M17xR4 7970M woes...or possibly something else, I don't have a clue

I've been checking this site out for a fair while but I finally made an account that I need to call upon your technological wizardry. So anyway, I've got an M17xR4 with a Radeon 7970M and whenever the GPU is under load, but I'm not in a game, I get all these small black squares fickering around the edges of my screen. I'd take a screenshot, but they're shy and hide away when I try. The only time it's really under load when I'm not gaming is Bitcoining, but it still doesn't quite strike me as normal operation. I've reinstalled the drivers before, all that kinda stuff, and it won't go away so I'm just wondering if anyone knows what's causing it...

And then there's the overclocking...
If I try moving the core or memory clock up or down by as little as 1MHz I get massive artifacts flashing everywhere and what I can only describe as looking like screen tearing, on the desktop. I'm still kind of a n00b to overclocking, I started with my brother's laptop since the everything in it isn't too good, and I've never seen it do anything even close to this. I'm not using any modified firmware, just Afterburner. With my luck with this so far I'm in no way game to try flashing anything.

And then there's Afterburner...
I know it doesn't exactly fit here, but considering the way the GPU is going, I think it might be noteworthy. If I've got Afterbuner running, not overclocked but for the OSD, I get constant audio stuttering in games. Tried adjusting the polling rates, doesn't seem to help. Even if I'm just watching an episode of something and it's running in the background, it'll stutter the video and audio.

Then there's in game stuff, in Skyrim for example, I get the regular z-fighting in the distance, and flashing in the sky and on the ground, and trees glitching around. Doesn't matter whether I'm close or far, and switching it to anything but Ultra seems to be the only way to play it okay.

Plus, I've managed to scratch the screen already, it's just enough to annoy the crap out of me especially since this thing isn't even 3 months old. Don't suppose any of you would happen to know the specifics of the screen warranty? Or how to replace one since I doubt it'd be covered for the event of clumsy moron.

I know this seems like a lot of stuff to be asking, and I probably did miss a thread or two already covering some of the stuff. Just ask if you need any other details, pretty sure I left a lot out...
Any help is INCREDIBLY appreciated, and thanks in advance to anyone willing to help.

 

Well, the Afterburner overclock thing is due to poor support. Run afterburner with the -xcl flag and only overclock through catalyst control center.
Regarding the artifacts when mining, the card may be a very poor binning, the heatsink may not be seated properly, or the card may actually be defective and only sort-of running.
Try overvolting it a little (either through bios flash or creating an overclock profile and editing it), and see if it fixes the issue, but first make sure the card/heatsink is seated properly, the thermal pads are all on, and that you're getting good core contact. The card may run cold even if it's getting -poor contact. My card wouldn't go over 84 celsius under load even with less than 30% core contact. It now stays comfortably under 70 in most tasks, and is much much more stable.

 

With the OCing tearing. Get the latest Beta version. It fixes that issue.

With regards to your artifacts, iv seen someone in the m18x section of this forum experience the same thing. Perhaps have a little read through the AMD drivers thread, it's a stickied one near the top.
If you happen to be in your warranty period, perhaps use that as I think you may have a dud card.
Maybe if you make enough noise they'll replace the machine instead of sending around a technician to replace the card, this might kill two birds with one stone regarding your screen

You can also try Sangamaru's suggestions above, it could quite likely be the culprit. But I'd sooner have Dell get it right from the get go since your machine is brand new. You shouldn't have to risk your warranty to fix something that should already work, unless of course you're comfortable opening up your baby.

 

Tried -xcl and THANK YOU! IT'S ALIVE! No longer is there that terrible, terrible screen glitching. No idea how to OC in CCC, yes I did just want to say it like that, but Afterburner is at least letting me overclock without much hassle now. Currently I've got it at 950/1400, under full load mining, and staying at a pretty good 70C-ish. Does not help the mining though, gives an extra 30Mhash/s, but the black squares are there and invited some friends too...

Thanks I'll check out the thread. And yes, noise shall be made. I looked at the US Dell site AFTER I bought my laptop, and finding that I could have gotten two slightly less powerful M17xs for the budget I had set for this one left me rather irritated. And yes, that is me complaining they won't give Australia lower power parts xD
I guess my brother shall be staying with his eMachine that we half disassemble, point a fan at, and OC to play games with.
And whilst I would love to rip this open, there's no way I'll do that to something this expensive until the warranty has loooooong expired.

EDIT: Yeah I checked the thread, it's everyone going on about how great their card runs Skyrim and such. I do not share in their enthusiasm...

 

Hi DBLJMP and welcome,

first of, do you get these "small black squares" then you look at pictures? for example:

Had to scroll through a few until I got this effect and it only happens with enduro off. Also apparent in 3Dmark 06/Vantage/11 during the physics test (CPU load).

Concerning the overclocking:

 

Can't say I do, I only get black squares around the edges of the screen on the taskbar and up the top, and they aren't so neatly arranged. It only happens under GPU load too. Didn't have any issues with 3Dmark or any other benchmarking utilities.
With the overclocking I used -xcl like sangemaru suggested, now it works fine.

Anyone else out there know about rogue black squares and seizure inducing gaming?