Artifacts everywhere--not sure what to do

Sorry if this gets long..also, wasn't sure where to post this. Anyways, I was playing some Dark Souls 2 on my PC when artifacts began populating on my screen. This has never happened before so I was kinda freaked out. I immediately quit the game hoping that would resolve the issue, but they stuck around on the desktop. After restarting my computer I was relieved to see that they were not present during boot up, but once windows actually started and my desktop loaded up, out they came. I did a little research and found there can be several causes for them including a bad monitor, dvi cable, drivers, gpu, etc. and I narrowed it down to either the graphics card or the drivers. I was really hoping it was the drivers because the graphics card is rather new and was installed August of 2013. However, after preforming a system restore, uninstalling drivers, reinstalling drivers, uninstalling drivers again, installing older drivers; this problem just wont go away! I discovered that when I don't have the AMD drivers installed there's no artifacts. Also, if I use my PC's APU instead of the discreet card there again are no artifacts. I'm afraid that means my gpu is toast, but i'm hoping for other options, which brings me here. Can anyone help me out here?

Thanks!

My build:

AMD A-series A10 APU

ASRock extreme6 FM2+ socket motherboard

8 gb crucial ballistix ram

HIS HD7870 iceQ Turbo GPU

Corsair 430 watt PSU

 

Ya sorry does sound like it. The only thing I can tell you is if your running a overclock reset it to your stock speeds. I am assuming you did that. I also had this happen in a computer my brother had and it came down to the GPU not being seated properly. I pulled it out and reseated it and it went away.

Any way I wish you the best of luck and hope at the very least you can RMA it.