4870x2 dying or corrupt DX?

Hey DevH'ers... it's been awhile!

I'm still running the same rig I built around 2 years ago, probably a thread on here somewhere about that.... as of the last couple of months though, I've been getting more and more BSODs and random lock-ups/crashes etc which occur during gaming.

I think I first noticed it on WoW and more recently CoD BO - have been unable to reproduce it on earlier CoD versions or anything else as strenuous as these.

Basically, as soon as something 3D loads - there is a high chance I will see flickering square pixel blocks, say around 10px squared or slightly larger. They are multicoloured and scattered around the screen, and generally seem locked to textures or stuff in-game. I have also seen some nasty triangles coming out and going through random parts of game worlds, and all of the above gives the system a good shot at a BSOD. All of these things flicker horribly and makes gaming be a right pain to enjoy.

Error messages have varied and so have the files they list, for example I've seen dxgmms1.sys and atikmpag.sys the last few days.

Brief specs: ATI Radeon 4870X2, Corsair 850W TX PSU, Intel Q9550, OCZ 4GB DDR 1333 kit, Asus P5Q deluxe. Nothing has been OC'd... ever. Cooling is good, temps are a-ok. Case is an Antec 1200.

Stuff I have tried: Removing Catalyst (using 10.12 atm) then driver cleaner, a reboot and reinstall. Upped RAM voltage. Lowered gfx settings in these games. Changed PSU connectors to GPU, as I have like 3 sets. Nothing has had any effect.

If anyone may have any suggestions other than buying a new GPU, I would be most grateful.

Many thanks.

EDIT: Am running Win7 x64 Pro.

EDIT 2: Pictures are better than words. These screens just taken off WoW.

http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j161/krypton_ls/Misc/IMAG0028.jpg
http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j161/krypton_ls/Misc/IMAG0029.jpg
http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j161/krypton_ls/Misc/IMAG0030.jpg

Have you tried underclocking a bit? Maybe a vmod but that is a bit of effort. Bake it?

Hey there, thanks for your reply.

I feel obliged to follow this up, as you have done!

My "solution" was as follows: download EXPERTool and manually override the fan speed to 100%. This has reduced idle temperatures from 65-70 degrees C to the mid 40's.... and temps under load from 85-90 to 60. As soon as anything causes it to reach 70+ then the artifacts displayed in my screenshots occur.

It's really sad that the problems are due to the sub-standard ATI CCC drivers - as a consumer of their product I should not have to worry about the temperature of the card or with what methods their software controls it. This card will now have been my last ATI purchase - once I come to building my next rig it will be with nVidia.

I spent so much time trying to figure out this problem - it really drove me crazy. I researched countless other forum threads all over the web using the information in the crash logs, deciphered using the free "WhoCrashed" in conjunction with logs and recordings from GPU & CPU-Z, HWMonitor and Speedfan. All were invaluable.

I hope that if any other 4870X2 user reads this - seriously keep both eyes on your card and change to nVidia in the future - or at least consider them.