Artifacts apearing in games

Hmmm sounds like overheating issue. I am not sure about the GPUZ but what does ATI Overdrive tell you about the temperature of the GPU.

Also artifacts can be caused by overheating of the memory, so make sure your memory is not over clocked and that you have proper air flow in your case.

the card was over clocked using CCC built in over clock settings. When I tested the clocks they came back as good. I would play Red Alert on it and eventually artifacts would begin to appear in any video that was displayed by the computer, even the map previews in game. So I turned off the factory over clock to default settings and only use the fan control in CCC to turn it up for games and I haven't had any problems since. Still looks better than my old computer ( a 6 year old dell). Im still not sure what caused the problems other than maybe CCC's overclocking feature it faulty. It works now maybe it will help others. THanks for the help guys