Alright lads, my brother said the "artifacts" appearing on the map are probably cause of the nvidia drivers are out of date. i'm pretty sure i seen a link on a crysis site, but i'm not sure which one now... should i just do a search on google? Cheers - Andy.

i'll post some screen shots and a fraps video in a lil while if you dont know what i mean by " artifacts ".

nice one for that mate, i just googled it. i really hope it fixes it, if it does i'm in heaven

bonus. it works perfectly on high now - love it. and i've got the vehicles to work

Anyone using the latest beta drivers for an 8800GTX card (preferably EVGA)? I tried them but they wouldn't install properly. It goes through the install process but then after restart there are no drivers loaded at all and it's using the basic VGA drivers.

Are you making sure your installing the correct version of the drivers. I downloaded the latest nvidia beta drivers (169.04) today - I'm in the UK so I made sure I downloaded the international version as they said the US version will not work outside the US. nvidia.co.uk if your in the UK.
Also make sure you pick the correct operating system. The drivers for my 64bit Vista installed fine. It did freeze when it was restarting, so I pressed the reset button but the drivers still installed ok.
You have probably tried this already but its the only thing I can think of.

DeadlyAvenger, I've had the similar problem - 640x480x16colors after installing latest driver and rebooting (but on 8600GTS). After that I've installed the same driver once again and everything is ok now.

i googled it, for the 7 series, and it works a treat