GPU Driver error when games crash

Hi Guys I wonder if you can help...

For the last year or so I've been having an issue with certain games crashing and either going to desktop or crashing my pc completely, it started with Battlefield 3 (Multiplayer only) which crashes usually withing 10 minutes of starting but I have known it crash immediatly upon joining a game, when that crashes it either crashes to desktop but I cannot see my mouse or click on things when it does this meaning I have to either alt+tab to a task manager window to close the bf3.exe or ctrl+alt+del and open task manager that way. When the game crashes I can see an error in the bottom right saying "Display Driver nvidia Windows Kernel Mode Driver, Version 310.70 stopped responding and has successfully recovered".

More recently I have tried playing Assassins Creed 3 which crashes as soon as I start the singleplayer campaign, it used to bluescreen but I reinstalled windows onto a new ssd and now it just crashes in a similar way to Battlefield 3 and displays the same error. I have the same problem with Just Cause 2 but it happens seemingly at random, I can go hours without a crash or it can happen within minutes.

System Specs:

Motherboard - Asus P8P67 Evo
GPU - Gainward 'GOOD' Edition GTX 580
CPU - I7 2600k
PSU - 750w (unsure of model)

So far in an attempt to fix this I reinstalled windows on a new SSD which stopped assassins creed 3 from Bluescreening but it still crashes, I have tried updating my drivers, running BF3 at lower settings but it still crashes and I have tried reinstalling of my games, I have been thinking about replacing the GPU with a 680 but I'm not sure I would want to do this if it didn't resolve the issue, but seeing as the error seems related to my GPU that is all I can think to do. Do you guys have any suggestions.

Thanks.