I have the same problem on my 9500 pro and I don't have all the bells and whistles on....but for me I found that if I let it sit for about 45 sec to a min it will do a VPU recover and I can continue playing np, just screws up my desktop after I quit.
I get the vpu recovery too. I think it must be either a bug in the software or a driver problem.
It seems like a ton of people running ATI cards on this game have this problem.
And I get it even without any aa/af.
Running 1280X1024
very high quality
mip mapping on
View distance maxed with X4 modifier in the stream ini.
I've played for up to 4-5 hours without it popping up but other times it's happened twice in one hour. And these doesn't seem to be any consistancy on when it occurs i.e what 7 vehicles are blowing up at once in the rain it's fine but it's crashed on my just walking down the street.