Sager NP8690 Artifacting RMA?

I have a Sager NP8690 with a Mobility Radeon 5870. Everything was just fine until one day, while playing COD 4, I minimized the game to start HWmoniter and when I returned to the game I had horrible artifacting. After restarting my computer I launched Just Cause 2 and had no problems until I minimized it. When I came back to it I had even worse artifacting. After formatting my computer's HDD and completely reinstalling Windows+Catalyst 10.11 I still have the problem, but like before, only when I minimize games. My temps are very good, none of the games run over 75 degrees C. Also, neither ATi Tool or OCCT's scan seem to detect the artifacting. I'm thinking about an RMA so I can get a new GPU. Does this sound like a good idea or should I be doing something else? Is it hardware or software related?

Here is a picture, just in case it's any help:

 

Just throwing it out there, have you updated to the newest DirectX release? Sometimes that fixes weird issues.

 

This whole thing was a false alarm. After I reformatted, I couldn't get Just Cause 2 working, so I downloaded Far Cry 2 instead because it is the smallest dx10 game in my library. Unfortunately, Far Cry 2 has a weird graphical oddity that looks like artifacting, but isn't. After finally getting Just Cause 2 and all my other games working, I discovered that the problem was fixed. It was sort of stupid to assume it was a hardware problem, considering it only happens when I windowed out. Thanks for the advice though, I'll do that in the future if I ever run into another problem like this.