7900GS Major Artifacting Issue

Had a little look around and the only other thread with a similar problem (on a 7900gtx) had no replies and was months old so I decided to make a new one.

Basically my Nvidia 7900GS started artifacting a while back and has steadily been getting worse until now I can't play any games at all.

It's a problem which affects both textures and models, it affects models by distorted them and reshaping them in a really weird way. It affects textures by having random bright red or green blobs on textures or other weird shapes.

Here are some pics:
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This happens within seconds of starting any game. The weird thing is it never happens while I'm running 3d rendering apps like Blender or Cinema 4d.

I also have a problem where I will get bright green pixels on my desktop, which flicker and don't stay in the same place like dead pixels would.

Thanks in advance

EDIT:
My other specs are:

Athlon X2 3800+
1GB Corsair DDR2 667MHz Ram
580W Hiper PSU
160GB SATA HD

 

That looks more like a driver problem to me. Have you tried to uninstall and reinstall them?

 

Yup I've even reformatted my PC but it doesn't solve the issue. Still does it with latest drivers.

 

You should try installing ATI Tool and using it to run an artifact scan. It will also be able to monitor your temperatures, so you can see if the artifacts are heat related. ATI Tool is great for nVidia cards, so don't worry about it causing driver issues or anything.