Well, I did some more temp. readings and got the card up to 92 degrees C during CS:S and it idles around 63 degrees.
I haven't gotten that massive artifacting lately, but the moderate artifacting is almost always present now. I ran Oblivion, and the performance didn't seem all that great.
On my 20 inch monitor I got a about 20-25 fps average indoors, about 35 max, and 5 minimum. This is with 4XAA and 16XAF. I haven't tried it outdoors yet, but from what I gather this seems like outdoor performance, which it usually much worse.
In HL2: EP1 the framerate was about 40 average, but dipped into the teens sometimes.
On CS_Compound, I got around 70fps average, but again it dipped into the 20's and 30's occasionally, and this is with no HDR. People said they were consistantly getting 100+ on this map, no matter what the settings, except 16XAA.
I am wondering whether the position of the tower is causing problems. I have it sitting on a pedastal that is holding up the desk. It is open in the front, closed in the back, and partially open on the sides. Do you think this is less than ideal, or would it not make much of a difference?
I will try that suggestion wizboy, but what exactly does 'write combining' do?