I recently purchased an XFX 4850 card which has been running all modern games superbly. It seems as though some games from HL2 and older seem to have artifact issues, while other don't, like JK for example.

I know this is not a card dying issue or anything of the sort, because it performs with games like crysis and CODMW2 perfectly. The issue only seems to be in older games. The artifacts I'm experiencing seem to be small black boxes of 3 or 4 pixels that will appear and disappear quickly. I have also encountered large artifacts that actually look like someone is physically using Microsoft paint and scribbling all over my screen. Another example is just artifacts in menus but all 3d rendering being normal.

Any ideas as to what may resolve the issue if possible at all? I am using ATI Catalyst 9.12 drivers. (also note: the artifacts actually improved with card overclocking using CCC overdrive)

That sounds to me like it's DOA.

Do you even know what DOA stands for?

Not even close. Like I said it runs everything else perfectly, I only encounter this problem with older games. If it was DOA this problem would be consistent.

Besides, XFX makes top quality products, you'd be hard pressed to get a card DOA from them.