest of my setup is AMD X2 4200+ @ 2.2ghz 2046mb DDR2-533 nForce 410/430 MCP ASUS NODUSM3 mobo. Thanks

Up the core voltage. Or give up.

Well that could explain your whole problem.

Amperage is a little on the low side but should be ok

I dont think there is a 400W FSP with 32A, theres one with 25A and a 450W with 29A. Give me a link to the psu you are talking about.

Well dont expect to run the 2900 on anything with less than 34A, I'd go for 36 tho to give you headroom. That 400W only has 25A so forget it

No it cannot, and the amperage is not anywhere near the low side for the current system config.

The only major consumer of 12V current is that AMD X2 4200+ @ 2.2ghz, and it's using less than 9A, probably closer to 5A when bottlenecked by the video in a game, unless it was such a horrible overclocker that the voltage had to be pushed to extremes.

The video card is very miserly, using 2A or less, because it's a 7600GS not even voltmodded or o'c past GT levels.

Remaining significant 12V consumers are the hard drives, but only upon system power-on when they're all spinning up. Suppose he had 4 hard drives, which most people don't but let's suppose it anyway. Typical current about 500mA per, if/when they're all spinning (which isn't necessary either for gaming but again let's just suppose they are since we're trying to find a peak momentary current requirement), so 2A total at the point where either the CPU or video card could be maxed out.

It's doubtful the optical drive is spinning or that fans are using significant addt'l current but let's give them 1A anyway.

The math.

9 + 2 + 2 + 1 = 14A maximum PEAK power.

Typical power is going to be even lower.
Any honestly rated, decent quality PSU claiming 14A @ 12V should run that system fine for many years.

On the other hand, some 2900 would require a PSU with more than 28A on 12V rail.

Well I have the core at 440 and mem at 375 and its pretty good. I dont get artifacts at that tho I get good performance in all my games right now. I only play at 1024x768 so the HD2600XT is good enough for that res.