Recently got a new 7970, ran great and maxed out all my games, however a few days later I'm noticing artifacts on my screen and also according to MSI Afterburner the GPU usage jumps from 96% on start up. It then stays like this and I can't seem to fix it. I've tried reinstalling the drivers too but no success. Is this a wide problem or should I return my graphics card? Thanks.
Artifacts would indicate a poor overclock / unstable overclock. MSI have a history for this and id send it back and request a card not made by MSI. you can technically fix this yourself by just removing the overclock they have pre applied, its also a good way to test if it is just the overclock or if your card is fubar.
Just to clarify it's not an MSI 7970, rather a Gigabyte one. Also I haven't overclocked it at all yet, it's just on default. For now it's sort of fixed it self, it only goes to full GPU usage when on Witcher 2 with Uber Sampling but I'm still paranoid it may **** up again any time soon.