Minimal pop-ins (tolerable for me, almost unnoticeable while in the heat of game play).
No artifacts.
No crash when quick saving (F5)
crashed a couple of times while saving thru the menu.
crashed once while changing zone.
60 FPS

It's not perfect, but it's definitely playable.

After days of trying out user shared fixes, rage update, and Graphics drivers, i have been plagued with artifacts and checkerboard texture.
so i decided to just run thru everything again.

The first thing I did was remove everything i changed.
I set the CCC to default.
I removed all launch parameters.
I deleted the RageConfig.cfg
I deleted the atioglxx.dll
I deleted the id software/rage cache file

I already have the 11.10 v2 driver installed and the rage updated so i decided to just leave it at that.

After that i reset the rage config to default by adding "+cvar_restart" in the launch parameter.
I launched the game and loaded a save. I got the checkerboard texture with 1 FPS, perfect cause thats where i actually started after downloading the update and installing the 11.10 v2 driver.
I closed the game and started going over the "Fixes" again.

after a few combinations of fixes (using the +cvar_restart everytime i mess up with the config file), i found my sweet spot:

in CCC, i ticked "Enable surface format optimization" and "Triple Buffering"
I created the id software/rage cache folder
I set the launch parameters to "+jobs_numThreads 0 +vt_maxPPF 16"

That's it, I probably could tinker with the rageconfig.cfg a bit, but i decided not to.

My conclusion:
Some fix didn't work on others because they probably have edited the config too much before trying the "right" fix for them.
So, try doing a config reset first (+cvar_restart) before attempting any fix.

cheers.

edit: btw my pc specs:
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 32-Bit
CPU: Intel Core2Quad Q6600 @ 2.4GHz
RAM: 3 Gb
VCard: PowerColor ATI Radeon HD 5850