6870 artifacting for no reason

So, interestingly enough my twin frozr 2 6870 just randomly started hating on me and im not sure why

I've had this card for about 3-4 months now and all of a sudden one day in the middle of a game the game artifacts and it crashes to desktop, I figure ok its probably a bug in that game, So I go to chrome and try to google but then that artifacts also and wont stop until after a reset

One of the times my BSOD was 116 the other time it was 101, next was 3b, next f4

All of them seem to point to NTOSKRNL.exe

if not that then its: ATIKMPAG.SYS, DXGKRN.SYS, DXGMMS1.SYS

So I reinstalled my drivers from 11.10 to 12.1 of course in between the installs I booted into safemode and while there ran driver sweeper.

I also noticed that an "Nvidia - Physx" entry was there... is that for software/cpu physx or is that the actual driver for some reason?

My system is extremely well ventilated my procs max is 35c and gpu is 55-60c max

System specs:
Athlon 2 x3 445
4g DDR2
random ASRock mobo
antec 500D 500w PSU
6870 Twin Frozr 2

(also why am I getting random fps lag spikes on BF3 multiplayer even playing it on medium with no AA and occlusions off?)

After about 15 minutes in Furmark the max it got was 80c, in games its a bit lower since my proc is holding me back quite a bit

Heat and/or power issues are the likely culprits if your drivers are up to date and properly installed. Are you overclocking the CPU, GPU, and/or memory? If so, stop, revert to stock and see if the problem goes away.

Here is a bit more for us to go over, I just uninstalled physx, (ran driver sweeper in safemode aswell) proceeded to play a BF3 multiplayer match (well 2 of em, both around 30mins, 60 mins total) game seemed fine (besides looking crap on medium)

I was getting tired of that server so I exited went to choose a new one then its loading for like 5 minutes and my ui trips out saying your display driver has recovered, etc etc etc.

maybe another faulty driver install?

aw jeez, meant to edit, sorry.

That seems like a huge PITA as I don't have enough storage to move my files, 1 120g + 1 320 and half a 1tb is filled up D:

I'm sorry, dude, but your description does sound a lot like hardware failure on the GPU side. To be sure, I would clock the card down a few MHz (50 should do) on GPU and MEM. If your issues go away, it's RMA time!

Ok, just tried playing today after uninstalling physx, I was able to play for 3 hours before it crashed

And yeah I'll check if the card needs a good cleaning, brb will update with results.

(also 99% of my crashes dont produce a BSOD, its just a crash to desktop + something like this picture just not that severe) http://i.imgur.com/hccuB.jpg

Update, checked and no dust, well some just barely noticeable and not an issue, cleaned it off anywho though.

Win 7 will install the needed chipset drivers automatically. Your system should not be using any Intel chipset drivers, not do you have a Physx capable device.