Windows 7

Thanks for the reply dude.

My system specs are:

Intel E6850 775 3.0GHZ overclocked to 3.7GHZ
BFG 680i SLI S775 PCIE
Silver Stone OP850 Watt
Zalmon CPU cooler
Corsair 2x2048 6400 DDR2 800
Gigabyte 3d Aurora Case
500GB WD

CPU idles between 34 and 38

Funny you ask as I'm in the process of building a new tower. This is what I've purchased so far.

Asus Crosshair iii Formula
AMD Phenom ii 965 Black Edition 3.4GHZ
Cool master V8
XFX 5870

Just waiting on DDR3 1600 and I'll use my existing case and power supply. Should be a killer when it's finished.

Now to the issue with the card. I removed my existing petition and installed a fresh copy of Vista Ultimate SP1. Downloaded both Catalyst drivers 10.1 & 10.2 which have installed successfully on two occasions. The first game I tested was stalker call of priprat. The game played normally under enhanced full dynamic lighting. As soon as I changed the settings to full dynamic lighting DX10, the game experiences artifacts all over the screen. Same issue happened in crysis except the artifacts were full blown right from the start. I installed resident evil 5 which ran well under DX9. As soon as I ran the game in DX10 it started to show heavy artifacts and sometimes freezed and required a restart.

Having had no success in DX10 on Vista, I though I'd try Win7. After doing a clean install, I downloaded the latest catalyst drivers which installed successfully. Rebooted the machine to find full blown artifacts all over the desktop. Now forget about playing anything on Win7. Just to clarify that my hardware isn't faulty, I uninstalled my Catalyst drivers and removed my 5870 and reinstalled my MSI NX8800 ultra. Downloaded the latest nvidia drivers and found no artifacts in any games whatsoever.

I don't believe service pack 2 would address any of these issues. And yes my DX is update to the latest. My biggest worry is not being able to use win7. I was looking forward to playing stalker in DX11. I can't even play games in DX10.

If possible, try using either 9.9 or 9.12 drivers.

ATI is trying to fix most of the artifact/glitch problems with the 57xx/58xx series cards with their upcoming 10.3 drivers, which are to be released March. So you might have to wait til then.

I assume this isn't your problem ?

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ATI-Grey-Screen-Lines-...

Thanks heaps for your insight peoples. I'll have to see what happens with the latest driver updates.

Is there a hotfix for 4800series cards? I have a HD4870 with very similar issues on Win7 64 bit.

Found out that my card XFX 5870 is faulty. Was given a full refund  

did you get a new working card?? I had similar issues, but only when I "unlocked" the overclocking part of CCC.