Low Temps with artifacts?

[AznAnarchy99]

I have a x800xtpe with an ati silencer 4 oced to 560/600 and my temps are 40 idle, 55 load with side window open, and i get minor artifacts throughout games, like in cs source, boxes would glitch here and there..

ive gone to 580/600 and i would still get the same temps and same minor artifacts. arent artifacts directly related to the temps? my card is at 550/580 and now i have no artifacts but ive seen others with better OCs, with the same setup

 

[Commander Suzdal]

Artifacts can be temp related, but they are more often a result of clock speed exceeding the capacity of the circuitry that's pumping out the data. They can also result from enabling features on a "factory-crippled" GPU--some are crippled to make more low-end cards to fill customer demand at a given price-point, others are crippled because that particular unit on that particular chip is flawed.

There are physical limits to how fast electrons can flow through the gates in a particular circuit, and this varies from chip to chip, not just from design to design. If you exceed those limits, artifacts will appear regardless of temperature. If you keep on exceeding those limits, you run the risk of permanently damaging the GPU.